How Much Do Guitar Lessons Cost In 2020? (Online And In-Person Average Costs)

Learning to play the guitar is a wonderful skill that many desire. Sadly, not many have been able to acquire it because they can’t find affordable guitar lessons. Now, there’s a solution.

Affordable guitar lessons are widely available online, but how much do guitar lessons cost? We’ll answer this question by taking a look at the available options, including cost, features, and tips.

What Are Your Options?

Hiring a private tutor is still a common way to receive guitar lessons, and the higher the quality of a teacher, the higher the fees.

So, how much is a guitar teacher? It depends on several factors.

You can’t expect to pay an instructor from a reputable academy the same amount you’d pay an unknown instructor without references. The experience and reputation of the teacher will certainly affect the asking price.

Other factors that’ll affect the price of a private tutor are your location and skill level. If you live in an area where there’s a shortage of private tutors, the scarcity will drive up prices. If your skill level is low, you might also pay more for the effort put in by the teacher.

In-person guitar lessons cost about $30 to $50 for a 45-minute session (1). If you are a beginner who’s taking weekly lessons and paying an average of $40 for 45 minutes, you could spend up to $160 monthly (or $800 in five months). It’s a lot of money.

These calculations aren’t taking into consideration the cost of buying materials or traveling to the guitar teacher’s location, either.

It must al be remembered that there are more cost-effective alternatives available such as online guitar lessons. We take a look at the best online guitar lessons here.

How Much are Guitar Lessons Online?

Instead of paying the high fees of a personal guitar trainer, you can find guitar lessons for free on YouTube. Hundreds of YouTube videos cover various guitar skills, and you have a rich resource that you can access with an internet connection.

You can also access it from anywhere without worrying about having to schedule an instructor. On the downside, the wide variety of options on YouTube can be overwhelming, and some aren’t good quality.

Watching a YouTube video is a one-sided tutorial (2), and you won’t get any feedback regarding your progress. The lack of interaction with a tutor may soon become monotonous.

What’s better than YouTube? Paid online guitar lesson platforms.

Examples of such platforms that are moderately priced are JamPlay and Guitar Tricks (3). These platforms are not the cheapest or most expensive in their category, and both let you pay a fraction of the cost of hiring a personal instructor with the same benefits (and more).

For example, JamPlay and Guitar Tricks cost about $19.95 a month - far less than you would ever pay for a top guitar tutor. At these prices, one month of in-person instructions pays for several months of online guitar training. We compared both of these platforms in our article ‘JamPlay vs Guitar Tricks‘.

What Do You Get For This Amount?

A month’s membership of JamPlay or Guitar Tricks will give you full access to the platform’s huge library of high-quality video lessons that cover various topics. There are thousands of these videos, covering everything from guitar fundamentals to how to play specific genres and songs.

Tools like JamPlay and Guitar Tricks also let you receive instructions and feedback in real-time from instructors who are professional guitarists. You still have access to an in-person instructor, and you can communicate from the comfort of your phone or laptop.

You can take lessons on these platforms at your convenience and learn at your own pace. If you are a newbie, you can start the lessons from scratch. If you already have some experience, pick the lessons that are most relevant to you.

Did we mention that Guitar Tricks offers a 14-day free trial? With that free trial, you can enjoy a limited time of free lessons, which is something hardly any private tutor would offer you.

Final Thoughts

The high price of hiring a personal guitar instructor is beyond what most aspiring guitarists can afford. Fortunately, with online guitar lesson platforms, you can pay less to enjoy the many benefits of having a personal guitar trainer.

Top-quality platforms, like JamPlay and Guitar Tricks, offer more than most tutors provide. Examples of such benefits are real-time feedback from pro-guitarists, access to thousands of tutorial videos, and the power to learn at your own pace.