How Much Does CBT for Insomnia Cost? [Data]

In general, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for insomnia costs $50-100 per hour and lasts for 4-5 sessions for a total cost of $200-500.

If you’d like a more detailed breakdown, read on.

This price depends on where you live, how many sessions you take, whether you take individual or group sessions, and whether you do sessions online or in person.

How Much Does One Session of CBT for Insomnia Cost?

World class therapists charge hundreds of dollars per hour.

The average CBT practitioner charges $50-100 per 60 mins. Some offer 30 minute sessions (ranging from $30-60 from what I’ve seen).Online teachers typically charge less because there’s less overhead for them.

Online CBT services tend to be weekly payments, so you essentially just subscribe (for $30-60 per week) for as long as you need to, and that usually includes one online session with a teacher.

How Many Sessions of CBT Will You Need?

If a session hypothetically costs $100, the total cost of your treatment will be equal to 100 times however many sessions you need.

You can obviously stop going or subscribing once you feel like you are no longer benefiting from it. However, some therapists bundle sessions together (so you don’t pay by individual session).

Most pre-packaged CBT for insomnia courses bundle together 4-6 sessions. That’s a good indication of how many sessions the average person needs. Each session usually occurs weekly, which gives you a good amount of time to apply what you’ve learned in the previous lesson.

What If You Can Only Afford One or Two Sessions?

Just because you can’t enroll into a full CBT course, doesn’t mean that all hope is lost.

While research on frequency is still not 100% clear, early results suggest that just a single session of CBT can improve the odds of clearing up sleep issues by up to 4 times (i.e. 400%) (1,2).

SummaryMost people will benefit from the additional sessions, but you can learn a large portion of what you need to from just a single CBT session.

Is CBT Worth The High Cost?

In most countries, CBT for insomnia isn’t covered by healthcare plans, so this is a significant expense that you’ll have to cover.

However, if you’re aware of the side effects of insomnia, it’s clear that a reliable way to improve your sleep quality is worth almost any price.

While there’s no guarantee of success, there’s a reason that doctors almost always prescribe CBT for patients with insomnia.

Evidence suggests that it’s CBT for insomnia the most effective treatment in most cases (3).

Group CBT vs. Individual CBT

While not all therapists offer it, some do offer group sessions of CBT (GCBT).

Overall, research shows that group sessions are just as effective (or close), and can be offered at a lower price for each individual.

A study looking at CBT for depression concluded (4):

We found no significant differences between individual and group format.

Another study of group CBT for binge eaters also found positive results (5).

So far, studies looking at group CBT for insomnia have found that it still significantly helps patients improve their sleep quality (6,7):

Overall, we found medium to large effect sizes for sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, and wake after sleep onset and small effect sizes for pain outcomes

Again, not all therapists offer a group option, but if you do see it and would like to save some money, it’s a very good option for most people.

References

1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia and Acute Insomnia
2. Treating Acute Insomnia: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a “Single-Shot” of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia
3. Acute insomnia: Current conceptualizations and future directions
4. Individual and group CBT and IPT for Puerto Rican adolescents with depressive symptoms.
5. Brief, four-session group CBT reduces binge eating behaviors among bariatric surgery candidates
6. Group cognitive–behavioral therapy in insomnia: a cross-sectional case-controlled study
7. A meta-analysis of group cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia