Report · Published 10 September 2026
What college admissions counselling costs in India, 2026.
We opened the pricing page of every college admissions counselling provider an Indian family is likely to shortlist, and wrote down what it said. Of 12 providers, 5 publish a price and 7 do not. Among the India-based providers that publish, the range is ₹15,000 for a single session to ₹10 lakh for an all-countries package. Every provider positioned as premium publishes nothing at all, and the figures third parties report for them reach ₹6.60 crore.
Prices as displayed between 1 and 10 September 2026. Converted at ₹88 to the US dollar where both currencies are shown. Units differ between rows, so read the tables rather than the headline. Free to reuse with a link.
5/12
Providers that publish any price at all on their own website.
₹15,000
The cheapest published figure from an India-based provider, for a single session.
₹10 lakh
The most expensive published figure in India, for an all-countries plan that includes writing services.
₹6.60 crore
The highest figure reported for a firm that publishes nothing, over a six-year engagement.
The finding
The firms that publish prices are the cheap ones
Every provider in this survey that publishes a price is either an online platform or a test-preparation chain. Every provider positioned as premium, in India and abroad alike, publishes nothing. That is not a coincidence of presentation. It is the market working as designed: a family cannot compare what it cannot see, and a firm that discloses last has the advantage in the room.
The vacuum gets filled anyway. Ask the internet what Crimson Education costs and you will be told anywhere between $25,000 and $200,000, because a Fortune article and a handful of review sites are the only public record. Ask what Athena costs and you get a figure a journalist published in 2022. Families are making decisions worth several years of tuition on numbers the firms themselves have never confirmed.
The second finding follows from the first. Across the India-based providers that publish anything, the price spans a factor of sixty-six, from ₹15,000 to ₹10 lakh, with almost no relationship between the number and the hours a senior person actually spends on the student. What varies is not effort. It is how many universities are on the list and who does the work.
Published prices
What providers state on their own websites
| Provider | Segment | Published range | In rupees | Unit | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Princeton Review princetonreview.com college counseling, checked 2026-09-09 | International premium firm | $99 to $19,999 | ₹8,712 to ₹17.60 lakh | per service | Essay counselling from $99; strategy session $349; admissions counselling $3,999 (7 meetings, a 20 to 25 school list, 2 to 3 rounds of personal statement edits); premier counselling $14,999 in senior year and $19,999 from junior year |
| The Red Pen theredpen.in shop, checked 2026-09-09 | Indian counselling firm | ₹15,000 to ₹46,000 | as shown | per service | General counselling ₹15,000; educational counselling ₹20,000; MBA or MS profile analysis ₹25,000; boarding school consultation ₹35,000; application review by former admissions officers ₹37,000; counselling with psychometric testing ₹46,000. Exclusive of GST. Full packages are quoted privately |
| Yocket yocket.com/premium, checked 2026-09-09 | Online platform | ₹59,999 to ₹1,34,999 | as shown | package | 10 to 16 universities across 2 to 4 countries, counsellor and mentor support, EMI offered at ₹5,999 a month |
| UniRely unirely.com services, checked 2026-09-09 | Online platform | ₹89,900 to ₹9,99,999 | as shown | package | Singapore or Hong Kong ₹89,900; UK five universities ₹1,24,900; Canada five ₹1,99,900; US seven ₹3,99,900; all countries unlimited ₹7,49,900; the top plan adds essay, research paper and recommendation writing at ₹9,99,999 |
| Plinth Education plintheducation.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-10 | Independent senior counsellor | ₹1,50,000 to ₹4,50,000 | as shown | package | Application Year from ₹1,50,000; Profile Build from ₹2,50,000; Full Journey from ₹4,50,000. Single services from ₹25,000. Floors published, exact figure fixed after a free written profile review |
Reported, not confirmed
Providers that publish no price
| Provider | Segment | Reported range | In rupees | Reported by | What the figure covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crimson Education | International premium firm | $25,000 to $200,000 | ₹22 lakh to ₹1.76 crore | Fortune and findmyorbit, reported | Reported typical range $35,000 to $65,000 for a multi-year package, above $100,000 for early-start or international programmes, and close to $200,000 to work with the co-founders |
| IvyWise | International premium firm | $29,500 to $76,875 | ₹25.96 lakh to ₹67.65 lakh | third-party pricing reports 2025-26 | Reported package range, with the initial 90-minute consultation reported at about $1,350 |
| Command Education | International premium firm | $120,000 to $750,000 | ₹1.06 crore to ₹6.60 crore | press coverage republished by the firm | Reported at $120,000 a year, and $750,000 for a six-year engagement |
| Empowerly | International premium firm | $10,800 to $32,000 | ₹9.50 lakh to ₹28.16 lakh | third-party pricing reports 2025-26 | Reported range across published tiers |
| Athena Education | Indian premium firm | ₹4,00,000 to ₹5,00,000 | as shown | YourStory, 2022 | Reported in 2022 as a mentorship programme of roughly ₹4 to 5 lakh a year, with students enrolling as early as Class 9. No price has been published since |
| Essai | Indian counselling firm | Not published | — | essai.in FAQ | Publishes no price. Its own FAQ states that pricing depends on the level of support and follows a consultation |
| Commission agents | Commission agent | Free to Free | as shown | sector norm, described on our agent guide | Free to the family. Paid by partner universities, commonly 10 to 20 percent of first-year tuition, mostly in the UK, Australia, Canada and Ireland. The commission decides which universities are recommended |
Not one firm positioning itself as premium, in India or abroad, publishes what it charges. Every provider that does publish is a platform or a test-preparation chain.
Segments
Six ways of selling the same work
- Commission agentFree to the family. Free to the family. Paid by the universities it places students at.
- Online platform₹59,999 to ₹10 lakh. Per-country packages. Counsellors are often current undergraduates.
- Indian counselling firm₹15,000 to ₹46,000. Counsellor teams. Some publish single-service prices, none publishes a package price.
- Indian premium firm₹4 lakh to ₹5 lakh. Multi-year programmes from Class 9. No published price since 2022.
- International premium firm₹8,712 to ₹6.60 crore. Former admissions officers and large teams. Only the test-prep chain publishes.
- Independent senior counsellor₹1.50 lakh to ₹4.50 lakh. One counsellor, capped caseload, published floors.
Method
How these numbers were collected
A desk survey. Each provider's own pricing page was opened and recorded. Where a provider publishes no price, a figure was recorded only if a named third party had reported one, and it is marked as reported rather than confirmed. No provider was contacted, no quotes were solicited, and no figure has been estimated or interpolated.
Window. Prices as displayed between 1 and 10 September 2026. Converted at ₹88 to the US dollar where both currencies are shown.
Excluded. Test preparation sold on its own, application and test fees, competition entry fees, journal publication fees, summer programme tuition, and anything bundled with a visa or loan product.
Sample. 12 providers, chosen because they appear in the search results and listicles an Indian family actually encounters. This is not a random sample and does not claim to be the whole market.
Conflict of interest. Plinth Education sells the service being surveyed and appears in the first table. Our own row is taken from our public pricing page on the same terms as everyone else. We have not ranked the table, scored anyone, or described any competitor as good or bad.
Corrections. If a figure about your firm is wrong or out of date, write to hello@plintheducation.com. We will check it against your page and correct it within seven days, with the change dated.
Licence. The data is free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution and a link to this page. Download the CSV.
For families
What to do with this
Use the table as a floor, not a quote. A published price tells you what a firm charges for a defined scope; it does not tell you who does the work, how many students that person carries, or whether essays are edited or written. Those three questions separate providers far more than price does, and they are the first three of the twelve on our guide to choosing a counsellor.
If a firm will not put a number in writing before you have spent an hour on a call, that is information. So is a package priced per country: it usually means the counsellor is paid per application rather than per student. Our package comparison guide sets out what to check line by line, and the fees article explains what each segment actually buys.
We publish our floors for the same reason we published this.
You should be able to compare before you talk to anyone, including us.