For race directors

What should you charge for your race?

Every number here comes from 1,049 entry fees that 384 Canadian races publish on their own registration pages, read one distance at a time and recomputed nightly. It answers the questions a runner never asks: where does our number sit, how do other races build a price ladder, and what happens if we go high. The runner's version of this page is what races cost in Canada.

Where your number sits

A director usually half-knows the median. What is hard to find is the shape of the market around a candidate price.

† Fewer than 50 published fees — read it as a rough range rather than a going rate. Anything under 20 would not be shown at all.

The middle of the market is wide. A 5K at $36 and a 5K at $65 are both ordinary — half of every 5K entry in Canada sits between them. You are not choosing between a right price and a wrong one; you are choosing which half of the field you want to sit in.

The ladder inside one race

Measured within each race rather than across them, which holds the town, the organizer and the year constant and reads only the gap between one distance and the next.

• 5K → 10K: median +$10.72 (1.15×), middle half between +$0 and +$11

  182 races selling both. 54 of them (30%) charge exactly the same for both.

• 10K → Half marathon: median +$22.10 (1.30×), middle half between +$16 and +$38

  76 races selling both. 8 of them (11%) charge exactly the same for both.

• Half marathon → Marathon: median +$16.16 (1.12×), middle half between +$11 and +$22

  19 races selling both — few enough that this is an indication, not a rule.

That last figure deserves saying plainly: about 30% of Canadian races selling both a 5K and a 10K charge the same for each. A good share of directors have decided the second five kilometres costs them nothing, and price that way.

How many distances to sell

The median Canadian race sells 2 distances — 152 sell one, 138 sell two, 61 sell three, 16 sell four or more.

Distance count tracks what a 5K charges: $45.41 at a race selling one, $56.71 at a race selling two, $64.56 at a race selling three, $66.40 at a race selling four or more. Read that carefully. It almost certainly runs through event size and production values rather than the number of distances itself — bigger events sell more distances and charge more for all of them — so it describes the market, not a lever you can pull.

146 races (38%) sell a paid kids' race alongside, at a median of $28.93. Separately, 118 entry options across 82 upcoming races are free — most of them kids' events.

Field size doesn't set the price

140 entry options across 63 races publish a live “spots remaining” count — the only capacity number Canadian races make public, and it is what is left, not the cap, so treat it as a floor on field size rather than a measurement of it. Against each option's price (normalised to its distance), the rank correlation is -0.03 — no relationship at all.

By bucket: 1–25 left sits at a $56.09 median; 26–100 sits at a $66.98 median; 101–300 sits at a $58.00 median.

So a small field is not, on its own, a reason the market will accept a higher fee, and a large one is not a reason to charge less. Whatever your per-runner costs look like, published prices are not tracking them. Only 133 of 384 priced races show any capacity signal at all, because the platform prints one only once a limit is set.

How other races raise a price

A listing shows a date range beside each fee, and it is tempting to read it as a price tier. It mostly isn't — for the large majority of races that range simply runs to the day registration closes. So the structure below comes from watching instead: every fee table on the site is re-read on a rolling cycle, and 335 increases have been caught across 104 races.

The median step is $10.72 (13%), and the middle half of increases land between 9% and 18%; the steepest tenth clear 24%. By distance: 5K +$5.46 (14%), 10K +$10.72 (11%), Half marathon +$10.76 (9%), Kids' race +$5.39 (17%). The dollar step barely grows with the distance, so the percentage shrinks.

The convention nobody has written down: among the 66 races seen raising two or more options that started at different prices — the only races that can tell the two apart — 36 raised every one by the same dollar amount (within a dollar) and 1 by the same percentage (within a point). And 56 of 114 races moved every priced option on their table on the same read, rather than staggering distances.

Cuts happen but are rare: 30 fees moved down across 10 races, a median $11.05 off. Worth knowing; not a strategy.

An honest limit: this log began September 8, 2026 and so far reflects a single comparison between two reads. The sizes of the steps are solid — each is a real before-and-after — but it is not yet a year of history, and it says nothing about when in the season races raise prices.

Do dearer races still fill?

Every committee worries that a higher price empties the start line. At 5K and 10K the data points the other way. Comparing one price per race per distance across upcoming races, those with at least one distance sold out charge a median of $70.00, and those with nothing sold out $61.12 — 15% more. A permutation test puts the chance of a gap that size appearing by accident at about 1 in 118 (68 sold-out against 459).

It survives the two obvious objections. Sold-out races tend to be closer to race day, so restrict both groups to races within 60 days (68 against 375) and the gap is $70.00 against $61.12. Trail races are over-represented among sell-outs, so compare road races only (54 against 387) and it is $70.00 against $61.12. Landing on identical medians from different sets of races is not a typo: fees cluster on a handful of the same price points. Split by distance: 5K $65.02 against $52.99, 10K $78.76 against $69.94.

The ceiling is higher than most committees assume. On the current calendar, sold-out entries include a $112.98 10K at Canmore Rocky Mountain Half Marathon, 10km & 5km, a $111.53 10K at Marathon Beneva de Québec 2026, a $109.06 10K at 2026 Muskoka Marathon and a $106.85 10K at Niagara Falls 10k, Half & Marathon 2026.

What this does not mean. It is an association. The far likelier reading is that races people want can charge more — not that charging more makes people want a race. Nothing here says raising your fee will help you fill. It does say that a well-run race priced in the top quarter is not unusual, and is not the thing standing between you and a full field.

When to open registration

Of 714 upcoming races publishing an open date, the median opens registration 224 days before race day, and the middle half between 137 and 340 days out. 65% open at least six months ahead, 40% at least nine, and only 13% inside 90 days.

Opening a year out is not unusual. Opening three months out puts you among the last to open — and if you intend to run an early-bird rate at all, it leaves little room for one.

Your weekend, and why price isn't how you compete

Placing 992 upcoming races on a map, the median race shares its weekend with 3 other races within 100 km, the middle half between 1 and 7. 24% have no rival within 100 km that weekend at all, and 39% none within 50 km.

That competition does not show up in price. At 5K and 10K, races with no rival within 100 km charge a $61.70 median; one to three charge a $56.87 median; four to nine charge a $62.14 median; ten or more charge a $61.59 median. Normalised to each distance, every group sits within ten percent of the market. Whatever you are competing on with the race down the road, the published data says it is not the entry fee.

How this was counted