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Summary: Choosing between the American Yoga Council and Yoga Alliance as teacher requires investigating their viewpoint, costs, and professional perks. Yoga trainers and studio owners should also review official requirements before deciding.
You have finished your yoga teacher training and are excited to step into the world as a professional yoga teacher. Perhaps you even dream of leading your own yoga teacher training some day. You take your yoga career seriously and wonder: should I join a professional yoga organization? Perhaps your trainers discussed Yoga Alliance as part of your professional development, or maybe they also mentioned a relatively new organization: the American Yoga Council.
Now you are thinking: Should I join one of them? If so, which one? Is yoga alliance registration necessary to run a YTT? Let’s take a look!
The American Yoga Council (AYC) is a professional membership organization and accreditation body. AYC offers professional membership and credentialing options for yoga teachers as well as yoga teacher trainings. When evaluating teachers, it considers training, your teaching experience, and additional professional qualifications. A newer organization, AYC emerged as a competitor to Yoga Alliance in late 2025.
Yoga Alliance has been around for almost thirty years and is known for its Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) and Registered Yoga School (RYS) credentials. Teachers who complete an eligible YTT through a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga School can apply to be a “RYT.” Yoga schools can apply for registration if they meet the organization’s requirement (which includes the school’s trainers being registered with the organization). In recent years, Yoga Alliance has placed an increasingly high priority on values such as diversity, equity, and inclusion and professional ethics and (as of late 2026) they are shifting their focus to include a wider membership beyond teachers and schools.
AYC and YA have different approaches to credentialing teachers. While YA is anchored in the 200/500 designation, AYC is more flexible and focuses on competencies. That said, there is overlap: AYC’s “Level 1” gives you a similar amount of street cred as YA “200 Hour.” If you took a non-Yoga Alliance registered YTT, then I would head on over to AYC as Yoga Alliance historically doesn’t register teachers unless they take a YA registered training. Personally, I don’t love this exclusion, as it closes the door on yoga teachers who are skilled but haven’t trained with a registered school; while YA has “grandfathering” options available, these aren’t always easy to navigate.
In contrast, AYC does not base teacher eligibility on a particular school (or number of hours), but instead credentials teachers based on their declared skills and experience. Rather than base credentialing of teachers on their YTT school, AYC prefers a flexible approach that declares and publicizes a teacher’s competencies as well as their mentors and lineage.
Another key difference for teachers to consider is how the organization may act as a marketing tool for you. The American Yoga Council puts their teacher and school directory front and center to help prospective students find teachers and schools that suit their needs. To this end, they have a robust linkage of teachers with mentors so that prospective students can locate similarly styled teachers more easily. (Consider the difference between trying to find a “vinyasa” teacher in your area versus finding a “Baron Baptiste” influenced teacher and you can see how this specificity is helpful). While Yoga Alliance also has a teacher and school directory, it does not sort by mentors and the directory is not widely used for marketing.
But beyond that, the choice is personal. Look over the organizations, their values, their benefits, and their costs and decide with one you like. YA and AYC both offer teacher discounts and CE resources (though I’d say AYC leans a little more heavily into business topics). And keep in mind: your choice doesn’t have to be final. You can join one organization and join another one later. Or you can join both if you like both options.
If you’re a school, choosing between AYC and YA has a few more factors to consider.
Since Yoga Alliance has been the industry standard for such a long time, some prospective students look specifically for Yoga Alliance-registered training programs so that they may get the “RYT” designation. (Although you should keep in mind that “RYT” simply means that you are a member of the organization and have graduated from a RYS; it is not in and of itself an indication of teaching quality.) The RYT registration pathway requires that you have trained at a Registered Yoga School. Yoga Alliance currently bases its designations on hours (200/500). So if your training isn’t registered with YA, then your trainees can’t register with the organization as a teacher.
Applying to register your school with Yoga Alliance also entails meeting a set series of core competencies (determined by YA) to ensure compliance. I believe that YA will be “softening” some of this specificity in the future, but their educational requirements place schools squarely in the 200 hour or 300 hour category. Compliance also currently requires programs to meet certain hourly standards: 30 hours philosophy/ethics, 30 hours to anatomy, 75 hours on techniques, training and practice and 50 hours to professional essentials.
In contrast, AYC does not credentials schools based on hours, but solely on core competencies. In other words, rather than focus on hourly requirements, AYC focuses on self-defined learning objectives. For example, a school could offer a Level 1 training and include no anatomy whatsoever, while another school could lean heavily into anatomy and keep philosophy to a minimum. This more flexible framework may permits schools to leverage their areas of expertise – and allows students to find schools that specialize in their particular interests. However, it could also mean that a Level 1 training (similar to a 200 hour) may not have the same topic diversity as a YA program. In addition to accrediting training programs, AYC also is implementing a robust credentialing system to recognize teachers’ work in specialized subjects.
Consider the initial registration fees, but also look beyond those costs and consider annual dues and renewal requirements. Both organizations have evolving benefits (including workshops, webinars, and partner discounts) that could be specifically useful for your needs.
However, here is a substantial difference between the two organizations: membership in AYC includes potential revenue opportunities. AYC has integrated a revenue sharing system whereby mentors and schools may receive a portion of their graduates’ dues. For a new teacher, this benefit may not matter much; for a larger school it could mean substantial financial support.
If you are planning to run a 200-hour or 300-hour yoga teacher training, it’s time to do your research. Consider each organization’s registration process, their curriculum expectations, faculty requirements, and your ongoing responsibilities. Consider the type of training that you wish to run. Does your vision for a program align with the hours and competencies of Yoga Alliance? Or do you have a more tailored vision for your curriculum that would benefit from more flexibility? If you’re planning to develop a YTT, I recommend that you “blue sky” your ideal program to get a sense of your YTT curriculum and then start evaluating.
There is no absolute “right answer;” your decision will depend on what is right for you. Also, do not panic! If you are on the fence about joining now, you can join later. Also, joining one organization does not preclude you from joining another. It is not uncommon to be a member of more than one professional organization. And keep in mind: these two organizations are not the only options. Depending on where you live, you may have other registration organizations to consider (Canadian Yoga Alliance, the Yoga Wheel etc.).
Disclosure: I have worked with both of these organizations. I have presented webinars for YA and also worked adjacent to them for years because I help build YTT’s. I also had the pleasure of working with AYC as they developed their core competency process for new schools. Each organization has different strengths: Yoga Alliance has a lot of brand recognition and community resources, while I love the American Yoga Council’s flexible focus on core competencies as well as their commitment to support teachers through revenue sharing.
For now, my own solution has been simple: I’m a member of both.
Rachel supports yoga teachers and studios around the world to create transformational education experiences that help them thrive in their business, share their passion, and inspire more people to practice yoga. Her extensive knowledge and experience include: earning two masters degrees, authoring three books, leading 4,000+ hours of TT, building a teacher training college for a national yoga company, and working behind the scenes in yoga studio & teacher management for more than fifteen years. As a writer and speaker, she continually wrestles with the juicy bits of life: relationships, authenticity, and discovering meaning in this crazy, wildish world. E-RYT 500, YACEP, BA, MFA, MSci. Learn more about Rachel.
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