Course Platform Pricing Breakdown
Teachable vs Podia vs Thinkific: what selling your first course actually costs
All three have dropped their free plans, so the cheapest way to sell a first course is not a course platform at all — below roughly $800 a month in revenue, a 5% storefront with no monthly fee beats every entry tier here. Above that, Thinkific Basic at $40 a month billed annually is the cheapest of the three, because it is the only entry plan with no platform transaction fee. Teachable Starter is the one to avoid on cost: it charges both a subscription and the highest fee of the three at 7.5%.
Comparison Outline
Quick verdict The free plans are gone What each plan costs Real monthly cost by revenue Three different meters running The Teachable per-student charge What 0% actually means When to move up a tier FAQQuick verdict
If you have not sold the course yet, do not buy a course platform. Every entry tier here now costs $29 to $42 a month before you make a sale, and two of the three still take a percentage on top. A 5% storefront with no monthly fee is cheaper at every revenue level below roughly $800 a month, and it lets you find out whether anyone wants the course before you take on a subscription.
The free plans are gone — that is the real 2026 change
This category used to be the easy recommendation for a first digital product, because all three had a free tier you could launch on. In September 2026, none of them do.
- Teachable states on its pricing page that it "is a paid service that includes a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee".
- Podia offers a 30-day free trial instead of a free plan: "Take Podia for a spin, no need to enter a credit card or pick a plan until you're ready."
- Thinkific offers "a 30-day free trial" and invites you to "build courses, host communities and test all the AI tools for a full month before you pay a cent".
A trial is not a free plan. A trial gives you 7 or 30 days to build and launch; a free plan gives you as long as it takes to find out whether the course sells. For most first-time course sellers that is the difference between a considered launch and a rushed one, and it is why the honest recommendation in this category has changed.
The substitute is a digital storefront. Payhip's pricing page lists a "Free Forever" plan at "$0 /mo" with a "+5% transaction fee", and lists Online Courses among its product types alongside digital downloads, coaching and memberships. It is a thinner course tool than the three platforms here — but it costs nothing until you sell something. We broke the storefront options down in Gumroad vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy.
What each plan costs
Read off all three pricing pages in September 2026. Prices shown are the annual-billing rate, with the monthly rate in brackets where the page displays both.
| Plan | Price (annual billing) | Platform fee | The binding limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter | $29/mo, $348/yr ($39/mo monthly) | 7.5% | 5 products, 100 active students |
| Teachable Builder | $69/mo, $828/yr ($89/mo monthly) | 0% on teachable:pay | 10 products, 1,000 active students |
| Teachable Growth | $139/mo, $1,668/yr ($189/mo monthly) | 0% on teachable:pay | 50 products, 5,000 active students |
| Podia Mover | $42/mo, $504/yr | 5% | 50 products, 100 email subscribers |
| Podia Shaker | $84/mo, $1,008/yr | None | 150 products, 500 email subscribers |
| Podia Earthquaker | $150/mo, $1,800/yr | None | Unlimited products, 1,000 email subscribers |
| Thinkific Basic | $40/mo ($54/mo monthly) | None on Thinkific Payments | Unlimited courses, 10,000 students, 1 admin |
| Thinkific Start | $82/mo ($109/mo monthly) | None on Thinkific Payments | Unlimited courses, 10,000 students, 2 admins |
| Thinkific Grow | $164/mo ($219/mo monthly) | None on Thinkific Payments | Unlimited courses, 10,000 students, 6 admins |
Quotes read September 2026 from Teachable's pricing page, Podia's pricing page and Thinkific's pricing page. Podia's page rendered only the annual-billing state to us, and its annual totals are exactly twelve times the displayed monthly figure, so we cannot confirm a monthly-billing rate or an annual discount from the page itself — check the toggle before you subscribe. Thinkific's displayed annual per-month figures are rounded, so we have not derived annual totals for it.
The pattern worth noticing: the price of removing the transaction fee differs enormously. On Teachable it costs $40 a month extra (Starter to Builder). On Podia it costs $42 a month extra (Mover to Shaker). On Thinkific it costs nothing, because the entry plan already has no platform fee. That single structural difference drives most of what follows.
Real monthly cost by revenue
Plan price plus platform fee, at a range of monthly course revenues. Card processing is excluded because it is roughly the same on all of them and cancels out — add about 2.9% + 30 cents per sale to every figure to get your true cost.
| Monthly course revenue | Payhip Free (5%) | Thinkific Basic | Teachable Starter | Teachable Builder | Podia Mover | Podia Shaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $200 | $10 | $40 | $44 | $69 | $52 | $84 |
| $500 | $25 | $40 | $66.50 | $69 | $67 | $84 |
| $1,000 | $50 | $40 | $104 | $69 | $92 | $84 |
| $2,000 | $100 | $40 | $179 | $69 | $142 | $84 |
| $5,000 | $250 | $40 | $404 | $69 | $292 | $84 |
Our arithmetic on the published rates above, using annual-billing prices and excluding card processing. Bold marks the cheapest option in each row. Teachable Starter and Podia Mover figures assume you are inside their student and subscriber allowances; see the next section for what happens when you are not.
The crossover is about $800 a month. Below it, 5% of your revenue is less than Thinkific Basic's $40, so the storefront wins. Above it, the fixed fee wins and keeps winning, because a percentage grows with you and a subscription does not.
Teachable Starter is never the cheapest column. That is not an accident of the numbers we picked — it is structural. Starter charges a subscription and a 7.5% fee, which is higher than the storefront rate it is competing with. Below about $147 a month in revenue it undercuts Thinkific Basic on price, but at that revenue the 5% storefront costs about $7, so Starter is still the wrong answer. You buy Teachable Starter for its course features, not for its economics.
Three different meters are running
The transaction fee is the number every comparison leads with, and it is the least interesting one, because all three platforms also meter something else — and they meter completely different things.
Which meter matters is a question about your business, not about the platforms. A $497 cohort course with 40 students has a student count that will never bind and revenue that makes a percentage fee expensive. A $27 mini-course with a 3,000-person lead magnet feeding it has the opposite profile. Work out which number in your business grows fastest, then read the pricing pages for that number rather than for the headline fee.
The Teachable per-student charge nobody mentions
Teachable's pricing page shows "100" active students on Starter, which reads like a cap. It is not — it is a threshold, and crossing it is billed rather than blocked.
Teachable's usage fees page, last updated 08/31/2026, lists monthly per-student charges for usage above the plan allowance: $0.10 per active student on Starter and Builder, and $0.05 on Growth and Advanced. It also lists a separate and much steeper rate for imported students — students "added to your school by a method other than Teachable's native checkout" — at $1.50 per month on Starter, falling to $1.00 on Builder, $0.75 on Growth and $0.50 on Advanced. Beyond that, published products above 100 are billed at "$199/month for every 50 additional products", and video storage above 1,000 GB at $15 per additional terabyte.
Two practical consequences. First, the Starter-to-Builder decision has a second trigger: at 500 active students the $40 of overage equals the whole price gap, and Builder also drops the 7.5% fee, so if any revenue is flowing the upgrade pays for itself well before 500. Second, and more sharply — if you are migrating an existing student list onto Teachable, price the import before you commit. At Starter's rate an imported cohort is charged monthly, not once.
One caveat we could not resolve: the usage fees page uses overlapping wording for "imported student" and "free student" (both described as students added by a method other than Teachable's native checkout, the latter listed at $0.50/month), and it does not state an included allowance for either. Ask Teachable support how your specific list will be classified before migrating. We have not asserted a total here because the page does not support one.
What "0% transaction fee" actually means
All three advertise a zero-fee tier, and on all three the zero is conditional.
Teachable's 0% is footnoted on its own pricing page as applying "for those using teachable:pay or Monthly Payment Gateway", and standard processing still applies: Teachable publishes 2.9% + 30¢ on US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ on international cards, 3.49% + 49¢ on US PayPal and 4.99% + 49¢ on international PayPal. That international card rate is a full point above the industry-standard 2.9%, which matters if your audience is not mostly American.
Thinkific's 0% holds only on Thinkific Payments, which the pricing page prices "in line with other processors like Stripe and Paypal at 2.9%". Bring your own Stripe and the third-party gateway fee applies. Thinkific publishes those percentages in a support article that returned HTTP 403 to us, so we could not verify them at source; several third-party sources report 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow, which we pass on as reported rather than confirmed. If you intend to use your own Stripe account, read Thinkific's own FAQ on that fee before choosing a plan, because a 5% gateway fee on Basic would erase the entire cost advantage in the table above.
Podia's zero is the cleanest of the three: "On the Mover plan, we charge a 5% transaction fee. There are no Podia fees on the Shaker or Earthquaker plans." Podia still notes that your processor charges "2.9% + 30¢, which may vary based on your location".
This is the same pattern we found in newsletter platform fees: a 0% platform cut never means 0% total, because everyone is sitting on top of Stripe. Compare platforms on the platform's cut alone and add processing separately.
When to move up a tier
Every upgrade here is a bet that a fixed cost beats a variable one. The break-even is easy to compute, and worth computing before the upsell email arrives.
| Upgrade | Extra cost | Fee removed | Break-even revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storefront (5%) → Thinkific Basic | $40/mo | 5% | ~$800/mo |
| Teachable Starter → Builder | $40/mo | 7.5% | ~$533/mo |
| Podia Mover → Shaker | $42/mo | 5% | ~$840/mo |
Our arithmetic: extra monthly cost divided by the fee percentage removed, using annual-billing prices. These are revenue thresholds only — the Teachable upgrade also arrives sooner if student overage or the 5-product limit binds first, and the Podia upgrade arrives sooner if your list passes 100 subscribers.
Two things this table does not capture. Podia's higher tiers buy email subscriber headroom as well as the fee removal, so if you were going to pay for an email tool anyway, some of that $42 is not really a platform cost — though at 500 subscribers on Shaker you are paying a lot for a small list compared with a dedicated tool, and our email marketing tools guide covers the alternatives. And Teachable's Builder tier lifts you from 5 products to 10, which binds early if you sell several small courses rather than one big one.
Tool Income Lab recommendation
Launch the course on a free storefront plan at 5% and keep it there until you are reliably above $800 a month. Then move to Thinkific Basic if you just need course hosting without a percentage, or Podia if you want the email list on the same bill. Only choose Teachable if a specific feature there is worth paying both a subscription and a fee for.
FAQ
Does Teachable, Podia or Thinkific still have a free plan?
No. As of September 2026 all three advertise a trial instead: Teachable a 7-day trial with a 30-day money-back guarantee, Podia and Thinkific 30-day trials. To sell a course with no monthly bill you need a storefront — Payhip lists a Free Forever plan at 5% and includes online courses as a product type.
Which course platform is cheapest for a beginner?
On cost alone, none of them. Below roughly $800 a month in revenue a 5% storefront with no monthly fee is cheaper than every entry tier here. That is our arithmetic: Thinkific Basic is $40 a month billed annually with no platform fee on Thinkific Payments, and 5% of $800 is $40.
What happens if you go over 100 students on Teachable Starter?
You are billed, not blocked. Teachable's usage fees page lists $0.10 per month per active student above the plan allowance on Starter and Builder, and $0.05 on Growth and Advanced. At 500 active students that $40 equals the entire Starter-to-Builder gap — and Builder also removes the 7.5% fee.
Is Thinkific really 0% transaction fee?
Only on Thinkific Payments, its built-in processor at 2.9%. Thinkific states that third-party processors such as Stripe incur an additional gateway fee that varies per plan. Its support article on that fee blocks automated access, so we could not verify the percentages; third-party reports put them at 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow. Confirm with Thinkific first.
What does Podia count toward its 100-subscriber limit?
Email subscribers, not students — and free subscribers count the same as buyers. Above your tier Podia disables broadcast and campaign sending, sets scheduled broadcasts to draft and pauses campaigns, while transactional emails keep working.
Final recommendation
The useful question here is no longer which platform has the lowest transaction fee — it is whether you should be paying for a course platform yet at all. The removal of the free tiers changed the shape of that decision. Every one of these now charges $29 to $42 a month whether or not a single person buys, which turns a first course into a subscription you must justify before you have any evidence it will sell. Sell it through a storefront at 5% first.
Once you are past roughly $800 a month, the ranking is clear: Thinkific Basic is the cheapest place to stop paying a percentage, provided you use its own processor. Podia costs more but bundles email, which is worth real money if it replaces a tool you already pay for. Teachable Starter is the outlier — the only entry tier that charges you twice — and its per-student billing means the sticker price is a floor rather than a total.
Every figure here is a September 2026 snapshot from the vendors' own pages, and this category has repriced more than once in the last year. Re-check before you commit to an annual plan.
Related reads: comparison hub, Gumroad vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy fees, newsletter platform fee models, self-publishing an ebook, building a newsletter list from scratch, and selling Canva designs on Etsy.