Teachable Pricing: What You Actually Pay Per Plan
Most “Teachable pricing” guides hand you a grid of plans and a sticker price. That is the least useful number on the page. The sticker price is fixed and easy to compare; the transaction fee is variable, compounds with every sale, and is where creators quietly overpay for years. So this breakdown starts with what actually leaves your bank account per sale, then works back to which plan is genuinely cheapest for your volume — and where a flat-fee rival like LearnWorlds beats Teachable outright.
Teachable is a hosted learning management system — “a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking” of courses — so you are renting the whole stack: checkout, hosting, course player and student management in one bill. All figures below were taken from Teachable’s official pricing page, accessed November 2026. Confirm current numbers at checkout before you commit.
Teachable’s plans, with the number that matters first
Teachable retired its free plan; the lineup now opens at Starter and climbs to a quote-only Custom tier. Here is every published plan, with the transaction fee placed where it belongs — next to the price, not buried in a footnote.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually (per mo) | Transaction fee | Published products | Admin seats | Students |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39 | $29 | 7.5% | 5 | 1 | Unlimited |
| Builder | $89 | $69 | 0% | 10 | 1 | Unlimited |
| Growth | $189 | $139 | 0% | 50 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Custom | Contact sales | 0% | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | |
Annual billing cuts roughly 22% off each plan (Teachable lists savings of $120, $240 and $600 a year on Starter, Builder and Growth). There is no free tier — only a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The 7.5% fee is what actually decides your plan
Look again at the table: Starter and Builder are identical on students and nearly so on everything else. The only meaningful difference is that Starter charges a 7.5% cut of every sale and Builder charges nothing. That single line turns the “cheapest plan” question into arithmetic.
Builder costs $480 more per year than Starter on annual billing ($828 vs $348). You “repay” that gap through the fee you avoid. The break-even is simple:
0.075 × your yearly revenue = $480 → revenue ≈ $6,400.
Once you clear about $6,400 a year in course sales, Builder is cheaper than Starter despite its higher sticker price — and the gap only widens from there. Below that, Starter’s low base wins. This is the whole decision for most creators, and it is the opposite of what the “pick the cheapest plan” instinct tells you.
What you really pay: the costs Teachable doesn’t total for you
Payment processing stacks on top of the transaction fee
The transaction fee is not the only percentage you lose. A payment processor sits in every sale, and in a typical chain each service provider is “adding cost to the transaction.” Teachable’s own FAQ lists standard processing at 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards and 3.49% + 49¢ for PayPal. So a $100 sale on Starter actually loses 7.5% + 2.9% + 30¢ = about $10.70, or 10.7%. On Builder that same sale loses only the ~$3.20 processing cut. We dig into how platforms differ here in our guide to course platform transaction fees.
No free plan, and annual billing locks you in
If you were counting on starting for $0, that era is over — Teachable replaced its free plan with a trial. If you are still weighing whether a free-style start makes sense for you, our piece on the free plan vs a paid plan walks through the trade-off. The 22% annual discount is real, but it commits you for twelve months; pay monthly while you are validating the idea, then switch to annual once you know you are staying.
Tax handling is a feature you may have to pay extra for
One line never appears in a plan grid: who collects and remits sales tax or EU VAT on your behalf. Depending on your configuration and country, Teachable may act as merchant of record — simplifying compliance but changing how and when you receive payouts — or leave you responsible for charging and remitting tax yourself, often through a third-party add-on. Check which model applies to you before choosing a plan, because a “cheaper” tier that leaves you manually filing VAT across the EU can cost far more in accountant hours than the subscription difference. For creators selling internationally, tax handling routinely outweighs a $40/mo gap between plans, so treat it as a real feature comparison rather than an afterthought.
Three real scenarios, costed
Platform cost below means base subscription plus Teachable’s transaction fee only (annual billing). Payment processing is extra and roughly equal across plans, so it is left out of the comparison.
| Profile | Yearly sales | Starter (base + 7.5%) | Builder / Growth (0% fee) | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First course | 50 × $50 = $2,500 | $348 + $188 = $536 | Builder $828 | Starter |
| Growing creator | 500 × $100 = $50,000 | $348 + $3,750 = $4,098 | Builder $828 | Builder (saves $3,270) |
| Small school | 2,000 × $100 = $200,000 | $348 + $15,000 = $15,348 | Growth $1,668 (5 seats, 50 products) | Growth |
The pattern is clear: Starter only wins for a true beginner with a low-priced first course. The moment you are selling with any consistency, the fee makes Builder the default, and Growth is bought for its five admin seats and 50-product ceiling — not for a better fee, since Builder is already 0%.
Teachable vs LearnWorlds: when each one is cheaper
This is where the fee structure stops being academic. LearnWorlds’ entry plan (verified at learnworlds.com/pricing, November 2026) charges a flat $5 per enrollment rather than a percentage, on a $44/mo annual base. Teachable Starter charges 7.5% on a $29/mo annual base. A flat fee and a percentage fee cross over at a single price point:
0.075 × course price = $5 → price ≈ $67.
Sell courses under about $67 and Teachable’s 7.5% is lighter per sale than LearnWorlds’ $5; sell premium courses above $67 and LearnWorlds’ flat $5 wins per sale. Teachable Starter also starts $15/mo cheaper on base. So Teachable is the cheaper home for low-priced courses at low volume, and once you graduate to Builder’s 0% fee, Teachable’s zero-fee tier undercuts LearnWorlds on recurring cost for most catalogs.
Where LearnWorlds pulls ahead is not price at all — it is interactive video, SCORM and a more configurable course player. If those features are why you are shopping, the fee math is a secondary concern; compare the full tiers in our LearnWorlds pricing breakdown. And if you are torn between Teachable and Thinkific specifically on fees, we map that in Thinkific vs Teachable’s fee model.
So which Teachable plan should you pick?
Start on Starter only if you are launching a single, inexpensive course and expect under ~$6,400 in first-year sales. The 7.5% fee is tolerable at that volume and the $29/mo base is the lowest real entry cost.
Choose Builder the day your projected sales clear that threshold — which is sooner than most people think. Paying $69/mo to erase a 7.5% fee is the single highest-leverage pricing decision on this platform.
Only reach for Growth when you genuinely need the extra admin seats or more than ten products. It is a team-and-catalog plan, not a cheaper-fee plan.
And look past Teachable entirely if you sell premium courses at modest volume (LearnWorlds’ flat $5 fee may cost less) or if interactive video is a must-have. The rule to carry out of here: price your plan around the fee and your real sales volume, never around the headline monthly number.
