Course Platform Costs at $500, $2,000 and $5,000 a Month
The same six platforms, totalled across a year at three trading levels. The cheapest one changes twice, and not in the direction the pricing pages suggest.
Every fee re-read 21 Sep 2026
Every online course platform, marked on what it keeps.
- Unit 1Plan price
- Unit 2Platform’s cut
- Unit 3Processing
- FinalWhat you keep
| Platform | Keeps | Marks /10 | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific | $485.20 | B+8.4 | |
| Sensei Pro | $485.20 | B7.9 | |
| Podia | $460.20 | B7.8 | |
| Teachable | $447.70 | B7.6 | |
| Kajabi | $485.20 | B−7.2 | |
| Gumroad | $434.70–$449.50 | C+6.8 |
Picking an online course platform is mostly an arithmetic problem wearing a marketing costume. We publish the arithmetic: the plan price, the platform's cut of each sale, and the number that actually lands in your bank account.
The take-home table
Platform cut and card processing are two different bills. Both are shown.
- Thinkific−$14.80 keeps $485.20
- Kajabi−$14.80 keeps $485.20
- Sensei Pro−$14.80 keeps $485.20
- Podia−$39.80 keeps $460.20
- Teachable−$52.30 keeps $447.70
- Gumroad−$50.50 to −$65.30 keeps $434.70–$449.50
Arithmetic on the take-home figures: $500 minus what you keep. Card processing at 2.9% + 30¢.
| Platform | Plan | Platform cut | Processing | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific | Basic, via Thinkific Payments | $0 | $14.80 | $485.20 |
| Kajabi | Basic, via Kajabi Payments | $0 | $14.80 | $485.20 |
| Sensei Pro | $179/yr licence + WooCommerce | $0 | $14.80 | $485.20 |
| Podia | Mover — 5% platform fee | $25.00 | $14.80 | $460.20 |
| Teachable | Starter — 7.5% platform fee | $37.50 | $14.80 | $447.70 |
| Gumroad | No monthly fee — 10% + $0.50 | $50.50 | Not published | $434.70–$449.50 |
Processing is quoted at the 2.9% + 30¢ US card rate Kajabi, Podia and Thinkific each publish for their own checkout. Gumroad does not say whether card processing sits inside its 10% + 50¢, so its row is a range rather than a guess. Monthly subscription costs are not in this table — they are on the shortlist, where the two are added together.
This term’s schedule
Every unit →
Sensei LMS Review (2026): $179 a Year and None of Your Sales
Automattic's WordPress learning plugin charges a flat annual licence and takes no cut at all. Graded B at 7.9 — cheapest on price, most expensive in hours.
Podia Review (2026): Simple Until the Email Meter Starts
Podia Mover is $42 a month billed annually with a 5% cut and 100 email subscribers included. Graded B at 7.8 — the meter, not the fee, is the thing to watch.
What Each Course Platform Plan Actually Gates
Products, admin seats, students, contacts and videos — the caps that force upgrades, listed per plan, with the one most likely to catch you first.
Gumroad for Selling Courses (2026): No Subscription, One Unanswered Question
Gumroad charges nothing monthly and 10% + $0.50 per direct sale. Graded C+ at 6.8 — good for validating an idea, and silent on one fee that matters.
Thinkific Review (2026): Unlimited Courses, One Condition
Thinkific Basic is $40 a month annually with no cut of your sales and unlimited courses. Graded B+ at 8.4 — the highest on this site, with one condition attached.
Why a whole site about fees
There are two prices on every online course platform and the second one is the expensive one.
The first is the subscription: a number on a pricing page, easy to compare, argued about endlessly. The second is the platform's cut of each sale, and it is the one that quietly decides whether a course business works. A creator on a cheap plan with a 7.5% cut can hand over more money in a single launch than a creator on a plan costing four times as much.
Most comparisons in this category stop at the subscription. We start there and keep going.
Three numbers, not one
Every platform on this site gets measured on the same three figures, and every figure carries the date we checked it.
- The plan price, quoted both ways — billed monthly and billed annually — because on the plans we priced on 21 September 2026 the annual route was between 20% and 27% cheaper, and only one of those two numbers is ever on the billboard.
- The platform's cut, stated as a percentage of each sale, per plan. This is the number that moves most often and gets reported wrongly most often.
- Payment processing, kept in a separate column. A plan advertised at "0% transaction fees" still routes roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents to a card processor. That is not the platform taking a cut, and conflating the two makes cheap plans look expensive and expensive plans look free.
Add them together against a realistic sale price and the ranking changes shape. That is the whole argument of this site, and it is why the first thing on this page is a table rather than a paragraph about "empowering creators".
The free tier is not coming back
On 21 September 2026 we opened the pricing page of every platform on this site and looked for a plan costing nothing. There were none.
Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific and Podia now each lead with a trial — one month, seven days, thirty days, thirty days — and then a paid tier. Trials are not free plans. A free plan lets an unfinished course sit there for a year while you decide whether you will ever finish it; a trial does not, and the difference matters enormously to someone testing an idea rather than launching a business.
Kajabi has gone furthest. Its pricing page today starts at $179 a month billed monthly, or $143 a month if you pay for the year up front, and lists nothing below that. Widely-circulated write-ups still quote an $89 entry tier; whatever its history, it is not on the page we read.
So a comparison written even a year ago will quote you starting prices that no longer exist. Every figure here was taken from the vendor's own pricing page on 21 September 2026 and carries that date. Where a platform declines to publish something — Gumroad will not say whether card processing sits inside its cut — we print the gap instead of filling it in.
- Kajabione monthtrial
free plan - Teachableseven daystrial
free plan - Thinkificthirty daystrial
free plan - Podiathirty daystrial
free plan
Read from the platforms' pricing pages on 21 September 2026.
Where to start
If you want the ranking and the reasoning, read the best online course platforms shortlist — it adds the subscription and the per-sale cut together at three realistic revenue levels, so the order reflects what you would actually pay.
If you have already narrowed it down, the graded reviews go deeper on one platform each: Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Podia and, for anyone willing to run their own site, Sensei LMS.
And if you want to know why any of these grades should carry weight, how we grade sets out the marking scheme, including the things we refuse to score because we cannot test them honestly.