If you sell courses on Teachable, two numbers now matter more than the monthly plan price. First, every free or imported student above 100 costs you $0.50 a month under the student usage fee rule Teachable rewrote in September 2026. Second, the Starter plan’s 7.5% transaction fee means the “cheap” $39 plan becomes the expensive one once your monthly sales pass $667 on monthly billing, or $533 if you pay annually. Together, they turn the classic free mini-course play — give away a five-day challenge to thousands, sell to a few later — into a monthly bill of hundreds of dollars before you make a single sale from it.
Every price below comes from Teachable’s pricing page as checked in October 2026 and from the reviews that tracked the September change, including the detailed Teachable review from AI Ignitions.
The September 2026 rule, in plain English
Teachable updated its Usage Fees policy on September 3, 2026 (page updated September 28, 2026). The rule is simple: students who pay more than $0 through Teachable’s own checkout — Native checkout — or a custom gateway never count toward the fee, with no cap. Every other student counts.
Who counts? Free-product students, students who enrolled with a 100% coupon, manual enrollments, imports from another platform, and buyers who paid on another platform — Teachable’s own list names Hotmart. If they didn’t pay through Teachable, they count.
The first 100 counted students per school are included free; each one above 100 costs $0.50 a month. And the charge is based on your billing-period peak above 100, not a month-end snapshot — if your challenge spikes to 1,200 counted students mid-month and half never come back, you still pay for the peak.
The same flat $0.50 rate applies on every plan: a Growth subscriber at $189 a month pays the same 50 cents per free student as a Starter subscriber at $39. Upgrading to Builder or Growth fixes a transaction-fee problem, not a free-student problem. Teachable says about 90% of creators never see a usage fee — but if your growth strategy is free content, run the numbers before your next launch.
What a free course actually costs now
The formula is simple: take your counted students, subtract the 100 free ones, and multiply what’s left by $0.50. That monthly charge repeats as long as those students stay counted.
| Counted students | Students above 100 | Monthly fee |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | $0 |
| 500 | 400 | $200 |
| 1,000 | 900 | $450 |
| 2,000 | 1,900 | $950 |
A free five-day mini-course that collects 2,000 sign-ups costs $950 a month under the new rule, even if the course itself brings in $0 in revenue. That’s $11,400 a year for a lead magnet. At 500 sign-ups, you’re paying $200 a month — more than five times the Starter plan’s monthly price — for students who haven’t paid you anything yet.
A free course that converts can still be worth it: if 2% of those 2,000 people buy a $99 course, that’s 40 sales and $3,960 in gross revenue. The problem is the courses that don’t convert — a 0.5% conversion rate, a freebie nobody opens, or an import of a cold list. And remember the peak rule: the fee doesn’t wait to see who sticks around.
The plans: what Teachable charges in 2026
Teachable was founded in 2014 by Ankur Nagpal in New York and acquired by Hotmart in 2020. On June 15, 2025, it retired Basic, Pro, and Pro+ and replaced them with Starter, Builder, Growth, and Advanced; Advanced has since dropped off the public pricing page in favour of a sales-led Custom tier. There is no free plan anymore — it was retired in June 2025 — but every plan starts with a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Transaction fee | Products | Admins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39/month | $29/month | 7.5% on every sale | 5 | 1 |
| Builder | $89/month | $69/month | 0% | 10 | 1 |
| Growth | $189/month | $139/month | 0% | 50 | 5 |
Starter is the only plan with a transaction fee, and it’s steep: 7.5% on every sale, up from 5% on the retired Basic plan. Starter is also capped at five products total — courses, coaching products, and bundles combined — so if you plan to sell more than a handful of offers, you’ll outgrow it fast.
The plan price is only part of what you pay. Teachable Payments charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction on US cards and 3.9% plus $0.30 on international cards, and the 7.5% Starter transaction fee applies whether you use Teachable Payments or your own Stripe account — it stacks on top of processing either way.
Starter vs Builder: the real break-even
This is where the “cheap” plan stops being cheap. Starter costs $50 less per month than Builder on monthly billing ($39 vs $89) but takes 7.5% of every sale, while Builder costs more up front and takes nothing — so there’s a revenue level where the two cost exactly the same, and above it Builder is cheaper.
On monthly billing, the plan-price gap is $50. Divide $50 by 7.5% and you get $666.67: above $667 in monthly revenue, Builder costs less overall despite its higher sticker price; below $667, Starter is cheaper; right at $667, they’re a wash.
On annual billing, the gap is $40 a month ($69 minus $29). Divide $40 by 7.5% and you get $533.33: above $533 in monthly revenue, Builder wins; below it, Starter does.
Here’s a worked example. Say you make 40 sales of a $50 course in a month — $2,000 in gross revenue:
| Cost | Starter (monthly billing) | Builder (monthly billing) |
|---|---|---|
| Plan price | $39 | $89 |
| Transaction fee (7.5% of $2,000) | $150 | $0 |
| Payment processing (2.9% of $2,000 = $58, plus 40 × $0.30 = $12) | $70 | $70 |
| Total monthly cost | $259 | $159 |
| Total as a share of revenue | About 13% | About 8% |
On $2,000 of monthly sales, Starter costs $100 more than Builder — $259 versus $159 — even though its monthly price is $50 lower, and the $150 transaction fee alone is nearly four times the plan price. The takeaway: above about $533 to $667 a month, depending on how you pay, Builder is the better deal; below $300 or $400, Starter still makes sense. Check your numbers every few months — the crossover arrives sooner than most creators expect, and every month you stay on Starter past it, you’re paying extra for the cheaper plan.
What changed in the Q3 2026 payment system
Teachable rolled out a new payment system in the third quarter of 2026. It removed after-purchase upsells, gifting, and student referrals. It also dropped the 10% payout reserve, which is good news — that reserve used to hold back a tenth of your payouts as a buffer, and now it’s gone.
But the new system also added tax-related charges: the default Standard bundle adds 0.5% on every sale where tax is charged and 0.7% on each recurring charge, while the Global bundle adds 2.8% to every sale. Small percentages, but they sit on top of the plan price, transaction fee, and processing fee — so compare the full stack, not just the headline monthly price.
Who should stay, and who should switch
It depends on what kind of creator you are, how you sell, and how many free students you’re carrying. Here’s a framework — run your own numbers against it.
Stay on Teachable if most of your students pay through Teachable’s checkout, your counted-student total sits well under a few hundred, and your revenue is low enough that Starter still wins or high enough for Builder or Growth. If the fee structure fits your business, there’s no reason to move.
Upgrade from Starter to Builder if your monthly revenue is above $533 on annual billing or $667 on monthly billing — above the break-even, you’re paying more to stay on the cheaper plan.
Rethink your free strategy if you have hundreds or thousands of counted students and most of them never paid. Audit them: how many came from free products, imports, or 100% coupons — and how many are cold? If most never bought anything, you have a monthly bill that isn’t earning its keep.
Look at alternatives if your business depends on free enrollments at scale. Ruzuku charges 0% platform transaction fees, offers a permanently free plan for up to 5 students, and its paid plans include unlimited students however they join — free enrollments and imports add no monthly fee, as its Teachable pricing comparison lays out. On Ruzuku, a free mini-course with 2,000 sign-ups doesn’t generate a $950 monthly fee.
| Feature | Teachable (2026) | Ruzuku |
|---|---|---|
| Platform transaction fee | 7.5% on Starter, 0% on Builder/Growth | 0% on all plans |
| Free plan | None (retired June 2025) | Yes, up to 5 students |
| Free/imported students | $0.50/month each above 100 | Unlimited, no extra fee |
| Monthly plan prices | $39–$189 (monthly billing) | Paid plans with unlimited students |
That’s not a recommendation to switch — Ruzuku is a different platform with a different feature set — but if your business is built on free enrollments, the fee difference is large enough to compare the two honestly.
One more check: when Teachable’s Trustpilot page was checked in October 2026, it showed a 3.3 TrustScore from 1,107 reviews; of the 202 reviews in the past 12 months, 96 gave 5 stars and 61 gave 1 star.
Our creator platform take-home comparison for 2026 walks through the same fee stacking across the major platforms, and our look at Udemy instructor revenue in 2026 and the Coursera merger covers the marketplace trade-offs, where you give up control in exchange for built-in traffic.
Practical fixes if you stay on Teachable
You don’t have to leave Teachable to fix a free-student problem. Most of these moves you can make before your next launch.
Charge $1 for the lead magnet. Students who pay more than $0 through Teachable’s own checkout never count. A $1 mini-course is still effectively free from the student’s point of view — nobody’s budget breaks over a dollar — but every student who pays that dollar is exempt from the $0.50 monthly fee forever.
Cap your free enrollments. A 300-person challenge costs $100 a month in fees (200 students above 100, times $0.50); a 2,000-person challenge costs $950. If your conversion rate is the same, the smaller challenge is far more profitable — and “only 300 spots” is a better pitch than “unlimited free spots” anyway.
Clean up your imports. If you’re moving a school from another platform, don’t import your entire student list in one go — import the people who actually engage. Every imported student counts toward the fee, so a big import of a dead list is the fastest way to rack up a monthly bill for people who will never log in.
Move the list to email. Your email list is yours. Teachable can’t charge you $0.50 a month per subscriber on your email platform. Use the free course to get people onto your email list, then nurture and sell to them there. The free course becomes a top-of-funnel tool that feeds an asset you own, instead of a permanent liability on Teachable’s platform.
Check whether you’re on legacy terms. Schools created before September 3, 2026, keep their legacy terms until their first renewal on or after April 30, 2027, unless they convert early. Under the legacy schedule from Teachable’s May 2026 help-centre table, active students cost $0.10 a month on Starter and Builder and $0.05 on Growth and Advanced, while imported students cost $1.50, $1.00, $0.75, or $0.50 a month depending on plan. The old caps were 100, 1,000, and 5,000 students, and the caps didn’t apply once a school reached $10,000 a year in on-platform sales. If you convert early, your counted-student count restarts at zero and only students added after conversion count — but don’t convert without running the numbers both ways first, because the new terms apply from conversion onward.
The bottom line
Teachable’s September 2026 rewrite didn’t change the headline plan prices — it changed the economics of the free course. A lead magnet that used to cost you nothing but your time now costs $0.50 a month for every student above 100 who didn’t pay through Teachable’s checkout, billed on your peak. At 500 free students, that’s $200 a month. At 2,000, it’s $950.
Stack that on top of the Starter plan’s 7.5% transaction fee, and the “cheap” plan starts to look like a trap for anyone who’s actually selling. If your monthly revenue is above $533 on annual billing or $667 on monthly billing, Builder is cheaper. At $2,000 a month in sales, Starter costs you $259 all-in versus $159 on Builder — $100 a month you’re paying for the privilege of the lower sticker price.
None of this means Teachable is a bad platform. Its pricing now rewards a specific kind of business: students pay through Teachable, free enrollments are modest and deliberate, and revenue justifies Builder or Growth. Start by checking your counted-student total and monthly revenue against the two break-evens above — those two numbers tell you almost everything you need to know.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Teachable charge per free student in 2026?
Under the policy updated September 3, 2026, Teachable charges $0.50 a month for every counted student above the first 100 included per school. Counted students are free-product students, 100%-coupon enrollments, manual enrollments, imports, and buyers who paid on another platform. Students who pay more than $0 through Teachable’s own checkout or a custom gateway never count. The charge is based on your billing-period peak above 100, and the $0.50 rate is the same on every plan.
What is the break-even point between Teachable Starter and Builder?
On monthly billing, Starter at $39 a month plus 7.5% of sales breaks even with Builder at $89 a month when your monthly revenue hits $666.67 — call it $667. On annual billing, Starter at $29 a month and Builder at $69 a month break even at $533.33 a month in revenue. Above those levels, Builder is cheaper overall; below them, Starter is.
Does the $0.50 student fee apply on the Builder and Growth plans too?
Yes. The $0.50 rate is flat across every plan — a Growth subscriber at $189 a month pays the same 50 cents per counted student above 100 as a Starter subscriber at $39. Upgrading your plan doesn’t reduce or remove the student fee. Upgrading from Starter to Builder only removes the 7.5% transaction fee on sales. If free students are your problem, a plan upgrade won’t fix it — change how students join, for example by charging $1 for the lead magnet so they pay more than $0 and never count.
How long do legacy Teachable terms last?
Schools created before September 3, 2026, keep their legacy terms until their first renewal on or after April 30, 2027, unless they convert early. On conversion, the counted-student count restarts at zero and only students added after conversion count. Under the legacy schedule, active students cost $0.10 a month on Starter and Builder and $0.05 on Growth and Advanced, while imported students cost $1.50, $1.00, $0.75, or $0.50 a month depending on plan.
Is there a way to offer a free course on Teachable without paying the student fee?
The cleanest way is to charge $1 instead of $0. Students who pay more than $0 through Teachable’s checkout never count toward the fee, so a $1 mini-course keeps every enrollee exempt while still feeling free to the buyer. You can also cap free enrollments, import only engaged students, and move your audience to your email list before trying to convert them.