Teachable Review 2026: What Selling a Course Really Costs, From the 7.5% Starter Fee to the New Student Fees
Teachable lets you build and sell online courses, coaching, digital downloads and memberships from one school, with its own checkout and payouts. On its pricing page on Oct 26, 2026, Starter costs $39 a month or $29 a month billed yearly and takes a 7.5% transaction fee; Builder is $89 or $69 with no Teachable transaction fee; Growth is $189 or $139; larger schools get a custom quote. Every plan has a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Three things changed in 2026: Teachable Payments now runs on Stripe with daily payouts and no reserve, the Advanced plan has disappeared from the pricing page, and schools created since Sep 3, 2026 pay $0.50 a month for each free or imported student above 100.
There are no affiliate links in this review. Every Teachable link goes straight to teachable.com or its help center.
| Made by | Teachable, Inc. (New York), part of Hotmart Company |
| What it is | Hosted platform for selling courses, coaching, downloads and memberships, with checkout, tax handling and payouts |
| Plans | Starter $39; Builder $89; Growth $189 a month, or $29, $69 and $139 billed yearly; Custom on request |
| Fees | 7.5% on Starter, 0% above; card processing from 2.9% + 30¢ in the US |
| Best for | Course creators who want checkout, tax and payouts handled and sell more than about $533 a month |
Teachable is good value from Builder up, an expensive place to start small, and its fee rules changed twice in September 2026.
“The fee is the same on every plan tier.”
That line comes from Teachable’s Usage Fees page, last updated on September 28, 2026, and it is about something new. Schools created on or after September 3, 2026 get 100 students free that arrive without a paid Teachable checkout: free courses, 100% coupons, imports and API enrollments. Every extra one costs $0.50 a month. If you plan to grow an email list with a free mini-course, that rule matters more than the plan price. Older schools keep the previous rules until their first renewal on or after April 30, 2027.
The rest of the picture is easier to like. Teachable gives you a school site, a course builder with quizzes and drip content (certificates on Growth), coaching and downloads, memberships and a community, free iOS and Android apps for students, and, since its July 14, 2026 announcement, a rebuilt checkout on Stripe called Teachable Payments. Teachable says it calculates, collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST in 45+ countries on sales through that checkout, and its help center says payouts arrive about two business days after each sale with no reserve held back. For a creator selling to students in many countries, that tax work is the strongest reason to pick Teachable over assembling your own tools.
The money side needs care. Starter looks cheap at $29 a month billed yearly, but its 7.5% fee means a school selling more than about $533 a month pays less on Builder at $69. Builder, at $69 a month billed yearly, is the cheapest plan with no platform transaction fee among the plans that the pricing pages of Teachable, Thinkific, Podia and Kajabi showed on Oct 26, 2026 (Thinkific’s page of Oct 5, 2026 also listed a cheaper Basic plan that its Oct 26 page did not show). Card processing comes on top, at 2.9% + 30¢ for a US school and a domestic card, and Teachable’s own pages disagree on several numbers, from the yearly discount to the international card rate.
One school, four product types, one checkout, and a fee that depends on your plan and on how the student got in.
Everything on Teachable lives in a school. Inside it you publish courses, coaching offers and digital downloads, which count toward your plan’s product limit (5, 10 or 50), plus memberships, bundles and a community, which do not. Students pay through Teachable Payments in 41 countries, or through your own Stripe account (Teachable calls this a Custom Payment Gateway) everywhere else. Teachable then adds its plan fee, 7.5% on Starter and 0% above, and, from September 2026, a usage fee for students who did not come through a paid checkout.
A new payments system, a vanishing top plan, bigger product limits and a new fee for free students.
If you last looked at Teachable in 2025, four things are different. First, the payments engine: Teachable announced Teachable Payments on July 14, 2026, a checkout rebuilt on Stripe, and its help center (articles dated September 9, 2026) says it replaces teachable:pay, drops the old 10% reserve, retires BackOffice and closes the Monthly Payment Gateway to new schools. Second, the plan line-up: archived copies of the pricing page show an Advanced plan at $399 a month ($309 billed yearly) in January and April 2026, but the June 16, 2026 copy and the live page show a Custom tier instead. Third, product limits went up: Starter moved from 1 published product in January to 5 by June, Builder from 5 to 10, and Growth from 25 to 50. Fourth, the Usage Fees page now charges for free and imported students above 100 on new schools.
Official Teachable video (YouTube channel @TeachableTV, linked from teachable.com), published Sep 30, 2026, 49 seconds: why Teachable moved creators to Teachable Payments.
Teachable is a mature, privately owned platform inside Hotmart Company; its scale figures are its own and do not all agree.
Teachable is part of Hotmart Company, a creator-economy group headquartered in Amsterdam; a Teachable press release of March 21, 2024 describes Hotmart Company as “home to Hotmart and Teachable” with more than 1,900 employees. Neither company publishes revenue or paying-customer counts, so every scale number below is a vendor statement. Read them as rough size, not as audited figures.
Teachable pricing FAQ, Oct 26, 2026
all-time, Teachable creators only (home page)
learner accounts, not paying customers
App Store 9,390 ratings; Google Play 1.06K reviews
| Signal | Figure | What it does and does not measure |
|---|---|---|
| Creators | More than 150,000 (pricing FAQ, about page) | Accounts that use Teachable, by Teachable’s count. Its March 21, 2024 press release said “tens of thousands of creator-educators use Teachable”, so the two dates give very different scales. |
| Earnings | $3.5B+ by Teachable creators (home); $10B+ by Teachable and Hotmart creators combined (about) | Creators’ cumulative sales, not Teachable’s revenue. The larger figure includes Hotmart. |
| Students | 100M+ served (home); over 7 million students (App Store description) | Learner accounts across all schools; the app figure is narrower. |
| Usage fees | “more than 80% of customers do not incur any usage fees” | Teachable’s own estimate on its Usage Fees page (Sep 28, 2026), made when the page was drafted. |
| Ownership | Hotmart Company, Amsterdam headquarters | Private group; the Privacy Policy is written for Teachable and the other Hotmart Company companies. |
Students rate the Teachable app well overall, recent app reviews are dominated by login trouble, and creators give the platform a middling score.
Two groups review Teachable, and they see different products. Students review the free Teachable app: on Oct 26, 2026 it averaged 4.6 out of 5 from 9,390 ratings on the US App Store and 4.5 from 1.06K reviews on US Google Play. Creators, the people who pay Teachable, mostly show up on Trustpilot, where the Teachable profile lists a TrustScore of 3.3 from 1,110 reviews. Its AI summary reads “Evaluating 202 reviews, most reviewers were somewhat happy with their experience overall.” The same page labels Teachable as a company that asks customers for reviews and says it “Replied to 95% of negative reviews”, so its profile is actively managed. The Trustpilot figures in this review come from the text of Trustpilot’s profile page for teachable.com on Oct 26, 2026, with no screenshot: a 3.3 TrustScore, 1,110 reviews, an AI summary based on 202 reviews, replies to 95% of negative reviews, and a label saying the company invites reviews.
The app averages hide a pattern. We read the 150 most recent US App Store reviews of the student app. They stretch back to February 2023, which tells you how few people leave one, and 77 of the 150 give one star (51.3%). Of the 30 written in 2026, 12 give one star and 12 give five, and 11 of those 30 complain about logging in with the emailed one-time code. Teachable’s mobile page presents that one-time-password login as piracy protection; in the 2026 reviews it is the most frequent complaint (11 of 30). Creators should know about it before they promise students an easy mobile experience.
“Really useful and it’s easy for beginners”, a student writes about the Teachable app.
“It helps me to listen to my courses while driving which is a big plus.”
“Teachable does a nice job on the actual selling side - checkout, payment plans, subscriptions, and the student experience all feel well thought out.”
“Half the time the login code never shows up.”
“I would like to stay signed in instead of always having to use email verification”.
For people who repeat a course, “There’s no way to reset progress or cleanly restart a course”.
Since an app update, “the downloads feature is not working”, the reviewer says.
A paying creator asks for round-the-clock help: “There should be 24-hour chat support”.
The pattern: creators praise the selling side (checkout, payment plans, subscriptions) and the tax handling that Teachable advertises heavily; students like being able to learn on a phone. Complaints cluster around the student app’s emailed-code login, offline downloads, support hours and, on Starter, the transaction fee. G2, Capterra and Reddit are not quoted here, and Hacker News has almost no 2025 or 2026 discussion of Teachable the platform.
Three self-service plans from $29 to $139 a month billed yearly, plus Custom; the plan mostly buys the fee rate, product slots and admin seats.
Every plan includes the AI course tools, the iOS and Android student apps, global payments with tax handling, upsells and abandoned-cart recovery, memberships, a community and unlimited bundles. Moving up changes four things: the transaction fee (7.5% on Starter, 0% above), the number of published products (5, 10, 50), admin seats (1, 1, 5) and a set of extras such as referral tracking for your own promoters on Builder, and certificates, white-labelling and free subtitles on Growth. Prices below are from teachable.com/pricing on Oct 26, 2026, in US dollars before tax; the FAQ on that page says “all prices on this page are in US dollars (USD)”.
Starter
a month; $29 a month billed yearly ($348 a year)
- 5 published products, 1 admin
- 7.5% transaction fee on all sales
- AI course tools, student apps
- Upsells and cart recovery
Builder
a month; $69 a month billed yearly ($828 a year)
- 10 published products, 1 admin
- 0% Teachable transaction fee
- Tracking for your own promoters
- Real time support
Growth
a month; $139 a month billed yearly ($1,668 a year)
- 50 published products, 5 admins
- Certificates, remove Teachable branding
- Imported students, custom permissions
- Free subtitles and translations
Custom
contact sales; no price published
- Everything in Growth
- Dedicated success manager, sandbox school
- Priority SLA-based support
- Migration assistance
| Plan | Monthly billing, a year | Yearly billing, a year | Yearly discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $468 | $348 | 25.6% ($120) |
| Builder | $1,068 | $828 | 22.5% ($240) |
| Growth | $2,268 | $1,668 | 26.5% ($600) |
Computed from $39/$29, $89/$69 and $189/$139 on teachable.com/pricing, Oct 26, 2026. The page labels the yearly toggle “22% OFF”, which is accurate only for Builder; Starter and Growth save more.
The free start is short: 7 days, after which the plan bills in full. The 30-day guarantee is real but narrow. Teachable’s Terms give monthly subscribers a refund within 30 days “of first signing up for a paid plan, or upgrading to a higher priced plan”, and annual subscribers within 30 days “of first signing up for an annual plan”. The FAQ answer to “Is there a free plan?” is direct: “Teachable is a paid service that includes a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.” Its cancellation help article adds that “Teachable no longer offers a free plan”, so a cancelled school goes offline rather than dropping to a free tier.
Teachable’s own cut is 7.5% on Starter and zero above; the card processing on top mirrors Stripe’s US list rates, and the payment bundles add more.
Two kinds of fee come off every sale. The Teachable plan fee depends only on your plan: per the help article on fees (Sep 9, 2026), “Starter” pays “7.5% on all sales”, and Builder, Growth and the legacy Advanced plan pay 0%, on both Teachable Payments and your own Stripe account. Processing fees depend on where your school is based and how the student pays. For a US school they match Stripe’s own US list prices: 2.9% + 30¢ for a domestic card, and Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards, which gives the 4.4% + 30¢ in Teachable’s help table. Teachable’s pricing page, though, shows 3.9% + 30¢ for international cards. The two pages disagree; budget for 4.4%.
Then come the bundles. Every Teachable Payments school starts on Standard, which adds 0.5% to transactions where tax is assessed and 0.7% to recurring transactions. Those two numbers are exactly Stripe’s own list prices for Stripe Tax Basic and pay-as-you-go Stripe Billing on stripe.com/us/pricing, so you are paying for the tax and subscription engines underneath. The Global bundle charges 2.8% on all transactions instead, waives both, and adds 35+ local payment methods and local-currency pricing. Teachable’s own example: a US school on Global pays 2.9% + $0.30 + 2.8% = 5.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| US school, per sale | Starter | Builder | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable plan fee | 7.5% | 0% | 0% | Help, Sep 9, 2026 |
| Domestic card | 2.9% + 30¢ | Help and pricing page | ||
| International card | 4.4% + 30¢ (help); 3.9% + 30¢ (pricing page) | Pages disagree | ||
| PayPal | 3.49% + 49¢ US; 4.99% + 49¢ international | Pricing page | ||
| Klarna, US buyer / Afterpay | 5.99% + 30¢ / 6.0% + 30¢ | Help | ||
| Standard bundle (default) | +0.5% where tax is assessed; +0.7% on recurring charges | Help | ||
| Global bundle (optional) | +2.8% on all transactions; tax and recurring fees waived | Help | ||
| Chargeback | $15 per dispute | Help and pricing page | ||
| Own Stripe account (CPG), US schools | Stripe’s fees + 2% Teachable integration fee | Help | ||
From Teachable’s help article Understand your transaction fees and bundles (Sep 9, 2026) and teachable.com/pricing (Oct 26, 2026), checked against stripe.com/us/pricing and PayPal’s US fee page (last updated Oct 1, 2026) the same day. Schools outside the US pay local rates, for example 1.9% + €0.25 for a domestic EU card and 1.5% + £0.20 for a domestic UK card.
Six example schools: Starter is only cheaper below about $533 a month, and the payment route matters as much as the plan.
Here is what Teachable and its card processing would cost a US school a month in six situations, using yearly billing, domestic cards at 2.9% + 30¢ and the Standard bundle unless stated. Taxes, refunds, chargebacks, apps and your own tools are left out.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| School | Plan and route | Plan | Fees | Monthly total | Share of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. First launch: $1,000, 20 sales of $50 | Starter | $29 | $75 Teachable + $35 cards | $139 | 13.9% |
| A. Same school | Builder | $69 | $35 cards | $104 | 10.4% |
| B. Steady sales: $5,000, 50 sales of $100 | Builder | $69 | $160 cards | $229 | 4.6% |
| B. Same school | Starter | $29 | $375 Teachable + $160 cards | $564 | 11.3% |
| C. Membership: 200 members at $25 | Builder, Standard | $69 | $205 cards + $35 recurring fee | $309 | 6.2% |
| D. Global: $10,000, 100 sales, 40% foreign cards | Builder, Standard | $69 | $380 cards, plus up to $50 tax handling | $449 to $499 | 4.5% to 5.0% |
| D. Same school | Builder, Global | $69 | $380 cards + $280 Global | $729 | 7.3% |
| E. US school on its own Stripe: $5,000, 50 sales | Builder, CPG | $69 | $160 Stripe + $100 integration fee | $329 | 6.6% |
Cards = sales × 2.9% + sales count × 30¢; foreign cards at 4.4% + 30¢. The Standard tax fee applies only where tax is assessed, so school D pays between $0 and $50. Prices from teachable.com/pricing and Teachable’s fee help article; all figures recomputed in our calculation file, Oct 26, 2026.
Three lessons fall out. Starter is a trap for anyone with real sales: at $5,000 a month it costs $335 more than Builder. The Global bundle pays only if local payment methods and local-currency pricing win you more than 2.8% of extra sales, which is a real question for a US school but a likely yes for one selling heavily in Brazil, the Netherlands or Poland. And a US school that keeps its own Stripe account pays $100 a month more at $5,000 in sales, and loses Teachable’s tax handling; Teachable’s own help article says creators in supported countries “will almost always pay less in total fees” on Teachable Payments.
Paid students stay free; free, imported and coupon-to-zero students above 100 now cost $0.50 a month each on new schools.
This change can surprise a new creator in late 2026. Under the Usage Fees page (last updated Sep 28, 2026), every student who joins through a paid Teachable checkout or your own Stripe checkout is free, without limit. Everyone else counts: “administrative imports, the Teachable API, manual enrollment by an owner or author, US$0 checkouts, coupon-to-zero checkouts, and access provisioned from a sale completed on another platform (including Hotmart).” Each school gets 100 of those for free. Above that, Teachable bills $0.50 per student per month, on the highest count reached during the billing period, and “The allowance is not a cap”, so nobody is locked out; you are billed instead.
Two details decide the bill. A student who has a paid enrollment and one free enrollment still counts. And removing a student’s access to every product takes them out of the count going forward, though not for a period they were already in. Schools created on or after September 3, 2026 are on these rules from day one; older schools stay on the legacy fees until their first renewal on or after April 30, 2027, or earlier if they ask support to switch. The legacy rules were different, not simply cheaper: active students above the plan allowance cost $0.05 to $0.10 a month and imported students $0.50 to $1.50 a month, depending on plan.
A fair 30-day refund, a mandatory 14-day refund for your students, arbitration in New York, and pages that do not agree with each other.
Teachable’s Terms of Use were last updated on April 20, 2026. Most of it is standard for the category, but seven rules are worth knowing word for word before you build a business on the platform.
| Topic | Exact rule | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Your refund | Monthly plans: refund within 30 days “of first signing up for a paid plan, or upgrading to a higher priced plan” (Terms 14.1) | Ask in writing inside 30 days. Teachable “reserves the right to modify, suspend, or alter its refund policy” (Terms 5.5). |
| Students’ refunds | Course buyers on Teachable’s gateways “are entitled to a fourteen (14) day full refund from the date of purchase” (Terms 14.2) | You cannot offer a shorter window on courses without Teachable’s permission; refunds are capped at $10,000 a day. |
| Price changes | “Price changes for Teachable Plan subscriptions will take effect at the start of the next subscription period following the date of the price change.” (Terms 12.2) | A yearly plan locks the price until renewal. |
| Usage fees | “usage fees apply regardless of whether You have received notice of such fees” (Terms 12.7) | Watch your student count in the admin yourself. |
| Termination | “Teachable may modify, terminate, or refuse to provide Teachable Services at any time for any reason, without notice.” (Terms 5.1) | Keep your own copies of content and student lists. |
| Leaving | “Student subscriptions may continue for up to 30 days after your plan ends, and students may still be charged” (help, Jun 29, 2026) | Cancel student subscriptions yourself before you close a school. |
| Disputes | New York law; binding confidential arbitration by JAMS in New York County; jury trial and class actions waived (Terms 20) | Claims must be brought within one year (Terms 17). |
Quoted from teachable.com/legal/terms-of-use (last updated Apr 20, 2026) and the help article Cancel Your Paid School Plan (Jun 29, 2026), Oct 26, 2026.
Where Teachable’s own pages disagree
| Topic | One Teachable page says | Another says |
|---|---|---|
| Yearly discount | “22% OFF” and “Annual billing saves you 22% compared to paying month-to-month.” (pricing) | The prices give 25.6% on Starter, 22.5% on Builder and 26.5% on Growth. |
| International card | 3.9% + 30¢ (pricing page) | 4.4% + $0.30 for a US school (help, Sep 9, 2026) |
| BackOffice | “BackOffice fee (optional)” 2-2.8% (pricing page) | “BackOffice has been retired.” (help, Sep 9, 2026) |
| Plans | Starter, Builder, Growth and Custom (pricing page) | Four self-service tiers including Advanced (help, Sep 24, 2026); the Terms still name “Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans” |
| Reserve | Teachable “may place a portion of Your school sales in reserve” (Terms 10.1) | “There is no reserve held on your earnings.” (help) |
| Payout speed | “your earnings can be in your bank account within minutes of a sale” (payments page) | About 2 business days after each sale; first payouts may take 4 to 6 weeks (help) |
| Processing rate | Processing rate “Up to 2.9%” (blog, Jul 14, 2026) | Up to 6.0% + $0.30 for Afterpay, and +2.8% on Global (help) |
| Student limit | Students enrolled through Teachable checkout: Unlimited (pricing) | US$0 and coupon-to-zero checkouts count toward the paid allowance (Usage Fees) |
| Bundles | Standard and Global (fees help article) | “three new bundles - Standard, Teachable Payments Pro, and Teachable Payments Global” (payments help article) |
| Annual refunds | 30 days “of first signing up for an annual plan” (Terms) | 30 days of signing up or upgrading, “both monthly and annual” (help, Jun 14, 2026) |
All pages as of Oct 26, 2026. The help article that lists three bundles also still shows an editor’s placeholder note in its BackOffice paragraph. When pages conflict, get the answer in writing from support before you rely on it.
Pick by monthly sales, by where you are based and by how many free students you plan to collect.
The real product is the checkout: Stripe-powered, tax-collecting in 45+ countries, paying out daily with no reserve, in 41 countries.
Course builders are much alike; what sets Teachable apart in 2026 is what happens when a student pays. Teachable Payments, per the help center’s September 9, 2026 overview, is a two-step Stripe-hosted checkout with 37+ local payment methods (Klarna, Afterpay, iDEAL, Bancontact and others), automatic local-currency display, checkout translation in 34 languages and up to 10 checkout upsells. Teachable acts as your payment collection agent, and in many places it is treated as the seller for tax purposes: it calculates, collects and remits US sales tax where it counts as a marketplace facilitator, EU VAT on electronically supplied services, and similar taxes in places such as Australia, Canada, India and Singapore, according to its Terms. You get a tax-compliant PDF invoice for every purchase instead of a spreadsheet of obligations.
The money then moves faster than before. The help article on payouts says earnings land in a Stripe Express account connected to your school, are paid out “~2 business days after each sale”, and that there is no reserve. Two caveats sit in the same article: new accounts may wait 4 to 6 weeks for their first payouts while Stripe verifies them, and payouts stop if you earn more than $500 without tax forms on file. Some older features did not survive the move: post-purchase and thank-you page upsells, gifting, the student referral program and checkout testimonials were removed, according to the change article.
Official Teachable video (@TeachableTV), published Oct 14, 2026, 86 seconds: the multilingual, local-currency checkout.
Official Teachable video (@TeachableTV), published Oct 7, 2026, 89 seconds: payments and payouts in one admin.
A realistic first month on Teachable, from the free trial to the first payout, with the checks that avoid the common complaints.
Official Teachable video (@TeachableTV), published Sep 24, 2026, 149 seconds: the support that comes with Teachable Payments.
The AI helps you draft and translate; the free student app is a real asset, with a login students often dislike.
Teachable’s AI tools are practical rather than flashy. The Course Starter drafts a curriculum, lesson content and a sales page; a quiz generator builds quizzes from lessons; and the transcription service creates captions and translates them, which the AI hub says covers “over 70 languages”. Captions and subtitle translation are free on Growth and cost extra on Starter and Builder, per the June 2025 plan article. The AI hub calls Teachable “the only course platform with a built-in video transcription service which includes automatic translations in over 70 languages”; Kajabi’s pricing page also lists video transcripts and translations, so treat that as a claim, not a fact.
The student app is free for creators and students on iOS 16+ and Android 11+, with offline viewing, dark mode and screenshot prevention. It is also where the one-time-code login lives, which explains the login complaints in recent App Store reviews.
Zapier, webhooks and a public API cover most automation; data export is the weak spot.
The pricing comparison lists Zapier, webhooks (with a per-plan limit), a public API with request limits, OAuth and third-party integrations such as email tools. If you outgrow the built-in email and want a dedicated tool, Teachable’s help center documents connections to Mailchimp, MailerLite and ActiveCampaign, and Zapier or Make can connect the rest; see our Zapier review and Make review. Developers who want an AI assistant to work with these APIs can read our guide to Claude MCP connectors.
Leaving is harder than arriving. The export help article says plainly that “Teachable does not support bulk exporting or downloading all course files and folders at once. Users must download each file individually.” Users and transactions export as CSV files. Keep your source videos and documents outside Teachable from day one.
An annual SOC 2 Type II audit and PCI-compliant gateways; your students’ data is shared across the Hotmart group under its privacy policy.
Teachable’s security page says it holds a SOC 2 Type II report, audited annually by the CPA firm A-lign and available under NDA, that it is “focused on SOC 2 Type II today”, and that “All our gateways are PCI SAQ A Level 3 compliant.” There is no ISO 27001 certificate. Card data is handled by Stripe or PayPal rather than stored by Teachable, per the Privacy Policy.
The Privacy Policy (updated Nov 4, 2025) is written for “Teachable and the other companies in Hotmart Company”. It says “Hotmart Company does not sell or disclose the personal data collected for monetary purposes”, but it also allows sharing within the group and with advertisers and analytics providers through cookies. Creators receive each student’s name, email, IP address, payment details (never the full card number), progress and messages, and become independent controllers of that data under the Data Processing Agreement. For a creator in the EU or UK, that means you need your own privacy notice for students.
Two more rules matter for anyone automating around the platform: the Terms forbid “any data mining, robots, or similar data gathering or extraction methods”, and the Fair Use Policy bans bots and scripts that scrape data or overload Teachable’s systems. Use the official API instead.
| Area | Teachable says | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | SOC 2 Type II, annual, report under NDA | Ask your account manager for the report if you sell to companies. |
| Payments | Gateways PCI SAQ A Level 3; Stripe fraud protection | Card data stays with Stripe or PayPal. |
| Privacy | No sale of personal data; sharing inside Hotmart Company and with ad and analytics partners | Your own privacy notice and consent for students. |
| Content | You own your content; Teachable may keep an archival copy after you leave (Terms 5.6) | Keep masters elsewhere; there is no bulk export. |
| Inactive accounts | May be deleted after 6 months without an active subscription (Terms 15.2) | Export users and transactions before you cancel. |
Teachable suits course creators who sell steadily, sell across borders and want tax handled; it suits hobbyists and lead-magnet-heavy funnels less well.
| Work pattern | Fit | Likely plan |
|---|---|---|
| Expert selling one to ten courses to students in many countries, based in a Teachable Payments country | Strong: tax handling in 45+ countries, local payment methods, daily payouts | Builder, $69 billed yearly |
| Creator with a team, many products or a need to remove Teachable branding | Strong: 5 admins, 50 products, certificates, white-label | Growth, $139 billed yearly |
| Membership or subscription business | Good: Stripe Billing, smart retries, customer portal; 0.7% on recurring charges | Builder or Growth |
| First course, under about $533 a month in sales | Fair: cheap entry, but 7.5% of every sale | Starter, $29 billed yearly |
| Creator based outside the 41 Teachable Payments countries | Mixed: own Stripe account needed, no tax handling or automatic payouts to co-authors and promoters | Builder on a Custom Payment Gateway |
| Funnel built on large free courses | Weak on new schools: $0.50 a month per free student above 100 | Any plan; consider removing access after the free course |
| Company training employees | Separate product: Teachable sells enterprise plans on its own pages | Custom or enterprise quote |
Who should not buy: anyone who needs unlimited products at the entry price, creators who want to keep their own payment processor with no extra fee as a US business, people who need a bulk course export for peace of mind, and anyone whose students will mostly use the mobile app and cannot tolerate code-by-email logins.
Nine things to weigh before you commit.
Thinkific for unlimited courses, Podia for a cheap all-in-one with email, Kajabi for marketing tools; each listed a pricier no-fee plan on Oct 26, 2026.
Prices are list prices in US dollars from each vendor’s own pricing page on Oct 26, 2026, checked against the latest Internet Archive copy of the same page (Thinkific Oct 5, Podia and Kajabi Oct 19, 2026). We compared published prices, fees, trials and refund rules only, not ease of use, course design or support quality. None of these platforms has a JAVIS review yet.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| Platform | Plans, billed yearly (monthly) | Platform fee | Trial and refund | Notable difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable | Starter $29 ($39), Builder $69 ($89), Growth $139 ($189) | 7.5% on Starter, 0% above | 7 days; 30-day money-back | 5 to 50 products; tax handled in 45+ countries on Teachable Payments |
| Thinkific | Start $82 ($109), Grow $164 ($219), Expand $374 ($499) | None; third-party gateway fee in select countries | 30 days; Terms say no refunds unless Thinkific made an error | Unlimited courses; 10,000 current students on self-serve plans |
| Podia | Mover $42 ($49), Shaker $84 ($99), Earthquaker $150 ($179) | 5% on Mover, none above | 14 days, no card; refund within 72 hours of a payment | Email marketing included (100, 500, 1,000 subscribers); 50, 150 or unlimited products |
| Kajabi | Basic $143 ($179), Growth $199 ($249), Pro $399 ($499) | None (0% revenue share) | 14 days; 30-day money-back | Contacts 2,500 to 100,000 with unlimited email; own app on Pro |
Thinkific’s page labels Start “Save $330” a year; the listed prices give $324. Its archived page of Oct 5, 2026 also showed a Basic plan at $54 a month or $40 billed yearly that the Oct 26, 2026 page does not list; check whether Basic is offered where you are. Card processing (about 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards) applies on all four.
The comparison that matters most is at the no-fee level. Teachable Builder at $69 a month billed yearly undercuts Thinkific Start ($82), Podia Shaker ($84) and Kajabi Basic ($143), unless Thinkific’s Basic plan ($40 billed yearly on its Oct 5, 2026 page, with 1 community and up to 5 digital products) is offered where you are. On monthly billing Builder is still the cheapest of the four at $89, ahead of Podia Shaker ($99), Thinkific Start ($109) and Kajabi Basic ($179). What you get for the money differs: Thinkific gives unlimited courses, Podia includes email marketing for 500 subscribers on Shaker, and Kajabi bundles email, funnels and a community for up to 2,500 contacts. Refund terms differ even more, from Teachable’s and Kajabi’s 30 days to Podia’s 72 hours and Thinkific’s no-refund default.
This review has no affiliate links.
Every Teachable link here goes straight to teachable.com, its pricing page, its Usage Fees or its Terms of Use, without tracking parameters. The score, the drawbacks and the alternatives would be the same either way.
How this review was put together: Teachable’s pricing page on Oct 26, 2026 and its Internet Archive copies of Jan 23, Apr 4, Jun 16 and Oct 21, 2026; the Usage Fees (Sep 28, 2026), Terms of Use and Fair Use Policy (Apr 20, 2026), Privacy Policy (Nov 4, 2025), security, payments, AI and mobile pages; the Teachable Payments blog post of Jul 14, 2026 and help articles dated Jun 14 to Sep 24, 2026; official Teachable videos; the pricing pages of Thinkific, Podia and Kajabi and their latest Internet Archive copies; Thinkific’s Terms of Service; Stripe’s and PayPal’s US fee pages; the US App Store and Google Play; Trustpilot and Hacker News. This review involved no school of our own, no payments and no support contact, so nothing here describes course-building speed, video quality or support from our own use. Screenshots show public pages only.
Recording lessons, designing course material, automating sales or growing traffic? These reviews cover the tools around a Teachable school.
Each card opens a published JAVIS review, routed by where you are.
Questions people ask before committing
How much does Teachable cost in 2026?
On teachable.com/pricing on Oct 26, 2026: Starter $39, Builder $89 and Growth $189 a month on monthly billing, or $29, $69 and $139 a month billed yearly. Custom plans are quoted by sales. Prices are in US dollars, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
Does Teachable take a cut of my sales?
Only on Starter, which charges 7.5% of every sale. Builder, Growth and Custom charge no Teachable transaction fee. Card processing still applies (2.9% + 30¢ for a domestic card at a US school), the default Standard bundle adds 0.5% where tax is assessed and 0.7% on recurring charges, and US schools using their own Stripe account pay a 2% integration fee.
Does Teachable have a free plan?
No. Teachable’s help center says it no longer offers a free plan; you get a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.
What are Teachable’s usage fees?
On schools created on or after Sep 3, 2026, each student who joined without a paid checkout (free courses, 100% coupons, imports, API) costs $0.50 a month above the first 100. Older schools move to this rule at their first renewal on or after Apr 30, 2027. Video storage above 1,000 GB costs $15 a month per extra TB.
Can I get a refund from Teachable?
Yes, within 30 days of first signing up for a paid plan, or of upgrading on a monthly plan, per the Terms of Use; the help center says upgrades on annual plans qualify too. Ask in writing. Your students, in turn, get 14 days to request a full refund on courses bought through Teachable’s checkout.
Can I use Teachable Payments outside the US?
In 41 countries, including every EU country, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Mexico and the UAE. Elsewhere, including India, Brazil and Vietnam, you connect your own Stripe account instead and handle tax yourself.
How fast does Teachable pay out?
The help center says about two business days after each sale on a daily schedule, with no reserve; new accounts can wait 4 to 6 weeks for their first payouts while Stripe verifies them. The payments page also mentions instant payouts for eligible creators.
Where this came from, and when.
Every price, fee, rule and rating in this review comes from the pages below, as of Oct 26, 2026 unless another date is given. Expand for the full list, the scoring method and what the review does not cover.
Show sources, scoring method and scope
Pricing: teachable.com/pricing on Oct 26, 2026, including the comparison table, processing fees and FAQ; Internet Archive copies of the same page of Jan 23, Apr 4, Jun 16 and Oct 21, 2026; teachable.com/legal/usage-fees (last updated Sep 28, 2026); help articles New Teachable plans in June 2025 and Change Your Teachable Plan (Sep 24, 2026).
Payments and fees: teachable.com/payments; blog post Meet the new Teachable Payments (Jul 14, 2026); help articles From Teachable:pay to Teachable Payments (Sep 9, 2026), Understand your transaction fees and bundles (Sep 9, 2026), Get paid with Teachable Payments, Set up Teachable Payments and start selling, and Issue refunds and manage disputes (Sep 9, 2026); stripe.com/us/pricing; PayPal’s US business fee page (last updated Oct 1, 2026).
Legal: Terms of Use (last updated Apr 20, 2026), sections 3, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17 and 20; Fair Use Policy (Apr 20, 2026); Privacy Policy (Nov 4, 2025); teachable.com/security; help articles Request a Refund on Your School (Jun 14, 2026), Cancel Your Paid School Plan (Jun 29, 2026) and How to export school content and data.
Company and product: teachable.com home, about, AI hub and mobile app pages; press release of Mar 21, 2024 on Hotmart Company’s $10 billion creator earnings.
Video: four videos from the official Teachable YouTube channel (@TeachableTV, linked from the teachable.com footer): hjuPgs8MJgU (Sep 30, 2026), wjduPhDq_oU (Oct 14, 2026), -RgycKhSjjg (Oct 7, 2026) and B9eKkCvp2mQ (Sep 24, 2026).
Independent evidence: US App Store listings for the Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi student apps (country=us) and the 150 most recent US reviews of the Teachable app (Feb 17, 2023 to Oct 17, 2026); US Google Play listing for the Teachable app (gl=US, hl=en); the Trustpilot profile page for teachable.com (TrustScore, review count, profile labels and AI summary). The Trustpilot figures in this review come from the text of Trustpilot’s profile page for teachable.com on Oct 26, 2026, with no screenshot: a 3.3 TrustScore, 1,110 reviews, an AI summary based on 202 reviews, replies to 95% of negative reviews, and a label saying the company invites reviews. Hacker News discussions were also searched. G2, Capterra and Reddit are not quoted.
Competitors: thinkific.com/pricing and Thinkific’s Terms of Service, podia.com/pricing and kajabi.com/pricing on Oct 26, 2026, with Internet Archive copies of Oct 5 (Thinkific) and Oct 19, 2026 (Podia, Kajabi).
Images: screenshots of public pages taken on Oct 26, 2026 at 1280 by 800 pixels; illustrations inside them are the vendors’ own. JAVIS charts and diagrams are labelled as such and computed from the figures above. Related cards use JAVIS’s own featured images.
JAVIS Fit Score (65/100): an editorial composite scored out of 20 on five criteria. Price clarity 11: every plan, fee and processing rate is published in US dollars, but the yearly discount label, the international card rate, the BackOffice fee and the plan list differ between Teachable pages. Capability 15: courses, coaching, downloads, memberships, community, apps, AI drafting and a tax-collecting checkout, held back by product caps and no bulk export. Independent evidence 13: a 4.6 and 4.5 student-app average against recent login complaints, a middling Trustpilot score and little creator discussion elsewhere. Terms, data and security 12: SOC 2 Type II, a 30-day refund and a clear student refund rule, against termination for any reason, arbitration and usage fees billed without notice. Cost and fit 14: Builder is the cheapest no-fee plan on the four platforms’ pricing pages of Oct 26, 2026, while Starter and the new student fees punish the wrong usage pattern. It is judgment, not a measurement.
What this review does not cover: course-builder usability, video playback quality, support response times, enterprise plans, Custom plan terms, tax treatment in your country, and prices for creators outside the regions listed.
