Teachable is a dependable course host that works best for creators who sell paid courses through Teachable’s own checkout, at $29 to $139 a month on yearly billing. It fits much less well if you give courses away free, enroll students who paid somewhere else, or sell plain files rather than lessons.
Recent Teachable reviews are split. Of the 202 on Trustpilot posted in the past 12 months, 96 give 5 stars and 61 give 1 star, and 22 of the 32 written without an invitation give 1 star. Schools created on or after 3 September 2026 also pay $0.50 a month for each free or imported student above the first 100.
Many Teachable reviews describe plans and fees that have since changed. The plans have new names, a new payment system arrived in 2026, and a review on Google’s first page lists product limits that do not match the pricing page.
Everything below comes from what Teachable publishes right now and what its customers wrote in the past 12 months: the pricing page, the help center, the fee policies and 202 Trustpilot reviews.
You will see what each plan really costs, the new per-student fee on free courses, what 202 recent Trustpilot reviewers complain about, and which kind of seller should pick Teachable at all.
If you want to check your own setup for fee and pricing mistakes like these, the Online Selling Mistakes Challenge covers the 5 most common online selling mistakes in 5 short emails over 5 days, free.
Key Takeaways
- Teachable’s 3 listed plans cost $29, $69 and $139 a month billed yearly. Only Starter takes a cut, at 7.5% per sale.
- Free students now cost money past 100. New schools pay $0.50 a month for each free, imported or paid-elsewhere student above 100.
- Teachable’s 0% plans still carry payment fees. The default bundle adds 0.5% on taxed sales and 0.7% on each recurring charge.
- Unprompted Trustpilot reviewers are far harsher. 22 of the 32 who wrote without an invitation gave 1 star, against 39 of the 170 invited.
- Teachable suits paid courses sold through its own checkout. Plain files cost less elsewhere, since Starter charges $348 a year plus 7.5%.
What Teachable costs in 2026, plan by plan
Teachable’s pricing page lists 3 plans at $29, $69 and $139 a month on yearly billing, and only the cheapest one, Starter, takes a cut of each sale, at 7.5%.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly, per month | Cut per sale | Products | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39 | $29 | 7.5% | 5 | Coupons, checkout upsells, cart recovery, tax handling |
| Builder | $89 | $69 | 0% | 10 | Custom domain, built-in email, affiliate program, live support |
| Growth | $189 | $139 | 0% | 50 | Certificates, Zapier and webhooks, 5 admins, no Teachable branding |
| Custom | Ask sales | Ask sales | 0% | Ask sales | A dedicated success manager |
The pricing page puts an asterisk on each 0%, and its FAQ ties it to selling through Teachable Payments. Starter, Builder and Growth start with a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and there is no free plan any more. Teachable counts a course, a coaching offer or a digital download as 1 product each, while bundles and memberships do not count toward the limit.
The plan grid is where the small print sits. Starter has no custom domain, no built-in email marketing, no affiliate program, and room for 1 connected app. Certificates of completion only arrive on Growth, which surprises anyone selling a course that ends in a certificate.
A 4th plan, Advanced, costs $309 a month on yearly billing or $399 month to month. Teachable’s help center names it, but the pricing page has no card for it. Our full Teachable pricing breakdown covers that plan in detail.
Plenty of what ranks for this search is out of date. A February 2026 review on Google’s first page says Starter allows 1 product, Builder 5 and Growth 25. Teachable’s pricing page says 5, 10 and 50. Older reviews on page 1 still describe a Basic plan with a 5% fee, which Teachable replaced in its June 2025 plan change.
What changed at Teachable in 2026
Teachable moved to a new payment system in the third quarter of 2026, and new schools now pay for free or imported students past the first 100.
The new payment system removed after-purchase upsells, gifting and student referrals and dropped the 10% payout reserve, while a separate usage rule set the student fee at $0.50 a month.
| What | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Payment system | teachable:pay | Teachable Payments, built on Stripe, for creators in 41 countries |
| Upsells | 3 at checkout, plus offers after purchase and on the thank-you page | Up to 10 at checkout, plus offers inside lessons. The after-purchase ones are gone |
| Payout reserve | 10% held back | None |
| Gifting and student referrals | Available | Removed |
| Free or imported students | Allowances set by plan, with a fee per extra active or imported student | First 100 free per school, then $0.50 a month each |
Teachable’s fees and bundles article lists 2 bundles for the new payment system, and the choice changes what “0% transaction fee” means. The default Standard bundle adds 0.5% on every sale where tax is charged and 0.7% on every recurring charge. It also leaves out local payment methods and local-currency prices.
The Global bundle adds 2.8% to every sale instead. In return it drops those 2 fees and adds 35+ local payment methods plus prices in each buyer’s own currency. Teachable’s own worked example: a US school on Global, selling to a US card, pays 5.7% plus $0.30 per sale in total.
Teachable’s pricing page has not caught up with its help center yet. It still lists international cards at 3.9% plus 30 cents, while the fees article puts them at 4.4% plus $0.30 for a US school. It still lists an optional BackOffice fee of 2% to 2.8%, and it ticks “Student referrals” on every plan. Teachable’s article on the payments change says BackOffice was retired and the referral program removed.
The per-student fee on free courses
The change most likely to hit a small creator is a new rule on who counts as a paying student. Teachable’s usage fees page, updated in late September 2026, says every student who pays more than $0 through Teachable’s checkout is free, with no limit.
Every other student counts. That covers free courses, 100% coupons, students you import, and buyers who paid on another platform and were given access in Teachable. Teachable’s list names Hotmart, and the rule covers any outside checkout, including CartMango, the checkout I run. The first 100 of these students are included, and each 1 above 100 costs $0.50 a month.
A free mini-course that collects 500 sign-ups would cost $200 a month on top of the plan, because 400 students sit above the free 100. That is more than Builder itself. Removing a student’s access to every product takes them out of the count, so pruning old free sign-ups lowers the bill from the next billing period.
Schools created on or after 3 September 2026 are on this rule from day 1. Older schools move to it at their first renewal on or after 30 April 2027, and only students added after the switch are counted. Video storage has its own limit: 1,000 GB on every plan, then $15 a month for each extra terabyte.
What 202 recent Trustpilot reviews say about Teachable
Teachable’s Trustpilot page shows 1,110 reviews and a 3.3 score. Among the 202 posted in the past 12 months, 96 give 5 stars and 61 give 1 star. The way each review arrived splits the scores sharply. Teachable invites customers to review it, and Trustpilot marks those reviews Verified.
Of the 32 reviews written without an invitation, 22 give 1 star, while 95 of the 170 invited reviews give 5 stars.
| How it arrived | Reviews | 1 star | 2 or 3 stars | 4 stars | 5 stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invited, marked Verified | 170 | 39 | 19 | 17 | 95 |
| Written unprompted | 32 | 22 | 7 | 2 | 1 |
| All 202 | 202 | 61 | 26 | 19 | 96 |
Every one of the 202 was read and sorted for this review, by star rating, by the label and by who wrote it. 90 come clearly from creators who run a Teachable school, and 8 from students who bought a course from one. The other 104 are too short to tell, and many of them are one-line thanks, often for a support reply.
Of the 90 creator reviews, 44 give 1 or 2 stars and 37 give 4 or 5. Money drives the unhappy ones: 21 of the 44 are about price rises, transaction fees or being moved onto a dearer plan, and 11 are about slow support.
The pricing complaints come with numbers attached:
- “Last year, I paid approximately $400 for my annual membership. This year, I was charged $820 for what was described as an “upgraded” plan.” (Joie W, 1 star, June 2026)
- “By 2025, I was paying $1,668 annually for a plan still limited to 25 courses.” (Lisa, 1 star, March 2026, who says she started on a $348 plan in 2020)
- “I am now waiting just short of 24 hours for a human reply to a simple question that their bot had no clue how to answer.” (Terry L, 2 stars, December 2025)
Happy creators mostly praise ease of use and support, and some praise reliability, like this 5-star review: “I have more then 2.000 students and nobody ever complained that they couldn’t enter the library or open a lesson or access a course.” (Sofia V, 5 stars, November 2025)
A single day skews the 1-star count. On 15 January 2026, 14 reviews arrived from people complaining about emails from Teachable, most saying they had never used it or never launched the course the email mentioned. 13 of them gave 1 star, and every one came through Teachable’s own invitation system.
If you have not sold the course yet
A creator with a course idea and no buyers yet should pick Teachable’s Starter plan, at $29 a month on yearly billing. A low fixed cost matters more than the 7.5% cut while sales are small.
Starter stays the cheaper plan until about $533 a month in sales. Builder costs $40 a month more on yearly billing, and 7.5% of $533 is $40, so past that line Builder’s 0% wins. On monthly billing the gap is $50, which moves the line to about $667 a month. If you are still choosing between course platforms, Teachable vs Thinkific runs the same sums for both.
What you give up on Starter: your own domain, built-in email, an affiliate program, and any more than 5 products.
Teachable will not find you buyers either. It has no marketplace where students browse for courses. As 1 commenter put it in an r/elearning thread asking whether Teachable is a scam, “The course instructor or owner is 100% responsible for promoting and marketing their courses.”
I learned the cost of building before anyone pays, years ago. I built an online training course, put what I called hundreds of hours into it, and fewer than 5 people bought it, which nearly made me quit selling online altogether. These days I want proof that people will pay before I build anything.
If you plan to give a free course away
A creator who wants a free mini-course to grow an email list should keep the freebie off Teachable once it is likely to pass 100 people. On a school created on or after 3 September 2026, Teachable charges $0.50 a month for every free student above 100, and 100% coupons for beta students count too. 300 free students sitting in your school cost $100 a month, and 1,000 cost $450 a month, on top of the plan. The count is the highest number in the school during each billing period, so a busy launch month sets the bill, and clearing people out later does not lower it.
The cheaper home for the freebie is the email tool you already pay for. A free email course, or a PDF it sends, does the same list-building job with no per-student fee from Teachable, and Teachable keeps the paid course. What you give up is the course feel: no lesson pages, quizzes or progress tracking for the free part.
If you would rather keep everything in 1 place, remove access for free students who have finished. Teachable’s usage fees page says a student with no access to any product stops counting. The cost there is time, because pruning becomes a monthly chore.
If your students pay from many different countries
A creator selling to the UK, the EU and beyond should pick Teachable Builder, at $69 a month billed yearly, on Teachable Payments. Sales tax and VAT rules differ by country, and Teachable Payments calculates, collects and pays that tax for you and sends every buyer a tax-compliant invoice. Builder avoids stacking Starter’s 7.5% on top of those fees.
A commenter in the same Reddit thread picked Teachable for exactly this, asking for alternatives and adding: “I was going for Teachable just because they take care of the VAT”.
Stay on the default Standard bundle unless your buyers need local payment methods. Standard costs 0.5% on top of each sale where tax is charged, plus card fees. For a US school those are 2.9% plus $0.30 on a US card and 4.4% plus $0.30 on a foreign one. The Global bundle swaps the 0.5% for 2.8% on every sale and adds local payment methods and local-currency prices.
The limit: Teachable Payments is open only to creators based in 41 countries. Outside them you would connect your own Stripe account. Teachable’s payment methods article says local payment methods, buy now pay later and local-currency pricing are not available that way. US schools that use their own Stripe account also pay Teachable an extra 2% per sale, according to the fees article.
A UK creator, in an April 2026 Trustpilot review, described losing money to a currency round trip: “When my first student paid £750 + VAT for my course, I received only £643.50.” Teachable’s article on the payments change says fees now follow the location of your account and currency conversion costs pass to the buyer, which covers the same kind of loss that reviewer describes.
If students pay you every month
A creator with a membership, a monthly coaching program or a payment plan should pick Teachable Builder, at $69 a month billed yearly, because Starter’s 7.5% would take $3.75 of every $50 renewal. Since the payment change, Stripe Billing runs Teachable’s billing, students manage their own cards in a customer portal, and a failed charge is retried 8 times over 2 weeks. The cost on the Standard bundle is 0.7% of every recurring charge, on top of card fees, so a $50 monthly membership pays Teachable $0.35 each month even on a 0% plan.
What you give up is an easy exit. Teachable’s cancellation guide says cancelling takes your school offline at the end of the billing period. Student subscriptions can keep charging for up to 30 days after that, unless you cancel them by hand. Any subscription that gets cancelled has to be bought again if you ever return.
Moving down a plan can be just as hard: the creator charged $820 wrote that downgrading would have meant cutting off about 400 students.
If your monthly product is a set of files rather than lessons, CartMango is 1 option. It takes subscriptions on every plan, and those subscriptions keep billing if you ever leave CartMango. It does not host course lessons yet.
If what you sell is a file, not a lesson
A creator selling templates, ebooks, printables or audio is better served by a checkout tool than by Teachable. Teachable’s Starter plan costs $348 a year before the first sale and then takes 7.5%, which is a lot to pay for a course platform when there is no course. Among the cheaper choices, CartMango is free right now and costs from $10 a year once paid plans start in November, with no cut of each sale. Payhip’s free plan takes 5% per sale, and Gumroad takes 10% plus $0.50.
On a $20 template, before card fees, Teachable Starter takes $1.50 of each sale, Payhip’s free plan takes $1.00, Gumroad takes $2.50 and CartMango takes nothing. CartMango’s $10 plan works out to about $0.83 a month billed yearly, so it costs less than Payhip’s 5% once you pass $200 a year in sales.
The catch with CartMango: it stores files, not video, so lesson videos stay on a host like YouTube or Vimeo. Course hosting and community are planned for October 2026 on its $30 a year plan.
Teachable review: which situation fits you
Teachable fits 3 of these 5 situations on its own, and in the other 2 the cheaper move is to keep free sign-ups or plain files off it.
| Your situation | Pick | What it costs | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course not sold yet | Teachable Starter | $29 a month yearly, plus 7.5% per sale | Builder is cheaper past about $533 a month in sales |
| Free course for your list | Your email tool for the freebie, Teachable for the paid course | No Teachable fee on the freebie | If you host the freebie on Teachable, 500 sign-ups add $200 a month |
| Buyers in many countries | Teachable Builder, Standard bundle | $69 a month yearly, plus 0.5% on taxed sales and card fees | Only for creators in 41 countries |
| Students billed monthly | Teachable Builder | $69 a month yearly, plus 0.7% per renewal | Leaving takes your school offline at the end of the period |
| Files, not lessons | CartMango | Free right now, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November, 0% per sale | Course hosting: not yet, planned for October 2026 |
For a deeper look at what each course platform keeps per sale, our best course platform guide prices 6 of them live, and the Teachable alternatives roundup covers the ones built for courses.
FAQ
Is Teachable legit?
Yes. Teachable is a real company that says more than 150,000 creators use it, and its Trustpilot profile has been claimed since 2016. Most creator complaints in recent reviews are about price rises, forced plan moves and slow support, and 4 of the 90 creator reviews report payout or payment problems. The Reddit poster who asked whether it was a scam was locked out of their own school after moving to the free plan. About 10 days and several LinkedIn messages to Teachable staff later, Teachable reset the custom domain that plan no longer covered.
Does Teachable have an app?
Yes. Every plan includes iOS and Android apps for students, according to Teachable’s pricing page.
A student’s 1-star review from January 2026 complained that “there is STILL no offline mode”, so check that before promising offline viewing.
Is there a free Teachable plan?
No. Teachable is paid only, with a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee on its 3 listed plans. If you cancel a paid plan, the school stays offline until you upgrade again. The cheapest way in is yearly billing, which Teachable advertises as 22% off and which saves $10 to $50 a month depending on the plan. Our Teachable coupon code guide explains why the codes passed around online do not beat that.
Can you make money with Teachable?
Yes, if you bring the buyers. Creators in the Trustpilot sample report schools with 2,000 and 20,000 students, but Teachable does not market your course for you. The money depends on your audience, your email list and the price you charge, and the plan you pick mostly changes how much of each sale you keep and which tools you get.
A cheaper home for the files around your course
The short version of this Teachable review: it earns its fee for a paid course sold through its own checkout. Many course creators also sell something smaller next to the course: a workbook, a template pack, a recorded workshop. On Teachable each of those uses up a product slot and pays the same 7.5% on Starter.
CartMango sells those with no cut of each sale, supports order bumps on every plan, and sends each buyer into your email tool so you can sell them the course next. It is free right now, and costs from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
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