Skool Pricing 2026: What It Really Costs
Updated September 11, 2026 • 9 min read
Skool costs $9/month on the Hobby plan or $99/month on the Pro plan, both with a 14-day free trial, and both charged per community rather than per account. What decides your actual bill is the transaction fee on top: 10% + $0.30 on Hobby, 2.9% + $0.30 on Pro, rising to 3.9% on payments above $900. That is why the cheaper plan on paper is not always the cheaper plan for you. Below roughly $1,270/month in payments collected, Hobby wins. Above it, Pro does.
The two plans
Skool has two plans and no tiers in between. Members, courses, videos and live calls are unlimited on both, so the plan you pick is not a capacity decision. What separates them is the transaction fee, the number of admins, and two features Hobby does not get at all.
| Hobby | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $9 | $99 |
| Transaction fee | 10% + $0.30 on every transaction | 2.9% + $0.30 up to $899 3.9% + $0.30 above $900 |
| Admins | 1 | Up to 30 |
| Members, courses, videos, live calls | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Custom URL | No | Yes |
| Member affiliate system | No | Yes |
| Billed annually | $7.50/mo | $82/mo |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
Plan features verified in Skool's own plan selection screen. Fees from Skool's help center, admin limits from its admin documentation. All checked September 11, 2026.
Two lines in that table are worth pausing on, because almost nobody publishes them. The Pro fee is not a flat 2.9%: it rises to 3.9% on any single payment of $900 or more, which matters the moment you sell a cohort or a high-ticket program. And the $0.30 per transaction applies on both plans, which quietly punishes low monthly prices. On a $9/month membership it is 3.3% of the payment before the percentage fee is even counted.
Annual billing takes two months off either plan, which brings Hobby to $7.50/month and Pro to $82/month. It is a discount on the plan and not an extension of the trial, so you are committing for a year to get it.
The cost nobody mentions: billing is per community
Your Skool plan covers one group. Not your account, one group. Create a second community and Skool asks you to pick a plan again, and bills it separately.
This catches people out because of how community businesses actually get built. The setup most creators arrive at is a free group at the top of the funnel feeding a paid one, and that is two groups, so two subscriptions. Two Hobby groups cost $18/month. A free Hobby front-end with a paid Pro group costs $108/month before a single transaction fee is counted. On annual billing those become $15 and $89.50.
None of the published pricing comparisons mention this, and neither does the pricing page. It is visible at the moment you create a second community, which is after you have already committed to the first one.
Verified in a Skool account on September 11, 2026, at the second-community creation step.
What the fees actually cost you
Take a single member paying $49/month, the middle of the range where most paid Skool communities land.
| On a $49 payment | Hobby | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage fee | $4.90 | $1.42 |
| Fixed fee | $0.30 | $0.30 |
| You keep | $43.80 | $47.28 |
That is $3.48 more per member per month on Pro. With 26 members you have covered the $90 difference in subscription cost, and everything above that is margin. The arithmetic is the same whatever you charge, which is what the next section turns into a threshold.
What it costs at your numbers
Put in what you charge and how many members pay it. The calculator applies both plans' real fee structures, including the $0.30 per transaction and the 3.9% tier on payments of $900 or more, and tells you which plan is cheaper for you.
That is $1,470 collected per month, across 30 transactions.
$9.00 subscription + $156.00 in fees (10% + $0.30 per transaction)
$99.00 subscription + $51.63 in fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction)
Pro is cheaper by $14.37/month at these numbers.
The $0.30 per transaction applies to both plans, so it cancels out of the comparison. The crossover is $90 ÷ 7.1% = $1,268/month in payments collected. Fees verified on Skool's help center, September 11, 2026.
Start your 14-day free trial →Affiliate link. It does not change the numbers above.
When to upgrade from Hobby to Pro
Start on the Hobby plan ($9/mo) to keep costs low. The switch to Pro ($99/mo) pays for itself once your community collects around $1,270/month in payments. Below that, Hobby stays cheaper despite its 10% transaction fee. Above it, the 2.9% Pro fee saves you more than the $90 difference in subscription cost.
Hobby = $9 + 10% of payments. Pro = $99 + 2.9% of payments. Pro saves 7.1% on everything you collect, and $90 ÷ 7.1% = $1,268/month. The $0.30 per transaction is identical on both plans, so it cancels out of the comparison.
One caveat the threshold hides. If you sell anything at $900 or more in a single payment, the Pro rate on that payment is 3.9%, not 2.9%, and the crossover moves against you. High-ticket cohorts are exactly the case where the headline number misleads. If you are building the community itself, our guide to creating a Skool community covers the steps around this decision.
How that compares to the alternatives
Most comparison posts quote a single number per platform and never say whether it is the monthly price or the annual one. The gap between the two is often 20% or more, which is enough to reverse a ranking. Here is the entry tier of each platform with both figures kept separate.
| Platform | Entry tier, monthly | Billed annually | Transaction fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skool Hobby | $9 | $7.50 | 10% + $0.30 |
| Skool Pro | $99 | $82 | 2.9% + $0.30 3.9% above $900 |
| Teachable Starter | $39 | $29 | 7.5% |
| Circle Professional | Not published | $89 | 2% |
| Mighty Networks Launch | $95 | $79 | Not verified |
| Kajabi Basic | $179 | $143 | Not verified |
Entry tier of each platform. Skool, Teachable, Circle and Mighty Networks checked September 11, 2026; Kajabi September 10, 2026. Whop is absent on purpose: it publishes transaction rates but no creator subscription price, so two of these columns would be guesses. Cells marked "Not verified" are exactly that.
On the fee column, one caveat we would rather state than hide. Skool's figure is all-in: payments run through Skool Payments and the percentage quoted is what Skool takes. For the other platforms we have published the platform fee as they state it, and we have not established whether card processing is charged on top of it. Where that is the case the real rate is higher than the cell.
Three things that ranking hides. Teachable's $39 entry tier carries a 7.5% cut, so the cheapest sticker price on the list is not the cheapest platform once you are actually selling; its fee drops to zero only on the $89 tier. The Mighty Networks and Kajabi ladders climb steeply, to $425 and $499 at the top, where Skool has no tier above $99 at all.
And Circle does not publish a monthly price at all. Its pricing page carries no billing toggle, and the note under the grid reads "Prices displayed in USD, based on annual billing and do not include applicable taxes." So the $89 that circulates through every comparison post as Circle's monthly price is its annual rate, and what Circle charges month to month is not public information. That single missing column is the clearest illustration of why this table keeps the two apart.
The honest summary is that Skool is the cheapest way to start and stays cheap on subscription, while charging you on the way out through transaction fees. Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on how much you collect, which is what the calculator above is for. If you want the platform judged on more than its price, our full Skool review covers what it does and does not do well.
The cost that only applies if you leave it on
There is a third charge that never appears on the pricing page. Skool's Growth Boost shows your group in Discovery results and in off-site ads, and takes a 30% commission when it brings you a member. In Skool's own words:
"You pay the 30% commission only when Skool gets you a member. Pay nothing for customers you bring in yourself."
It is a performance fee, so it costs nothing on the members you bring in through your own audience. It sits in Settings, under Discovery. Whether it is worth 30% depends entirely on how much of your growth you can source yourself, and that is a decision to make deliberately rather than discover on a payout statement.
Source: Skool help center, Discovery FAQs, checked September 11, 2026.