teachable.com
Course platforms
Teachable
A course platform, published at $39–189/mo + 7.5% on Starter.
Teachable is the cheapest of the big course platforms on annual billing and the one whose pricing most rewards reading carefully. The headline is $39 a month. The number that decides whether it is cheap is 7.5%.
It also ships a coaching product that is more than a gesture — an intake block, milestones and messaging — which puts it slightly ahead of most course tools on the coaching side while still leaving the calendar to somebody else.
This page covers what Teachable is, exactly how the fee and the student caps work, what it covers of the eleven-part coaching stack, and the specific case where it is the right buy.
The short answer
Teachable is a course platform published at $39 to $189 a month, with a 7.5% platform fee on the $39 Starter plan and active-student caps of 100 on Starter and 1,000 on Builder. Its BackOffice service handles sales tax and affiliate payouts, which is genuinely rare.
What it is good at
Teachable is the cheapest of the big course platforms on annual billing ($29/mo Starter), its coaching product with intake block, milestones, and messaging is more than most course tools offer, and BackOffice handles sales tax and affiliate payouts for you.
What it covers
Recorded against Coachful, because that is the comparison we have data for. Read the Coachful column as an interested party’s account of itself. Where a capability reads Partial, it means the product does some of the job rather than all of it, and it is never rounded up or down.
- Online courses & digital downloadsTeachableYesCoachfulYes
- Coaching programs with daily tasksTeachablePartialCoachfulYes
- Habits & daily check-insTeachableNoCoachfulYes
- Session scheduling (self-serve booking)TeachablePartialCoachfulYes
- Two-way calendar syncTeachableNoCoachfulYes
- Built-in video + Zoom / Meet / TeamsTeachablePartialCoachfulYes
- Contracts & e-signaturesTeachableNoCoachfulYes
- Community & group cohortsTeachableYesCoachfulYes
- Client mobile appTeachableYesCoachfulYes
- 0% platform fee on the entry planTeachableNoCoachfulYes
- Coach-run affiliate programTeachableYesCoachfulPartial
Pricing and features verified May 2026
What is Teachable?
Teachable is a course platform for building, hosting and selling online courses and digital downloads. Its coaching product adds an intake block, milestones and client messaging, which is more than most course tools offer, and BackOffice handles sales tax, VAT and affiliate payouts on your behalf.
The registry records online courses and digital downloads, community and group cohorts, a client mobile app, and a coach-run affiliate program as fully covered. Coaching programmes with daily tasks, self-serve session scheduling, and built-in video with Zoom, Meet or Teams are recorded as partial. Habits and daily check-ins, two-way calendar sync, contracts and e-signatures, and a 0% platform fee on the entry plan are recorded as absent.
Scheduling as partial rather than absent is the accurate reading: the coaching product has some session handling, but it depends on an external scheduler and an external video tool.
What does Teachable cost, once the fee is included?
The platform fee is the whole pricing story. On Starter, 7.5% of every sale goes to Teachable on top of the subscription and on top of payment processing.
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | Platform fee | Active students |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39/mo | $29/mo | 7.5% | 100 students, 5 products |
| Builder | $89/mo | $69/mo | 0% | 1,000 students, 10 products |
| Growth | $189/mo | $139/mo | 0% | 5,000 students, 50 products |
| Coachful, for comparisonours | $29 / $49 / $99 | same | 0% on every plan | 5 / 20 / unlimited clients |
Prices as recorded in the registry, verified May 2026. Processing through teachable:pay is 2.9% plus 30 cents on US cards and 3.9% plus 30 cents international. Teachable offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on new plans.
What 7.5% means in practice
Who is Teachable for, and who is it not for?
It is for a creator selling a few courses to a large audience who wants tax and affiliate administration handled. BackOffice genuinely removes work that most platforms leave to you, and that is worth real money to someone selling internationally.
It is for someone starting cheaply who understands the maths. Below roughly $667 of monthly sales, paying 7.5% on Starter costs less than upgrading to the 0% tier. Above it, the upgrade pays for itself, and Trustpilot reviewers describing escalating costs are usually describing that crossover arriving sooner than expected.
It is not for a coach with live clients. No two-way calendar sync, no contracts, no habits and no check-ins, with scheduling only partial, means the live relationship happens in other tools.
What does Teachable cover of the coaching stack?
Fully covered
- Online courses and digital downloads
- Community and group cohorts
- A client mobile app
- A coach-run affiliate program, with payouts handled by BackOffice
Partial or absent
- Coaching programmes with daily tasks — partial
- Self-serve session scheduling — partial
- Built-in video and Zoom, Meet or Teams — partial
- Habits and daily check-ins — absent
- Two-way calendar sync — absent
- Contracts and e-signatures — absent
- A 0% platform fee on the entry plan — absent
What would a coach still need alongside Teachable?
- A scheduler with real calendar sync, because two-way sync is absent
- A contract tool, because agreements are absent
- Somewhere for between-session work, because habits and check-ins are absent
- A spreadsheet, at least, to watch the 7.5% against the upgrade threshold
How does Teachable compare with Coachful?
Teachable does two things we do not. BackOffice handles sales tax, VAT and affiliate payouts on your behalf, which is a real service rather than a feature, and Coachful handles affiliate payouts manually.
Its annual Starter price of $29 a month also matches our entry tier on the headline figure, though the registry records that tier as capped at 100 active students and five products and carrying a 7.5% platform fee on every sale, where Coachful Lite is capped at 5 clients and takes 0%.
Coachful takes 0% on every plan including the $29 one, has no active-student cap beyond the client bands, and includes booking with two-way calendar sync, built-in video, e-signed agreements, programmes, habits and daily check-ins, which Teachable’s coaching product does not.
On migration, Teachable exports students as CSV from Users along with sales and course reports. Video content has to be downloaded manually since there is no bulk course export, so budget an afternoon if you move.
What should you do about it?
Work out your monthly sales, multiply by 0.075, and compare it with $50. That one calculation decides which Teachable tier you should be on and whether the platform is cheap or expensive for you.
If the answer is that you are paying hundreds in platform fees on a $39 plan, the fee is the product decision rather than the subscription. The value ranking measures stack parts per dollar of monthly cost, which is the frame that makes fee structures visible.
What does Teachable do fully, and what does it leave out?
Teachable is recorded as fully covering 4 of the 11 capabilities in its row: online courses & digital downloads; community & group cohorts; client mobile app; coach-run affiliate program.
It is recorded as not including 4 of them: habits & daily check-ins; two-way calendar sync; contracts & e-signatures; 0% platform fee on the entry plan. A coach who needs any of those runs a separate tool for it.
A further 3 are recorded as partial: coaching programs with daily tasks; session scheduling (self-serve booking); built-in video + Zoom / Meet / Teams. Test those with your own workflow before relying on them.
Coachful’s published tiers, for comparison
How does Teachable’s price compare with an all-in-one plan?
The registry records Teachable’s price as $39–189/mo + 7.5% on Starter. That figure covers Teachable alone, so the fair comparison adds the monthly cost of whatever you would run beside it, starting with habits & daily check-ins.
On Coachful’s published tiers, 5 clients on Lite cost $29 a month ($5.80 per client), 20 clients on Solo cost $49 ($2.45 per client), and 50 clients on Pro cost $99 ($1.98 per client). Pro has no client cap, so the per-client figure keeps falling as the practice grows.
Write both totals down for your current client count and for double it. The cheaper tool at today’s size is not always the cheaper tool at the size you are aiming for.
What should you check before choosing Teachable?
Get the price at two sizes
The registry records $39–189/mo + 7.5% on Starter. Ask what you would pay at your current client count and at double it, including any per-seat, per-client or usage charges.
Price the tools around it
List what you would add for habits & daily check-ins, two-way calendar sync, contracts & e-signatures and the rest of the gaps above, with a monthly price for each. Add them to the Teachable figure before comparing.
Test the client side
Sign up as a client of your own trial account and go through booking, paying and the first piece of work. Clients judge a practice by that path, not by the coach dashboard.
List your next two offers
Check that a group programme, a course or a second coach would fit before you commit. Moving clients later is the most expensive change a practice makes.
Ask how you would leave
Find out which records export (clients, notes, payments, content) and in what format, before you need to know.
What are the common mistakes when comparing Teachable?
- Comparing Teachable’s subscription with an all-in-one plan without adding the tools it needs beside it.
- Choosing on the coach dashboard and never testing what a client sees on a phone.
- Treating a "partial" capability as fully covered and discovering the gap with a paying client.
- Buying for the practice you have today rather than the one you can see in eighteen months.
Where it sits
Built to sell and deliver recorded content. Strong at courses, thin on the ongoing relationship.
Common questions
What is Teachable?
A course platform for selling online courses and digital downloads, with a coaching product that includes an intake block, milestones and messaging, and a BackOffice service that handles sales tax and affiliate payouts.
What are Teachable’s transaction fees?
Starter, at $39 a month or $29 annual, carries a 7.5% platform fee. Builder ($89, $69 annual), Growth ($189, $139 annual) and Custom are 0%. Processing through teachable:pay is 2.9% plus 30 cents on US cards and 3.9% plus 30 cents international.
What are Teachable’s student limits?
Starter allows 100 active students and 5 products, Builder 1,000 students and 10 products, and Growth 5,000 students and 50 products.
When does upgrading from Teachable Starter pay for itself?
Around $667 of monthly sales. Below that, 7.5% costs less than the $50 a month difference to the 0% Builder tier; above it, the upgrade is cheaper. That is arithmetic from the published figures rather than a vendor claim.
Can you run coaching on Teachable?
Partially. The coaching product has an intake block, milestones and messaging, but two-way calendar sync, contracts, habits and daily check-ins are all recorded as absent, so the live relationship depends on other tools.
Can you export your courses from Teachable?
Students export as CSV from Users, along with sales and course reports. There is no bulk course export, so video content is downloaded manually.
What does Teachable not include?
The registry records habits & daily check-ins; two-way calendar sync; contracts & e-signatures; 0% platform fee on the entry plan as absent, and coaching programs with daily tasks; session scheduling (self-serve booking); built-in video + Zoom / Meet / Teams as partial.
How does Teachable’s price compare with Coachful’s?
The registry records Teachable at $39–189/mo + 7.5% on Starter. Coachful, which publishes this directory, is $29 a month for up to 5 clients, $49 for up to 20 and $99 for unlimited.
The verdict
Teachable is a capable course platform whose price depends entirely on how much you sell. At low volume the $29 annual Starter tier is the cheapest serious course product here. At real volume the 7.5% is the most expensive thing on the invoice.
BackOffice is the genuine differentiator and worth paying for if you sell internationally. The coaching product is better than most course tools offer and still not a coaching platform: no calendar sync, no contracts, nothing between sessions.
Elsewhere
We also publish a Coachful vs Teachable comparison on our product site. It argues our case, and it is labelled as ours.