Teachable vs Thinkific: Which Is Better for Selling Courses?

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For most store owners and creators selling a handful of courses or downloads, Teachable is the better value: its Builder plan costs less than Thinkific's cheapest plan and charges no platform fee with Teachable Payments. Choose Thinkific instead if you plan to publish many courses, run a paid community, or need several admins, because it has no course limit and includes communities on every plan.

Quick comparison

	Teachable	Thinkific
Free plan	No	No
Free trial	7 days on the plan cards (a page pop-up offers 30), plus a 30-day money-back guarantee	30 days
Cheapest plan	Starter: $39/mo, or $29/mo billed yearly	Start: $109/mo, or $82/mo billed yearly
Platform transaction fee	7.5% on Starter; 0% on Builder and up with Teachable Payments	None listed
What scales the price	Number of published products, admins, features	Communities, admins, video bandwidth, features
Product limit	5 (Starter), 10 (Builder), 50 (Growth)	Unlimited courses on every plan
Admin users	1 (Starter, Builder), 5 (Growth)	2 (Start), 6 (Grow), 15 (Expand)
US card processing	2.9% + 30¢ (Teachable Payments)	2.9% (Thinkific Payments)
Standout	Courses, coaching and downloads in one storefront; student mobile apps on every plan	Communities and spaces on every plan; up to 10,000 current students

Neither is a Shopify app. Both are hosted platforms with their own storefront and checkout, so you run them alongside your store rather than inside it.

Pricing compared

Teachable (from its pricing page, November 2026):

Plan	Monthly	Billed yearly	Fee	Products	Admins
Starter	$39	$29/mo	7.5%	5	1
Builder	$89	$69/mo	0%*	10	1
Growth	$189	$139/mo	0%*	50	5
Custom	Contact sales	Contact sales	0%*	Flexible	Flexible

*0% applies when you use Teachable Payments. Card processing still applies: 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ for international cards, 3.49% + 49¢ for US PayPal sales and 4.99% + 49¢ for international PayPal sales. Chargebacks cost $15. Teachable Payments pays out daily.

Teachable's help center also describes an Advanced plan at $399 a month with up to 100 products, but the current pricing page shows only Starter, Builder, Growth and Custom, so ask sales if you need more than 50 products.

Thinkific (from its pricing page, November 2026):

Plan	Monthly	Billed yearly	Communities	Admins	Video bandwidth
Start	$109	$82/mo	1 (10 spaces)	2	200 GB/mo
Grow	$219	$164/mo	3 (20 spaces)	6	400 GB/mo
Expand	$499	$374/mo	10 (200 spaces)	15	1,000 GB/mo
Plus	Contact sales	Contact sales	Unlimited	By plan	From 7,500 GB/mo

Every plan includes unlimited courses and unlimited digital downloads. Start, Grow and Expand each allow up to 10,000 current students. Thinkific Payments lists a 2.9% rate. If you use Stripe or PayPal instead, Thinkific adds a gateway fee that varies by plan, and its pricing page does not list the amounts. A branded mobile app is a $199 a month add-on.

What it costs at two sales levels

These examples use only published prices, billed yearly, and assume US card sales through each company's own payments. Thinkific's page lists 2.9% without a fixed per-sale fee, so we did not add one.

$1,000 a month (20 sales of $50):

Teachable Starter: $29 + $75 (7.5% fee) + $35 processing = $139
Teachable Builder: $69 + $35 processing = $104
Thinkific Start: $82 + $29 processing = $111

$5,000 a month (100 sales of $50):

Teachable Starter: $29 + $375 + $175 processing = $579
Teachable Builder: $69 + $175 processing = $244
Thinkific Start: $82 + $145 processing = $227

The Starter plan's 7.5% fee is the trap. On monthly billing, Builder costs $50 more than Starter, so Builder is cheaper once you sell more than about $667 a month. On yearly billing the gap is $40, so the break-even is about $533 a month. If you expect real sales, skip Starter.

At these sizes, Teachable Builder and Thinkific Start cost about the same. The decision comes down to limits and features, not price.

Where Teachable is stronger

Mixed product types. Teachable sells courses, coaching and digital downloads from one storefront. Memberships, bundles and community spaces do not count toward the product limit.

Lower entry price. Starter at $29 a month billed yearly is the cheapest way into either platform. It is fine for testing one or two products before you have steady sales.

Built-in selling tools. Every plan lists AI creation tools, iOS and Android student apps, global payments and taxes, and upsells and cart recovery. Builder adds an affiliate program and real-time support.

Growth-plan extras. Growth adds course certificates, removal of Teachable branding, imported students, custom admin permissions, and free subtitles and translations.

Watch out: product limits are tight. Builder allows 10 published products and Growth 50, so a large library pushes you up plans quickly. Builder and Starter include only one admin user. The trial length is also unclear: the plan cards say 7 days while a pop-up on the same page offered 30.

Where Thinkific is stronger

No course limit. Thinkific includes unlimited courses and digital downloads on every plan, so you pay for features and team size rather than catalog size.

Communities. Every plan includes at least one community with spaces, and Grow and Expand raise the count. If your product is a paid group as much as a course, that matters.

More admins. Start includes 2 admins, Grow 6 and Expand 15, against 1 on Teachable's Builder.

Longer trial. A 30-day free trial gives you time to build a course before paying.

Watch out: there is no low-cost tier. Start is $109 billed monthly, nearly three times Teachable Starter. Using Stripe or PayPal instead of Thinkific Payments adds a gateway fee whose amount is not on the pricing page. Grow and Expand are where phone and priority chat support begin; Start has email and chat.

Who should choose Teachable

Store owners adding a few courses or downloads to an existing brand, with fewer than 10 products.
Coaches who want to sell sessions and courses together.
Sellers who want an affiliate program for their own products, from Builder up.

Who should choose Thinkific

Course businesses with a growing library, where Teachable's 10 or 50 product caps would push you to a higher plan.
Communities and cohort programs, since communities are included on every plan.
Teams that need more than one admin without paying for Teachable Growth.

Which one should you choose?

Choose Teachable if you will sell up to 10 products and want the lowest cost. Start on Builder, not Starter, once you expect more than roughly $550 to $670 a month in sales.
Choose Thinkific if you need unlimited courses, a paid community or several admins, and can justify $82 a month or more.
Neither if you mainly sell downloadable files from a store you already run. Shopify's free Digital Products app may be enough; see our roundup of the best platforms to sell digital products and courses.

Common questions

Is Teachable cheaper than Thinkific? At the entry level, yes: Teachable Starter is $29 a month billed yearly against $82 for Thinkific Start. But Starter charges a 7.5% fee on sales, so once you sell a few hundred dollars a month, compare Teachable Builder ($69 billed yearly) with Thinkific Start instead.

Does Thinkific charge transaction fees? Its pricing page lists no platform fee on sales. Thinkific Payments has a 2.9% processing rate, and using Stripe or PayPal adds a gateway fee that varies by plan.

Do Teachable or Thinkific have a free plan? No. Teachable offers a free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and Thinkific offers a 30-day free trial.

Which one is better for a community? Thinkific includes communities and spaces on every plan. Teachable lists community spaces too, and they do not count toward product limits, but Thinkific's plans are built around community and admin counts.

How we put this together

We did not test Teachable or Thinkific hands-on. All prices, fees and limits come from each company's own pages, read in November 2026: Teachable's pricing page and its help article on the June 2025 plan changes, and Thinkific's pricing page. The cost examples are our arithmetic on published US rates and assume all sales go through each company's own payments. Prices and trials change, so confirm them before you sign up.

Teachable vs Thinkific: Which Course Platform Should You Pick?