The price is the last decision, not the first. Knowing how to price an online course means answering two other questions before you pick a number: what your buyer would otherwise pay to solve this, and how much of the sticker price reaches your bank. Both are answerable tonight, which matters when the launch email is already scheduled and the price line is the only thing still blank. This guide takes them in order, then gives you the arithmetic that decides it: what you keep on a $99, a $299 and a $997 sale across six published fee structures.
Key Takeaways
- Price against what your buyer is replacing, not against your hours. A freelancer’s quote, your own hourly rate times the sessions the course removes, or the money the skill earns them afterwards gives you a floor and a ceiling in about ten minutes.
- The sticker price and the money that lands in your account are two different numbers. On a single $997 sale, the platform’s cut alone ranges from nothing on the no-cut tiers to $99.70 on the steepest one, before card processing.
- A percentage cut and a flat monthly fee swap places at a specific sales figure. Teachable Starter and Kajabi Basic cost the same at roughly $1,870 a month in sales on monthly billing, about $1,520 on annual billing.
- A flat per-enrollment fee is the only shape that gets cheaper as your price goes up. LearnWorlds Starter’s $5 is 5.05% of a $99 course and 0.50% of a $997 one.
- A second price tier is an access decision, not a second course to build. Same material, different door, plus the part that involves you.
Once the number exists, sell courses with MCG – put the course you already have behind a pay-wall and keep the sale, minus nothing but what the card processor takes.
Start With What Your Buyer Is Replacing
Your buyer isn’t comparing your course to other courses. They are comparing it to the other ways they could get this problem off their desk. Name that alternative and you have the only anchor that survives a reply-to-email asking why it costs what it costs.
Three anchors are worth using, and you can source all three in an evening.
- The freelancer or agency quote. What would someone charge to do this for them? If you teach bookkeeping cleanup, find three published packages from people who sell that cleanup as a service. If the going rate is $1,200, a course that lets someone do it themselves is worth a real fraction of $1,200, not $49.
- Your own hour, multiplied. If you already do this work with clients, your invoice history is the source. Count the sessions the course removes from a typical engagement. Two sessions at $250 is a $500 anchor before you’ve written a word of sales copy.
- What the buyer gets paid afterwards. Some skills have a price attached on the other side: a photographer who can finally sell albums, a virtual assistant who can add a $400-a-month service line, a contractor who can quote a job type they used to turn down. Look up what that work sells for in their market.
Then write one sentence and keep it open while you set the price:
“Instead of paying [X] for [Y], they spend [my price] and do it themselves in [time].”
That sentence gives you both ends of the band. The ceiling is the replacement cost, because nobody pays more for the do-it-yourself version than for the done-for-you version. The floor is whatever the cheapest partial substitute costs, which for most subjects is a book, a template pack or a weekend of searching. Your number lives between them, and now you can say out loud why.
Why Counting Your Hours Gives You the Wrong Number
The most common way creators pick a price is to add up the hours they spent and attach a rate. It feels fair. It produces the wrong number in both directions, and it’s the method to drop first.
Your production time is invisible to the buyer. They never see the four takes, the re-record after the dog barked, or the weekend you spent on the workbook. They see a promise and a price, and they compare that promise to the alternative you named in the last section.
Cost-plus overprices short courses. Forty hours on a 25-minute course doesn’t make the 25 minutes worth $600. It makes your process expensive, which is your problem to solve, not your buyer’s.
It underprices good ones just as reliably. A 90-minute course that saves someone a $1,200 agency bill isn’t worth $89 because you happened to build it fast. Speed isn’t a discount you owe anyone.
Your hours belong in one place, and it isn’t the price. It’s the check afterwards. Multiply your price by the sales you can realistically expect from the list you already have.
If that total doesn’t cover the time you put in, the problem is the size of your audience or the scope of the promise. Raising the price by $40 won’t fix it, and a bigger number on the sales page won’t either.
Drop the per-hour math. Keep the replacement sentence.
What You Keep on a $99, a $299 and a $997 Sale
Now subtract. The sticker price isn’t what you earn, and the difference is large enough to change which number you write down.
Three fee shapes exist on this field, and card processing sits on top of all three.
- A percentage of every sale. Teachable‘s entry tier takes 7.5%, so the cut grows with the price.
- A higher monthly fee and no cut at all. That’s Kajabi Basic: the fee is the same whether you sell one course or two hundred.
- A flat amount per enrollment. LearnWorlds Starter charges $5, whatever the course costs.
Here is what reaches you on one sale at each of the three prices creators most often land on.
| Fee structure | $99 sale | $299 sale | $997 sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter (7.5% platform fee, plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing) | $88.40 | $267.60 | $893.01 |
| Kajabi Basic (no platform cut, Kajabi Payments at 2.9% + $0.30) | $95.83 | $290.03 | $967.79 |
| Thinkific (no platform cut, Thinkific Payments at 2.9%) | $96.13 | $290.33 | $968.09 |
| Podia Mover (5% platform fee, before processing) | $94.05 | $284.05 | $947.15 |
| LearnWorlds Starter ($5 flat per enrollment, before processing) | $94.00 | $294.00 | $992.00 |
| Skool Hobby (10% platform fee, before processing) | $89.10 | $269.10 | $897.30 |
Fee rates as published by each platform in September 2026. The figures assume a US card. The bottom three rows show the platform’s own cut only, because those platforms publish the fee and pass card processing through separately, so take off roughly another 2.9% plus $0.30 to compare them like for like.
Compare the platform’s own cut and the spread is stark. On a single $997 sale it runs from nothing on the no-cut tiers, through $5.00 on a flat per-enrollment fee, to $49.85 at 5%, $74.78 at 7.5% and $99.70 at 10%. Sell forty of those in a year and the fee shape you picked is worth more than a price increase would have been.
Two more subtractions belong in the same calculation, and neither one shows up in the row above. This is Teachable’s published schedule, on top of its 7.5% platform fee.
| What the buyer does | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Pays with a US card | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Pays with an international card | 3.9% + $0.30 |
| Pays through PayPal from outside the US | 4.99% + $0.49 |
| Disputes the charge | $15 per chargeback |
If half your list is outside the US, your effective take rate is a full point worse than the table above shows. And a disputed sale costs you the sale plus the fee on top of it.
Price the take-home, not the sticker. Look up the row that matches where your course will live, subtract, and ask whether the number that lands is still the number you wanted.
Percentage or Subscription: The Crossover Is a Number, Not an Opinion
A percentage and a monthly subscription behave in opposite ways as your price rises, which is why the order of decisions matters. Pick the price first. Then pick the fee shape that suits it.
Teachable’s 7.5% costs $7.43 on a $99 sale and $74.78 on a $997 sale. The same cut, ten times the money. A flat monthly fee costs you the identical amount whether you sell one course or two hundred, so every extra sale makes it cheaper per sale.
Those two lines cross at a number you can check against your own dashboard in thirty seconds. The arithmetic is one line:
(higher monthly fee – lower monthly fee) ÷ the percentage = the monthly sales figure where the two cost the same
Run it on the two entry tiers you’re choosing between. Teachable Starter is $39 a month plus 7.5%; Kajabi Basic is $179 a month and takes no cut.
| The pair | The line | Where the two cost the same |
|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter vs Kajabi Basic, monthly billing | ($179 – $39) ÷ 0.075 | about $1,870 a month in sales |
| The same pair on annual billing ($29 and $143) | ($143 – $29) ÷ 0.075 | about $1,520 a month |
| Podia’s entry tier ($42 + 5%) vs Kajabi Basic | ($179 – $42) ÷ 0.05 | about $2,740 a month |
Below the crossover the revenue share is cheaper. Above it, the subscription is. A gentler percentage takes longer to catch a flat monthly fee, which is why Podia’s line sits so much higher up than Teachable’s.
The third shape deserves a mention because it behaves unlike the other two. LearnWorlds Starter’s $5 per enrollment is 5.05% of a $99 course and 0.50% of a $997 one. It’s the only fee on this field that gets cheaper as a share of the sale when you price higher. If you’re selling a $997 program to a small number of people, a flat per-sale fee is the friendliest shape available.
So: write the price down, estimate the monthly sales, then run the crossover line. That’s a decision, not a preference.
The Cut We Take, and the One We Can’t Remove
Mini Course Generator’s answer to the first half of that decision is simple, and it’s worth stating plainly because it changes the arithmetic above. From our own pricing FAQ: “Not a cent. We don’t take commissions or transaction fees from your revenue.” And on the selling side: “We do not cut any sales commissions (we do not even have access to your sales data) and the funds are transferred instantly to your account.”
There’s no percentage row to add to the table for us, and no per-enrollment fee. What remains is the card processor, which every platform on the list above pays too. That’s the subtraction nobody can remove, and it’s the only one left on this side. The plans, what each one includes and the free trial are all on our pricing page.
The honest limits belong in the same section, because they change what you should buy. A course platform isn’t an email tool, an affiliate network or a funnel suite.
- Email marketing. We don’t run it. If you need broadcast emails, keep the tool you already use and connect it.
- An affiliate program. We don’t have one.
- The card processor’s cut. Nobody can remove that, here or anywhere else.
The platforms that bundle email and affiliates charge for the bundle whether or not you switch your email over, and that monthly fee lands on your launch either way.
Which leads to a rule for a first launch. Work out what you will genuinely use between now and Monday. If the answer is “a page with a price on it, a pay-wall, and a way to deliver five lessons”, don’t buy a $179-a-month stack to get it. Buy the bundle when the bundle is doing work.
One Price or Two? Ask It the Way a Coach Would
“Should I have two tiers” usually gets answered as if the second tier were a second course. It isn’t. It’s a second door into the same material, plus the part of your offer that involves you.
That reframing is what makes tiering cheap enough to do before Monday. The self-serve tier is the recorded lessons and the workbook. The premium tier is the same lessons plus something that only happens because you’re there: a group call, a review of their actual work, a private thread where you answer questions for six weeks.
You aren’t building twice. You’re deciding who gets in where.
On our side that decision is a setting. Mini Course Generator’s learner access gateways give you six ways to control who can open a course: open to everyone, double opt-in, pay-wall, specific named people, in-app authentication, and a Password Wall. A public lead-magnet version, a paid version and a private cohort version can be the same course with three different doors.
If you’re a coach or consultant pricing a group program, the thing you’re pricing is the live hours, and the self-serve tier is what you charge for the part that runs without you.
One rule keeps this from eating your week. If the second tier requires new material you haven’t recorded, it isn’t a tier. It’s a second product, and it goes after the launch, not before it. Ship one price with an access setting you can change, and add the with-me tier when someone has already asked for it.
Reading Refunds in the First Thirty Days
You won’t know whether the number was right from the sales figure. Sales tell you the promise worked. Refunds tell you whether the price matched it, and they show up inside the first thirty days.
A price set below what the promise implies isn’t the safe choice people assume. A low number pulls in buyers who bought on impulse, never opened lesson one, and ask for their money back when the card statement arrives. That’s the most expensive kind of sale you can make, and on some platforms it comes with a fee attached: Teachable charges $15 per chargeback, so a dispute costs you more than the refund itself.
Read who is asking, not just how many.
- Refunds from people who never opened the course. The price was low enough to be an impulse, or the sales page promised a different thing than the course delivers. Tighten the promise and raise the number.
- Refunds from people who finished it. The promise was bigger than the material. Cut the promise or add the missing piece before you touch the price.
- Almost no refunds and steady sales at the price you set. You’re under the ceiling. Test a higher number on the next group, not on the people mid-purchase.
Write down the refund rate you would accept before you launch, so that in week two you know what “too many” means. A number decided in advance is a measurement. A number decided while you’re watching refunds come in is a mood.
Put the Number in Front of Your Own List Before You Commit to It
There’s one test worth running before the public launch, and it takes an afternoon. Send the offer, at the real price, with the real checkout, to a slice of the people already on your list.
Not a survey. A survey asks what people would pay, which is a question about their imagination. A live checkout asks what they will pay, which is a question about their card. The two answers differ, and only one of them pays you.
Keep the test honest: same price you plan to publish, same promise, same page. If charging your earliest supporters full price feels wrong, give the early group access rather than a discount, like a live Q&A that later buyers won’t get. That keeps the number intact and gives you a reason for the email. Once the price holds with a warm audience, what is left is a marketing problem, and the test your course idea walkthrough covers that side.
“Done” looks like this: the price is on the page, the pay-wall is on, and at least one real payment has gone through end to end.
If nobody buys at that price from the warmest audience you have, resist the urge to cut the number. The people who already know you are the least price-sensitive buyers you will ever get. When they pass, the promise is the thing that’s wrong.
The Short Version
Tonight, in this order:
- Write the replacement sentence: “Instead of paying [X] for [Y], they spend [my price] and do it themselves in [time].” That’s your floor and your ceiling.
- Find the take-home row that matches where your course will live, so you know what the sticker turns into after fees.
- Pick one number inside the band and put it on the page.
- If you’re on a platform that takes a percentage, run the crossover line. At roughly $1,870 a month in sales, the flat-fee option stops being the expensive one.
- Send the offer to a slice of your own list, with a working checkout, before the public launch.
Don’t price your hours. Don’t add a second tier that requires recording anything new. Watch refunds rather than sales in week two, because that’s when you find out whether the number matched the promise.
The price has to live somewhere. Build the page your price sits on with the promise, the replacement sentence and the checkout in one place.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge for my first course?
Start from the replacement anchor, not from a round number. Find what your buyer would pay to have this done for them or to learn it another way, then price the do-it-yourself version below that and above the cheapest partial substitute, like a book or a template pack. That gives you a band rather than a guess. Pick one number inside it, check what it becomes after fees, and test it on your own list before you publish.
Should I price by the number of lessons?
No. Lesson count measures your production, not the buyer’s outcome, and it pushes you to pad the course to justify the number. Two well-built lessons that get someone to a result are worth more than twelve that circle it. Price the outcome named in your replacement sentence, then build the shortest course that delivers it.
Is it better to charge once or run a monthly price?
Charge once for a course that finishes. A monthly price commits you to producing something new every month, and the day you stop, people cancel. Recurring pricing fits a community, a group program with live calls or an ongoing coaching relationship, because the thing being paid for keeps happening. If your course has a start and an end, sell it once and add a recurring tier later if people ask for continued access to you.
What do platforms take out of each sale?
It depends on the fee shape. On a percentage model like Teachable’s entry tier at 7.5%, a $997 sale leaves you about $893 after processing; with no platform cut, such as Kajabi Basic or Thinkific Payments, the same sale leaves about $968, and LearnWorlds Starter’s flat $5 leaves $992 before processing. Mini Course Generator takes no commission and no transaction fee, so the card processor is the only subtraction. Check whether the rate you were quoted assumes a US card, because international cards and PayPal cost more on some platforms.
Should I raise the price after launch, and what happens to people who already bought?
Raise it between groups, not mid-purchase, and let everyone who already bought keep what they bought at the price they paid. That’s standard and nobody objects to it. Announce the new price with a date, so the current number has a visible end. If you’re adding something to justify the increase, give it to the existing buyers too, because those are the people who will tell others what the course is worth.
Sources
- Teachable pricing page, including its published payment processing rates and chargeback fee
- Kajabi pricing page
- Thinkific pricing page
- Podia pricing page
- LearnWorlds pricing page
- Skool pricing page
- Mini Course Generator pricing page and product documentation
- All platform fee rates as published by each platform in September 2026
