Teachable vs Thinkific (2026): Which One Should You Actually Pick?

Every “Teachable vs Thinkific” comparison on the internet has the same two problems. First, the prices are stale — both platforms restructured their plans in the last 18 months, and most reviews still quote numbers that haven’t been true for a year. Second, the free plans. Almost every comparison still tells you to “start on Thinkific’s free plan.” That plan is gone.

So before writing this, I re-verified both pricing pages directly — all prices below are as of October 2026. I’ve spent years evaluating course platforms, first as a college dean building online programs and now as a consultant. The right choice comes down almost entirely to your sales volume and how much you hate transaction fees.

Disclosure: some links in this post are affiliate links. I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you — it never changes my rankings.

Quick Verdict

Choose Teachable if you want the fastest path from idea to launch. It’s the simplest platform to learn, the student experience is clean, and if you already own your email and funnel tools, Teachable Builder at $89/month ($69 billed annually) is all the platform you need. Skip Starter — the 7.5% transaction fee is a trap I’ll show you in the math below.

Choose Thinkific if transaction fees make you angry. Zero platform fees on every plan, unlimited courses from the cheapest tier, and a checkout system with order bumps, coupons, and abandoned-cart emails included on Basic. You trade away some simplicity and pay more for the mid tier, but you keep more of every sale.

The surprise: the plans most creators actually need are closer in price than reviews claim — Teachable Builder at $69/month annual vs Thinkific Basic at $40/month annual — and the fee math flips the winner depending on how many copies you sell.

Teachable vs Thinkific at a Glance

All prices verified on the vendors’ pricing pages as of October 2026. Verify before you buy — both companies have repriced more than once since 2025.

	Teachable	Thinkific
Entry plan	Starter $39/mo ($29 annual)	Basic $54/mo ($40 annual)
Mid plan	Builder $89/mo ($69 annual)	Start $109/mo ($82 annual)
Scaling plan	Growth $189/mo ($139 annual)	Grow $219/mo ($164 annual)
Platform transaction fee	7.5% per sale on Starter; 0% on Builder and up	0% on every plan
Payment processing	2.9% + 30¢ US cards via Teachable Payments (3.9% + 30¢ international)	2.9% via Thinkific Payments
Course limit	5 products (Starter), 10 (Builder), 50 (Growth)	Unlimited on all plans
Student limit	Unlimited	10,000 students on self-serve plans
Free plan	None — 7-day free trial	None — 30-day free trial
Completion certificates	Growth plan only	Start plan and up
White-label (remove branding)	Growth plan and up	Grow plan and up
Custom domain	Yes	Yes, every plan

I’ve reviewed both platforms in depth — my Teachable review and Thinkific review cover each individually. This post is the head-to-head.

Pricing: What You’ll Actually Pay

Teachable (as of October 2026)

Plan	Monthly	Annual	Transaction Fee	Products
Starter	$39/mo	$29/mo	7.5% per sale	5
Builder	$89/mo	$69/mo	0%	10
Growth	$189/mo	$139/mo	0%	50
Custom	Contact sales	Contact sales	0%	Flexible

Two fine-print details that matter:

The 0% fee has a condition. It applies when you use Teachable’s native payment system (teachable:pay) or their Monthly Payment Gateway. That’s how most creators will process anyway, but read the current terms on teachable.com/pricing before assuming.
“Products” means published courses, coaching offers, and digital downloads — each one counts against your cap. Drafts, memberships, and bundles don’t count, but don’t plan your whole catalog around that footnote.

There’s no free plan anymore — Teachable phased it out in its 2025 restructure. You get a 7-day free trial and a 30-day guarantee instead.

Thinkific (as of October 2026)

Plan	Monthly	Annual	Transaction Fee	Courses
Basic	$54/mo	$40/mo	0%	Unlimited
Start	$109/mo	$82/mo	0%	Unlimited
Grow	$219/mo	$164/mo	0%	Unlimited
Plus	Custom	Custom	0%	Unlimited

Thinkific raised prices in 2026 and retired its famous free plan (the one half the internet still recommends). There’s now a 30-day free trial covering the whole platform. If you use Stripe or PayPal directly instead of Thinkific Payments, an extra third-party gateway fee applies — it varies by plan, so check thinkific.com/pricing for the current number.

The hidden limits on Thinkific aren’t courses — those are unlimited — they’re 10,000 current students on the self-serve plans and video bandwidth: 100 GB/month on Basic, 200 GB on Start, 400 GB on Grow. A video-heavy course with a few hundred active students can brush against that bandwidth ceiling on Basic.

The Transaction Fee Math (This Is Where It’s Decided)

Teachable Starter’s 7.5% fee sounds small. It isn’t. Here’s a $97 course sold once, using each platform’s cheapest realistic option — Teachable Starter vs Teachable Builder vs Thinkific Basic, all with US card processing:

	Teachable Starter	Teachable Builder	Thinkific Basic
Platform fee (7.5%)	$7.28	$0	$0
Processing (~2.9% + 30¢)	$3.11	$3.11	$2.81
You keep (per sale)	$86.61	$93.89	$94.19
Total fees as % of price	10.7%	3.2%	2.9%

Roughly ten cents of every dollar leaves your pocket before the money reaches you on Starter. Now the breakeven math — the point where upgrading stops costing more than it saves:

Starter to Builder is a $50/month gap ($39 to $89 monthly). At $7.28 of platform fee per $97 sale, about 7 sales a month pays for the upgrade. Seven. If you’re selling more than a handful of copies monthly, Starter is strictly worse.
Starter to Thinkific Basic is a $15/month gap ($39 to $54 monthly). That’s about 2 sales a month. Thinkific’s cheapest plan becomes the cheaper option almost immediately if you’re selling anything at all.
Builder to Thinkific Basic: Thinkific saves $29/month (annual: $69 vs $40) with identical fees — but Basic lacks certificates, memberships, bundles, and payment plans. If you need those, the real comparison is Thinkific Start ($82 annual) vs Teachable Builder ($69 annual), and Teachable is cheaper until its product caps or Growth-gated features bite.

That’s the whole pricing story: Teachable Starter only makes sense below ~5-7 sales a month. Above that, you’re choosing between Teachable Builder and whichever Thinkific tier has the features you need.

Course Builder and UX

Teachable is faster to launch. The curriculum builder is drag-and-drop simple, and you can go from empty account to sellable course in an afternoon. The student player is one of the best in the business — clean, fast, good on mobile. My full Teachable review covers this in detail.

Thinkific gives you more control and takes longer. Themes, site-level customization, and an advanced CSS/HTML editor (from the Start plan) mean your course site can match your main brand precisely — that matters more than most creators expect once you’re past your first launch. The trade-off is setup time: expect 2-3 days to get a Thinkific site looking right, versus half a day on Teachable. Thinkific’s admin interface is functional but feels dated next to Teachable’s.

The quiz builders are a genuine differentiator: Thinkific supports multiple question types, passing scores, and prerequisite gates (pass quiz 1 to unlock lesson 2). Teachable’s assessments are adequate but simpler.

Winner: Teachable for speed and simplicity. Thinkific for customization and assessment depth.

Checkout and Payments

This is quieter than the pricing table, but it decides real money.

Teachable processes through Teachable Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ on US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ on international cards, 3.49% + 49¢ on US PayPal. Payouts are daily, which helps cash flow when you’re small. That 3.9% international rate quietly adds a percent to every overseas sale — worth knowing before your first launch abroad.

Thinkific’s checkout (TCommerce) is included on every plan — order bumps, coupons, gifting, and abandoned-cart emails from the $40/month tier. Order bumps and abandoned-cart recovery measurably lift launch revenue, and Teachable doesn’t bundle an equivalent at entry tiers. PayPal as a payment option on Thinkific waits until the Grow plan ($164 annual), which is a real gate if your audience prefers PayPal.

Custom domain: available on both platforms at every paid tier — no gating there, despite what some older comparisons claim.

Winner: Thinkific, on the strength of TCommerce at entry level. Teachable wins on payout speed and international simplicity.

The Plan-Tier Traps Nobody Puts in the Comparison Table

Every platform dangles the cheap tier and hides the useful features upstairs. Here’s what’s actually gated as of October 2026:

Teachable:

Completion certificates: Growth only ($189/mo, $139 annual)
Remove Teachable branding: Growth only
Affiliate program and community features: Builder and up
The 7.5% fee on Starter, already covered — it’s the biggest trap of all

Thinkific:

Certificates, paid memberships, bundles, and payment plans: Start and up — Basic buyers don’t get payment plans, which surprises a lot of first-time creators
White-label (remove Thinkific branding): Grow and up ($219/mo)
Advanced CSS/HTML editor: Start and up
API, webhooks, PayPal, group/B2B orders: Grow and up
Branded mobile app: a $199/month add-on on any plan

If “sell a course with a 3-payment plan and give buyers a certificate” is your minimum viable feature set, that’s Teachable Growth at $139 annual versus Thinkific Start at $82 annual. The cheap-tier comparison everyone does matters less than whether the feature you need lives in the cheap tier at all.

Migrating Between Them Later

You can switch platforms later — it’s annoying, not catastrophic. Course content, video files, and student lists (name, email, enrollment) export from both. What never transfers cleanly: student progress, live links, and checkout or email configuration, which you rebuild from scratch. Budget 2-4 weeks of paying for both platforms, and never migrate mid-launch. The full process — including the migration email to send students — is in my When to Switch Platforms lesson; the short version is that migrating pays when the pain of staying (usually fees or hard limits) exceeds a month’s overlap cost, not before.

Which Should YOU Pick?

Pick Teachable if:

You want to launch this week and never read documentation
You already pay for email (Kit, ActiveCampaign) and landing pages, and just need a clean course host — see how to choose by situation
You’re selling under ~10 products and want daily payouts
You’d rather pay more for the platform than a percentage of every sale — Builder is the plan, Starter is bait

Pick Thinkific if:

Zero transaction fees is a principle, not a preference
You want unlimited courses and order bumps from day one
Your course site needs to match an existing brand, or you need multilingual support
You’re building quizzes and assessments that actually gate progress

Pick neither if you want all-in-one. Neither includes email marketing or a real funnel builder. If you want courses plus email plus funnels in one subscription, that’s Kajabi or GoHighLevel territory — see Kajabi vs Teachable, Thinkific vs Kajabi, and my GoHighLevel review for that fork in the road.

FAQ

Which is cheaper in 2026, Teachable or Thinkific?

Depends entirely on volume. Below roughly 7 sales a month, Teachable Starter ($39/mo) is cheapest. Above that, Thinkific Basic ($40/mo annual) wins on fees and checkout. Once you need certificates and payment plans, it’s Teachable Growth ($139 annual) vs Thinkific Start ($82 annual) — and Thinkific stays cheaper until Teachable’s simplicity is worth the premium to you.

Do Teachable or Thinkific still have free plans?

No. Thinkific retired its free plan in 2026; Teachable phased its free tier out in 2025. You get trials instead — 7 days at Teachable, 30 days at Thinkific. For a genuine $0 start, Gumroad or a DIY setup is the honest path; my free and low-budget lesson maps them out.

Which has better checkout features?

Thinkific, for the money. Order bumps, coupons, and abandoned-cart emails are on every Thinkific plan; Teachable counters with faster payouts but charges 3.9% on international cards. If your launch plan leans on cart-recovery emails, Thinkific wins at entry price.

Can I move my course from Teachable to Thinkific (or back)?

Yes — content and student lists export from both; progress and page configuration don’t. Expect to rebuild the structure and sales pages, and to run both platforms in parallel for a few weeks. Full walkthrough in When to Switch Platforms.

Which is better for memberships and payment plans?

Thinkific — but only from the Start plan ($109/mo); Basic omits paid memberships, bundles, and payment plans. Teachable handles recurring payments, and its product caps only count published courses, coaching, and downloads — but check the current feature matrix on teachable.com/pricing for your tier before a membership launch.

What if I hate both?

Then you’re probably not looking for a course host — you’re looking for a business platform. My free Pick Your Platform course walks through every major option honestly, including why it recommends GoHighLevel for creators building more than one course.

Final Thoughts

Teachable and Thinkific are closer in 2026 than they’ve ever been, and the differences now live in the fine print. Teachable is the simpler tool with a fee trap at the bottom and its best features gated at the top. Thinkific is the flat-fee tool with no transaction fees, better entry checkout, and a mid tier that costs more than it looks like it should.

Run your own numbers with the table above: price times monthly sales times 7.5% tells you instantly whether Teachable Starter is even a candidate. Everything after that is feature fit.

Still torn? My free Pick Your Platform course walks the full decision — deep dives on Teachable and Thinkific included — based on your course, budget, and tech comfort.