How much does an online course platform cost in 2026?

It depends entirely on whether the plan takes a cut of your sales. The cheap plans are cheap because they do: Teachable's Starter is $29 a month paid yearly and takes 7.5% of every sale; Podia's Mover is $42 a month paid yearly and takes 5%. The plans that take nothing from your sales cost far more up front: Teachable's Builder is $69 a month paid yearly, which is $828 for the year, and Podia's Shaker is $84 a month, $1,008 for the year. Figures checked on the platforms' own pricing pages on 29 July 2026.

Which course platforms take a percentage of your sales?

On the plans we checked on 29 July 2026: Teachable Starter takes 7.5%, Podia Mover 5%, Kajabi Basic adds 5% if you use your own payment provider rather than theirs, Circle's Professional plan 2%, Mighty Networks' Launch plan 2%, and Patreon and Substack both take 10% of what you earn. That is before the card processing fee, which everyone pays on top. Bernard takes nothing from your sales at any level.

Are course platform prices in pounds?

No. We read the pricing pages of Podia, Kajabi, Teachable, Circle, Mighty Networks and Patreon on 29 July 2026, and every one of them quotes US dollars. None publishes a pound price. A UK buyer pays whatever the rate is on the day, plus whatever the card adds for the conversion, so the bill moves about from month to month.

Do course platforms add VAT for a UK buyer?

None of the pricing pages we read says. That is worth knowing before you compare figures, because it is the difference between the price on the page and the price on the invoice. Ask, or check your first invoice. Bernard is not VAT-registered, so his price is the number you pay, with nothing added at the checkout.

Can Bernard host an online course?

Yes, and the honest limits are worth reading first. Bernard does lessons, video with automatic transcripts and captions, a free preview lesson, paid or free or invitation-only enrolment, a members area with discussion, and recurring memberships charged on your own Stripe account. He does not do quizzes, marking, certificates, per-student progress tracking, staged release, live classes, or payment plans. Courses are a £600 addition to the £200 yearly plan, so £800 a year for a website with a course on it.

Report · 29 July 2026

What an online course platform really costs in 2026 - Podia, Kajabi, Teachable and the rest

Selling a course online looks cheap right up until you read the small print twice. The advertised figure is a monthly one sitting on a yearly plan, it is in dollars, and on the cheaper plans the platform also takes a slice of everything you sell. That last part is where the real money goes, and it is never in the headline.

Here is the whole bill, set out the way Bernard sets out a quote. Every line, and no surprises at the van.

Nobody sells you a course platform in pounds

We read the pricing pages of Podia, Kajabi, Teachable, Circle, Mighty Networks and Patreon on 29 July 2026. Every one of them quotes US dollars. Not one publishes a price in pounds.

That sounds like a detail. It is not. You are being quoted in a currency you do not earn in, on a card that will add its own charge for the conversion, and the figure that leaves your account is different this month from last. Before anyone has said the word tax, you already cannot write the number down.

The cheap plan is not cheap. It is commission.

This is the part worth reading slowly. On most of these platforms the entry plan is affordable because it is not really the price. The price is a percentage of everything you sell, taken before the money reaches you.

Plan	What it takes from every sale
Teachable Starter, $29/month billed yearly	7.5%
Podia Mover, $42/month billed yearly	5%
Kajabi Basic, $143/month billed yearly	5%, if you use your own payment provider rather than Kajabi's
Circle, Professional plan	2%
Mighty Networks, Launch plan	2%
Patreon	10% of what you earn
Substack	10% of what you earn
Bernard	nothing

Every one of those sits on top of the card processing fee, which nobody escapes. Stripe and PayPal charge their own fee on each payment, and 2.9% plus 30 cents is the figure both Podia and Teachable quote for it. The percentages in the table are the platform's own cut, on top, charged for the privilege of the cheaper plan.

Put a real month through it. Sell £1,000 of courses on Teachable's Starter plan and £75 of it goes to Teachable, on top of the card fee and on top of the subscription. Do that every month for a year and the commission alone is £900, against a subscription of $348 for the same year. The plan that looked like the cheap one is the expensive one the moment the thing actually works.

Kajabi is the other shape of the same trick. It does not take a cut if you use Kajabi's own payments, but the subscription starts at $143 a month paid yearly, which is $1,716 across the year, and the 5% appears the moment you bring your own payment provider.

We could not read Thinkific's pricing page on the day we checked, so there are no Thinkific figures here. We would rather leave a gap than print a number we have not seen ourselves.

The VAT question is left open

Our other cost guides can tell you exactly what VAT does to the bill, because Squarespace, Wix and the UK hosts all say so in their own help pages: see Squarespace 2026 pricing, explained - what your renewal will actually cost for how that arithmetic works. Not here. None of the course platforms' pricing pages says what happens to VAT at a UK checkout, one way or the other.

So we are not going to tell you either. Ask them, or read your first invoice properly, before you compare any of these figures with anything. It is the difference between the price on the page and the price on the statement.

Bernard's own answer is short. He is not big enough to be VAT-registered, so nothing is added at the checkout, and the money from your course sales lands in your own Stripe account, where your tax is your own business rather than a platform's.

So what does it really cost?

The only fair comparison is between the plans that take nothing from your sales, because that is what Bernard does. On that band, in dollars as they are quoted, and in pounds at the rate on the day we checked:

The yearly bill	Teachable Builder	Podia Shaker	Bernard
The plan, paid yearly	$828, about £645	$1,008, about £790	£800
Taken from every sale	none	none	none
Card processing	2.9% + 30c on US cards, 3.9% + 30c on cards from anywhere else	2.9% + 30c to Stripe or PayPal	Stripe's own fees, on your own Stripe account
What you actually pay, each year	about £645	about £790	£800

Bernard is dearer than Teachable's Builder plan and about level with Podia's Shaker. He is not the cheap option and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.

What the £800 buys is a different shape of thing. Teachable and Podia sell you a course platform. Bernard's £800 is the £200 yearly plan, which is your whole website moved, rebuilt and looked after, plus £600 for courses on top of it. One place, one bill, one thing to log into. If you want a shop alongside the courses, that is the £1,000 plan.

What the price is really for

Courses on Bernard work like this. You build a course out of lessons in order, each one its own page that people and the search and AI tools that read the web can actually read. Video either stays on your own YouTube or Vimeo or is uploaded to Bernard, and either way it comes back transcribed, with captions, a searchable transcript, chapters, short clips and a trailer, without you typing any of it. You can leave one lesson open as a free taste.

Selling it is your choice of three: charge for it, give it away for an email address, or let people in by invitation only. Students get in by a link in their email, with no password to forget and no account to make. They appear in your contacts like everyone else, so the people who bought a course are not stranded in a different system from the people on your list.

If you want it to be a membership rather than a one-off, that works too, and it rides inside the same £600. Monthly or yearly, charged on your own Stripe account, with a club room, a conversation under every lesson, the tools to remove a post or a member, and a digest on a Monday telling you what happened. Because the subscriptions live on your Stripe rather than ours, they would keep billing even if Bernard disappeared tomorrow, and you can export your members and your content whenever you like. That is deliberate. A membership you cannot take with you is not really yours.

And Bernard takes nothing from any of it. Not on the £200 plan, not on the £800 one, not ever.

What Bernard's courses do not do

This matters more than the price, so it goes in plain sight rather than in a footnote. If any of these is the thing you need, one of the platforms above is the better home and you should go there.

There are no quizzes, no marking and no certificates. There is no per-student progress tracking, so nobody sees a percentage-complete bar. Lessons are not released on a schedule, so there is no drip-feed and no cohort start date. There are no live classes or webinars. The community is one room plus the discussion under each lesson, so there are no private messages between members, no member profiles beyond a name and no separate topic areas. And there are no payment plans, instalments or course bundles at the checkout.

That is a real list, and Bernard would rather hand it to you now than let you find it out in month two.

Paste your current address and Bernard will measure up, free, and show you the new place before you decide anything.

Questions people ask

How much does an online course platform cost in 2026?: It depends entirely on whether the plan takes a cut of your sales. The cheap plans are cheap because they do: Teachable's Starter is $29 a month paid yearly and takes 7.5% of every sale; Podia's Mover is $42 a month paid yearly and takes 5%. The plans that take nothing from your sales cost far more up front: Teachable's Builder is $69 a month paid yearly, which is $828 for the year, and Podia's Shaker is $84 a month, $1,008 for the year. Figures checked on the platforms' own pricing pages on 29 July 2026.
Which course platforms take a percentage of your sales?: On the plans we checked on 29 July 2026: Teachable Starter takes 7.5%, Podia Mover 5%, Kajabi Basic adds 5% if you use your own payment provider rather than theirs, Circle's Professional plan 2%, Mighty Networks' Launch plan 2%, and Patreon and Substack both take 10% of what you earn. That is before the card processing fee, which everyone pays on top. Bernard takes nothing from your sales at any level.
Are course platform prices in pounds?: No. We read the pricing pages of Podia, Kajabi, Teachable, Circle, Mighty Networks and Patreon on 29 July 2026, and every one of them quotes US dollars. None publishes a pound price. A UK buyer pays whatever the rate is on the day, plus whatever the card adds for the conversion, so the bill moves about from month to month.
Do course platforms add VAT for a UK buyer?: None of the pricing pages we read says. That is worth knowing before you compare figures, because it is the difference between the price on the page and the price on the invoice. Ask, or check your first invoice. Bernard is not VAT-registered, so his price is the number you pay, with nothing added at the checkout.
Can Bernard host an online course?: Yes, and the honest limits are worth reading first. Bernard does lessons, video with automatic transcripts and captions, a free preview lesson, paid or free or invitation-only enrolment, a members area with discussion, and recurring memberships charged on your own Stripe account. He does not do quizzes, marking, certificates, per-student progress tracking, staged release, live classes, or payment plans. Courses are a £600 addition to the £200 yearly plan, so £800 a year for a website with a course on it.