Skool Pricing in 2026 - What You Actually Pay After Fees.
Skool is $9 or $99 a month, but the transaction fee changes everything. The real 2026 math on Hobby vs Pro, break-even revenue, and a $399 pay-once alternative.
Andrew Lee Jenkins · 2026-07-02 · 8 min read · Updated 2026-09-06
I sell software for a living, and even I had to read Skool's fee page twice. The plan prices are simple. The fee structure is where the real bill lives, and it is the part most pricing posts skim past. Here is the whole thing with actual math.
The 30-second answer.
Skool plans, verified September 6, 2026
Plan
Monthly price
Transaction fee
Plan cost per year
Hobby
$9
10% of member payments
$108
Pro
$99 ($82.50/mo billed annually)
2.9% all-in
$990 to $1,188
Source is skool.com/pricing. The Pro fee is all-in, meaning it includes card processing. Hobby's 10% is the number to stare at.
Prices verified September 6, 2026. Re-check skool.com/pricing before you decide, vendor pricing drifts.
Make it something yours.
Explore Seedly's software and the guides to help you get started.
If your community is free, Skool costs $9 or $99 a month and you can stop reading this section. The moment members pay you, the percentage becomes the real price. Here is the monthly fee bill at three revenue levels.
Monthly fees by revenue (plan price not included)
Member revenue/mo
Hobby fee (10%)
Pro fee (2.9%)
$1,000
$100
$29
$5,000
$500
$145
$20,000
$2,000
$580
Our arithmetic from the verified fee schedule. At $5,000 a month, Hobby's fee is $500 a month riding on a $9 plan.
Hobby's 10% cut is the most expensive line on this whole comparison, and it hides in plain sight. A $9 badge riding on a 10% toll is very good pricing design... for Skool.
Where Hobby vs Pro breaks even.
Hobby charges $9 plus 10%. Pro charges $99 plus 2.9%. Set those equal and the crossover lands around $1,270 a month of member revenue on monthly billing, or around $1,040 if you pay Pro annually. Call it roughly $1,000 to $1,300, our calculation from the verified fee schedules. If you earn more than that, Pro is already the cheaper plan. Which means the cheap-looking plan is for hobbyists, exactly as labeled, and everyone else is a $99-a-month customer paying 2.9% of everything, forever.
What $99 a month does not buy.
No white-label. Your community lives at a skool.com/yourbrand subpath, with Skool branding throughout.
No public API. Automation means Zapier triggers, not real integration.
Courses without quizzes or certificates, and progress tracking that stops at a percent-complete bar.
No content export. You can download a members CSV, and that is the entire exit door. Posts, comments, and courses stay behind. More in the export comparison.
The refund and billing record.
Skool's Trustpilot rating sits at 1.9 out of 5 on an unclaimed profile, per a competitor teardown from April 2026. The recurring complaint patterns are billing-shaped. Users report being charged months after cancelling a trial, and the refund stance reported by reviewers amounts to “we don't do refunds.” I am paraphrasing reviews here, not court records, so weigh accordingly. But when the complaints cluster this tightly around billing, it belongs in a pricing post.
What Skool is genuinely good at.
Honesty section, and I mean it. Skool's gamification loop is the best in the category, full stop. The UX is deliberately simple in a way that non-technical creators love. Hosting, uptime, and security are their problem, not yours. And native livestreaming shipped around October 2025, closing an old gap. If you want zero setup and you are fine renting, Skool is a polished landlord, and you should weigh that honestly against everything above.
The pay-once alternative.
Seedly Communities is $399 once. Not per month, not per year. The transaction fee is 0% because members pay through your own Stripe account, so there is no path for a platform cut to exist. Members are unlimited, and you get the full source code with a commercial license. You do take on your own hosting, which is the honest trade covered in the five-year cost post.
Five years, Skool Pro vs owning
Skool Pro plan only, $99 x 60 months$5,940 + 2.9% of everything
Seedly Communities one payment$399 + your hosting
Skool Pro's cumulative bill passes $399 in month five, before the fee line.
Yes. Hobby takes 10% of member payments and Pro takes 2.9%, both all-in with card processing. Verified against skool.com/pricing on September 6, 2026.
You can export a members CSV with emails, including on paid groups. There is no export path for posts, comments, history, or course content, and no public API. Third parties sell scrapers precisely because no sanctioned route exists.
No. Skool has never sold one. The search demand for a lifetime deal is real though, and it is exactly why pay-once platforms exist. Here is the five-year math on what that difference is worth.
