A Teachable alternative is worth moving to when you are paying a percentage of every sale for a course player. Teachable's Starter plan costs $39/mo and takes 7.5% of every paid sale, and there is no free plan to fall back to since the free tier was discontinued in June 2025. The part most pages leave out is that Teachable's own higher tiers take 0% platform fee, so the first alternative worth pricing is the plan above the one you are on.
How much does Teachable actually take?
On Starter, 7.5% of every paid sale, on top of the $39/mo you already pay. On Builder and above, 0% platform fee. Card processing is 2.9% + $0.30 US cards, 3.9% + $0.30 international on every tier, which is ordinary and is not what this decision turns on.
Verified July 2026 against teachable.com/pricing. Check it before you price anything: this is the number your margin depends on and the one most likely to have moved since.
Is the Starter plan actually cheaper?
Only below about $667 a month in sales, and this is the arithmetic worth doing before you pick a tier rather than after. The extra $50 a month that Builder costs buys out the 7.5% cut entirely.
Past that point the cheaper-looking plan is the expensive one, and it gets worse every month you grow, because one number moves with your sales and the other does not. That is the same reason the comparison below is worth making at all: a percentage is a bill that scales with your success.
What are the real alternatives, and what does each change?
They split into three groups, and picking the wrong group is how people end up migrating twice.
- The like-for-like course platform. Podia and Thinkific are the same shape as Teachable with different pricing, and both are honest about it. You keep your setup and the arithmetic changes. What does not change is that the course is still something people work through on their own.
- The all-in-one creator suite. Kajabi folds courses, email and funnels into one product, and costs considerably more than Teachable rather than less. A move you make to consolidate tools, not to save money.
- The community-first platform. This is where Drry sits, with Circle and Skool. The premise is different: the course is one thing your members get, alongside a feed they talk in, a library, audio and live sessions, all behind one login. Fewer course-authoring bells than Teachable, deliberately.
Is there a free Teachable alternative?
Yes. Drry is free to 100 members with no card, with unlimited courses and 0% of what your students pay you, so the only deduction is the ordinary card processing fee and the money lands in your own Stripe account rather than being forwarded to you.
The thing worth checking on any free alternative is what happens once it works, because the common arrangement in this category is that the tier is free and a percentage of what you earn is the price. Above the free plan Creator is $29 a month flat and still takes 0%, so growing changes your monthly bill and never your cut.
What do you give up by leaving?
Teachable's course authoring is mature, and the compliance machinery around selling courses internationally, which it handles as merchant of record on some arrangements, is genuinely work you would otherwise do yourself. If selling into many tax jurisdictions is your situation, price that properly before moving.
And budget the rebuild: lesson trees do not transfer between platforms, so the videos move and the structure is retyped. See what Teachable costs in detail for the pricing side, Teachable against Thinkific for the closest like-for-like, and Drry against Teachable for the feature-by-feature version.
Questions coaches ask
Is there a free alternative to Teachable?
Yes. Drry is free to 100 members with no card, carries unlimited courses, and takes 0% of what your students pay you, so the only deduction is the ordinary card processing fee and the money lands in your own Stripe account. Teachable itself has no free plan: the free tier was discontinued in June 2025 and what remains is a 7-day trial. Systeme.io also runs a free tier if a funnel is what you are after.
How much does Teachable take from each sale?
On the Starter plan, 7.5% of every paid sale, on top of the $39/mo you already pay. On Builder and above it is 0% platform fee. Card processing is 2.9% + $0.30 US cards, 3.9% + $0.30 international on every tier and is ordinary. Verified July 2026 against teachable.com/pricing.
Is Teachable's Starter plan actually cheaper?
Only below about $667 a month in sales. Starter costs $39/mo plus 7.5% of every paid sale; Builder costs $89/mo and takes 0% platform fee. The extra $50 a month buys out a 7.5% cut, so past that point the cheaper-looking plan is the expensive one. It is worth doing this arithmetic before choosing, because the cut grows with you and the price does not.
What is the best Teachable alternative?
It depends on what the percentage is buying you. If you only want the cut gone, Podia and Thinkific are the closest like-for-like course platforms. If your students would be better served talking to each other than watching alone, a platform with a real community is the better move, which is where Drry sits. If you sell coaching rather than courses, most of a course platform is machinery you are not using.
Can I move my courses off Teachable?
Yes, and it is more manual than any vendor admits. You export the student list and download your own video files, then rebuild the course structure wherever you land, because lesson trees do not transfer between platforms. What does move cleanly is the commercial part: your domain and, if you were using your own Stripe account, the payment relationship with your students.
Did Teachable get more expensive?
Its free tier was discontinued in June 2025, so the entry point moved from nothing to $39/mo with 7.5% of every paid sale on top. That is the change most people mean, and it is the reason a lot of the current pages about leaving were written. Check the current figures yourself before deciding: verified July 2026 here, and pricing pages move.