We make Drry, a Thinkific competitor, so read this with that in mind. Thinkific costs $54, $109 or $219 a month, or about a quarter less on each tier if you pay annually ($40, $82, $164), with a custom-priced Plus tier above that. There is no free plan, only a 30-day trial. And Thinkific takes no cut of its own from your sales, as long as you use their payment processor rather than yours. Those are the four sentences most pages about Thinkific pricing stop at, and the two facts that actually decide it are further down.
Everything below is our honest read of their published page as it stands, and we will tell you plainly where our own product enters the picture (one section, clearly labeled, near the end).
The four plans, and what each price buys
The ladder roughly doubles at each step, which is unusual, and it means the gap between tiers is worth reading carefully rather than assuming it is more of the same:
- Basic, $54 a month ($40 annually): unlimited courses, one community, 10,000 current students, 100 GB a month of video bandwidth, five digital downloads, quizzes, a custom domain, one administrator, email and chat support.
- Start, $109 a month ($82 annually): everything in Basic, plus unlimited digital downloads, 200 GB a month of bandwidth, live cohorts and coaching sessions, completion certificates and assignments, memberships and subscriptions, an HTML/CSS editor, and a second administrator.
- Grow, $219 a month ($164 annually): everything in Start, plus removal of Thinkific's own branding, three communities, 400 GB a month of bandwidth, group and B2B orders, invoicing, API access and webhooks, phone support, and six administrators.
- Plus, custom: the enterprise tier, with no published price. Single sign-on, SCORM and learning paths, CRM integrations, custom roles, custom analytics, and seats past10,000.
The fact buried in the feature list: memberships start at $109
"Memberships and subscriptions" is a line item on Start. It is not on Basic. That single placement changes the answer to "what does Thinkific cost" for anybody building a recurring business rather than selling a course once, and it is the reason a price comparison that quotes $54 can be accurate and useless at the same time.
Read the tier boundary as a list of things a growing course business discovers it needs, all of which sit on the same side of it: assignments, completion certificates, live cohort sessions, unlimited digital downloads, and recurring billing. Quizzes are on Basic, which is worth knowing because it is the one assessment tool that does not push you up a tier. If your plan is a paid community, a cohort, or anything that charges monthly, your Thinkific quote is $109 a month from the first day, and the $54 tier is a course storefront you were never going to stay on.
The fee story is the best in the category, with a condition
This part is genuinely to Thinkific's credit, and we will not pretend otherwise. Their page says that customers processing on Thinkific Payments will not incur a third-party payment gateway fee, and that their own processing runs at 2.9%, in line with Stripe or PayPal. Card processing is a cost every platform's processor charges, so what that describes is a platform margin of zero. Against a 10% revenue share, or a tier that only drops its fee once you pay for the expensive plan, it is a better deal than most of the market offers.
The condition is what the fee section says next: using Stripe or PayPal instead means an additional third-party payment gateway fee applies, and it varies per plan type. Their pricing page states that the fee exists without publishing the rates, which live in their help centre, and a third sentence adds that fees for the payment methods TCommerce enables by default vary too, offering Apple Pay and Google Pay as its examples without naming a rate for either. Three fee statements, and exactly one number across all three.
So the honest summary is not "Thinkific is 0%" and not "Thinkific charges a fee". It is that the zero is real and it is priced in ownership: the cheap path is the one where the payment relationship, the processor, and the payout schedule are theirs. If that is a trade you are happy with, it is a good trade. If you want your own merchant account and your own Stripe dashboard, you are on the path whose rate their pricing page does not name, and you should go and read the per-plan figures before you commit rather than guessing at them.
Bandwidth is metered, and that is unusual here
The plans carry 100, 200 and 400 GB of video bandwidth a month. Almost nothing else in this category meters delivery, and it is worth understanding what it ties your bill to: not how much video you store, but how much of it your students watch. A single popular course with long lessons consumes the allowance faster than a large library nobody has opened yet.
Their pricing page publishes the allowance and does not say what happens when you pass it, so treat this as a question to ask before you migrate a video-heavy library rather than as a number we can interpret for you. Estimate honestly: hours watched a month, times your bitrate, is the calculation, and it is the one most people discover after the fact.
Who Thinkific is genuinely right for
- Large audiences on one course. 10,000current students on the $54 tier is a lot of headroom, and if you are selling a single course to a big list, Basic is a fair price with no cut on top.
- Anyone happy to use their processor. The 0% is not marketing, it is the arrangement, and it is worth real money against a percentage platform.
- Structured teaching. Quizzes, assignments, certificates, SCORM and learning paths are a real course-delivery product rather than a video list, and if you are teaching a curriculum that matters more than the community around it, that is what you are buying.
And where it is the wrong shape: you want to validate at $0, you want your own payment account without an unnamed fee, or what you are actually building is a community that happens to contain courses rather than a course catalogue that happens to have a forum.
How a flat price compares (our pitch, disclosed)
This is the section where we sell you something, so weigh it accordingly. Drry is built on the other side of the trade Thinkific makes on fees: 0% of member payments on every plan, through your own Stripe account, with no version of the arrangement where the zero depends on us holding the payment relationship. Only Stripe's standard processing applies, and the customer, the card, and the billing history are yours.
- A genuinely free plan: 100 members, unlimited courses, a landing page and member email, no card and no 30-day clock. The thing Thinkific does not offer at any price.
- Recurring membership is not a tier you upgrade into. Charging monthly works on every plan, including the free one, which is the single largest difference between this page and Thinkific's: their answer to that requirement is $109 a month.
- Then flat $29 or $99 a month. Custom domain, unlimited landing pages and analytics arrive at $29, which is less than half of Thinkific's membership-capable tier, and the bill never grows because your revenue did.
And the honest limit, because the rest is worth nothing without it: we cap members, and Thinkific does not cap students anywhere near as tightly. Our largest plan carries 2,500members. If you are past that, or heading past it soon, Thinkific's 10,000 on its cheapest tier is a real advantage and you should take it. We are the better answer below that line, not above it.
If you want the feature-by-feature version, see Drry vs Thinkific, and if you are weighing the course platforms against each other rather than against us, Teachable vs Thinkific does that comparison directly. Our Teachable pricing guide reads the closest competitor's plans with the same disclosed honesty as this page.
Questions coaches ask
Does Thinkific have a free plan?
No. Thinkific's own pricing page answers this directly: there is no free plan, and what you get instead is a 30-day free trial of the paid product. The cheapest way to keep a Thinkific site running past that trial is Basic at $54 a month, or $40 a month if you pay for the year up front. If a $0 way to test the idea matters to you, that is a reason to look elsewhere rather than a detail.
Does Thinkific take a cut of my sales?
Not of its own, if you use their processor. Thinkific Payments charges 2.9% to process a card, which is ordinary processing rather than a platform cut, and their page states that customers on Thinkific Payments will not incur a third-party payment gateway fee. The condition is the interesting part: bring your own Stripe or PayPal instead and their page says an additional gateway fee applies and varies per plan type, without publishing the rates. So the 0% is real, and it is the price of letting Thinkific own the payment relationship.
Which Thinkific plan do I need to sell a membership?
Start, at $109 a month. This is the most decision-relevant fact on their pricing page and it sits inside a feature list: "Memberships and subscriptions" appears on Start, not on Basic. So if what you are building is a recurring community or membership rather than a one-off course, Thinkific's real entry price for you is $109 a month, not the $54 the page leads with. Assignments, completion certificates and live cohorts start on the same tier. Quizzes are the exception and ship on Basic, so an assessment-only course can genuinely stay on the cheaper plan.
Is Thinkific worth $54 a month?
For a one-off course sold to a large audience, it is a fair price: Basic carries unlimited courses, 10,000 current students and a custom domain, which is more headroom than most new course businesses will use. It is poor value if you need any of the things that start one tier up, because then you are really being quoted $109. And it is the wrong shape entirely if you want a free plan to validate with, or your own payment account at 0%.