Every Big Course Platform Raised Prices This Year. Here's What They Now Take From Every Sale You Make.

The hosting bill used to be the boring line in a course business. In eight months it stopped being boring.

Kajabi raised prices across every plan effective January 13, 2026. It was the company's first increase in roughly a decade, and existing customers saw the new rate on their first billing date on or after January 13th. Customers who declined to migrate stayed on their legacy plan, which transitioned to the new price point anyway — old limits, new price. Ruzuku, a competing platform that discloses the conflict, puts the increase at roughly 20-25% across every plan, with the $89 Kickstarter tier eliminated, Basic's contact limit cut from 10,000 to 2,500, and no grandfathered pricing.

Then Thinkific moved. Starting August 13, 2026, prices rose approximately 10% on Basic, Start, Grow, Legacy Pro and Fixed Growth — the company's first subscription increase since 2022. Existing customers pay the new price at their next renewal on or after that date.

Teachable didn't raise list prices this year. It doesn't need to. Its entry tier does the work.

The percentage nobody budgets for

Teachable's Starter plan is $29/month on annual billing and charges a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale, with a 100-student cap and no custom domain. Builder at $69/month annual drops the platform fee to 0%.

Thinkific's number is quieter. As of March 2026, it applies an additional 0.7% processing surcharge on subscription and payment-plan transactions on top of the standard Stripe rate, pushing the real effective rate on recurring revenue to around 3.6%.

And free is over everywhere. Thinkific discontinued its permanent free plan and now offers a 30-day trial. Teachable has no free plan either — paid plans come with a 7-day trial.

The math at three revenue levels

Assume US cards, the platform's native processor, annual billing, and a $200 average order at standard processing of 2.9% + $0.30.

At $3,000/month: Teachable Starter runs about $346 all-in ($29 plan, $225 platform fee, $92 processing). Builder runs about $161. That's $185 a month, or roughly $2,220 a year, to stay on the cheaper plan. AdvLaunch's read: at $3,000/month the Starter fee siphons $225/month, and Builder is cheaper from $530/month in revenue onward. Thinkific Basic at its new $40 lands near $132. Kajabi Basic at $143 annually lands near $235 — with email, funnels and checkout included.

At $10,000/month: Starter would cost about $1,084 against Builder's $374. Except Starter's 100-student cap makes the comparison academic. You get evicted from the bad plan by growth.

At $30,000/month: platform percentages stop mattering and processing dominates. Teachable Growth at $139 annual sits near $1,054. Thinkific Grow at $164 annual sits near $1,079. Kajabi Pro at $399 annual sits near $1,254, partly offset by its lower 2.7% + $0.30 processing rate on that tier.

The two traps

Bringing your own Stripe is now a billable choice. Thinkific adds 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow if you process through Stripe or PayPal directly. Kajabi's new plans do the same: 2% Basic, 1% Growth, 0.5% Pro where Kajabi Payments is available — and it does not apply if you stay on a legacy plan.

The second trap is feature gating on memberships. Thinkific includes them on Start at $74/month annual; Teachable pushes you to Growth at $139/month annual for the same capability, a $780/year gap before a dollar of recurring revenue moves.

One action item, if you're on Thinkific monthly: switching from monthly to annual billing before August 13, 2026 converted your rate at the old annual price, with new pricing deferred to your 2027 renewal. That window has closed. The next one won't be announced with much notice.