Skool Will Go Find You Members. Then It Keeps 30% of Everything They Pay, For as Long as They Stay.

Skool's pricing page shows you two numbers. Its help center shows a third one, and the third one is the only one that never stops.

The two public numbers are simple enough. Skool costs $9 a month on Hobby and $99 a month on Pro, with a transaction fee on every member payment: 10% on Hobby and 2.9% on Pro, rising to 3.9% on any single charge above $900. Both plans also carry a flat $0.30 per transaction.

Then there's Growth Boost.

Skool's Payments FAQ describes it this way: your group gets shown at the top of search results for keywords your ideal customers are searching for, visibility goes up, and Skool runs off-site ads to promote your community. Skool fronts the cost. You "only pay a 30% commission if Skool gets you a customer."

That sounds like a deal. Free ads, pay only on results. And for a lot of owners it genuinely is.

But two sentences further down the same page, the deal changes shape. "Growth Boost is default ON." It can be switched off at any time from Settings > Discovery. And the cut "applies to recurring charges, as long as the member's subscription is active."

Not the first payment. Every payment. Forever.

The difference between a finder's fee and a tenancy

This is the part that reframes the whole thing. A 30% finder's fee on a new member is a customer acquisition cost. A 30% cut of every renewal is a permanent revenue share on a slice of your membership base, and it compounds in the wrong direction: the better your retention, the more total commission you pay on that member.

The math at three common price points, using Skool's published rates. Skool deducts the commission and the transaction fee from the gross charge.

At $10 a month. Skool's own example: if it brings you a paid customer and your group price is $10, it deducts $3 plus fees depending on your plan. On Hobby that's another $1.30. You net $5.70 on a $10 member. The platform takes 43%.

At $49 a month on Pro. The commission is $14.70. The transaction fee is $1.72. You keep $32.58, about two-thirds. Over a member who stays a year, Skool collects $176.40 in Growth Boost commission on top of your $99 monthly plan fee.

At $99 a month on Pro. A member who joins through Discovery on a $99 community leaves you roughly $66 a month, for as long as they stay. Twelve months of that member sends $356.40 to Skool in commission alone.

None of those are outrageous numbers for paid acquisition you didn't have to run, manage or fund. They are outrageous numbers if you didn't know they were happening.

There is also a slider, and it goes to 70

The default rate is 30%. It is not a fixed rate.

Since late August 2026, owners can raise the Growth Boost rate in stages up to 70%, and according to Skool a higher rate brings more traffic because it feeds the platform's efficiency score. Members who have already joined keep the rate they came in at.

That is a bidding system. You are buying distribution inside Skool's directory by offering a bigger share of lifetime member revenue than the community ranked next to you.

Skool's own changelog traces the arc: "Growth Boost is LIVE!" in June 2026 with a 30% commission described "like an affiliate," a bidding system in late August, and a September reset Skool framed as a new structure that lets it scale further.

At the top of the slider the economics get loud. One owner who turned the slider to 70% worked it out on a $27 membership: $18.90 a month goes to Skool, for as long as the member keeps paying.

Skool says the quiet part itself

Here is the detail that should settle the argument for anyone selling above a few hundred dollars. Skool describes Growth Boost as "not recommended for high ticket sales." The math is hard to justify when 30% comes off a $1,000 program.

The platform is not hiding this. It is just not putting it where you look. One pricing analysis found that four of the five written guides ranking on page one of Google for Skool pricing don't mention Growth Boost at all, and that Skool's own help docs are inconsistent about whether it's on by default. The Discovery FAQ explains what happens "upon toggling ON" and notes you pay nothing for customers you bring yourself, without saying who flipped the switch.

When leaving it on is the correct decision

Turning it off is not automatically the smart move, and the people loudest about the 30% usually skip this part.

Switching Growth Boost off removes the cut, but your community then disappears from Discovery. Discovery is arguably the strongest reason to pick Skool over Kajabi or Circle in the first place: new communities get surfaced to Skool's existing user base, and that compounding organic distribution isn't something you can buy on a Kajabi plan.

So the decision splits cleanly:

Leave it on if you're priced low, you have no list, no audience and no ad budget, and your alternative to Skool's traffic is no traffic. A 30% commission on members you would never have acquired is a 30% commission on revenue that didn't exist. The advice from people who study the Discovery algorithm is to keep it on unless you sell high-ticket, and check the Growth tab monthly to see what Skool's network is actually delivering.

Turn it off if you're bringing your own traffic from YouTube, a newsletter or paid ads, and especially if your price point is high. If you already have an audience, switching it off keeps the 30% in your pocket.

One more thing worth knowing before you route around the platform entirely: Skool lists "payments off-platform" among its Discovery ranking penalties, alongside bots, spam, low-quality artwork, bad customer support and an inactive owner.

The 20-second check

Settings. Discovery. Look at the toggle. Then look at the rate next to it, because the default and the rate you're actually bidding are not necessarily the same number anymore.

The cleanest way to audit it: take the revenue from members Skool brought you, multiply by your Growth Boost rate, and put that figure next to your monthly plan fee. If you've never run that calculation, you don't currently know what your platform costs.