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Skool bundles a discussion feed, a course player, and payments into one product, and it prices that bundle as a flat monthly fee plus a cut of whatever you charge your members. There is no free plan. Here is what Skool's pricing page says as of September 2026, what you actually get for it, and what it looks like in real numbers if you are running a paid group.
What Skool charges
As of September 2026, Skool's pricing page lists two plans:
- Hobby: $9/month, with a 10% transaction fee on payments you collect through Skool.
- Pro: $99/month, with a 2.9% transaction fee on payments you collect through Skool.
The page also advertises a 2 months free trial before either plan starts billing.
The two plans share the same feature set. The only stated difference between them is the transaction fee percentage, not what you can build or how many members you can have. That is unusual: most platforms tier by member count or feature access, and Skool ties its lower tier to a flat price and its upper tier to a much lower cut of revenue.
Always check the live pricing page before you commit. Fee structures on community platforms change, and this is the kind of number that directly affects your margin.
What's included
Per Skool's pricing page, both Hobby and Pro include:
- Unlimited members
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited videos
- Unlimited live calls
- A custom URL
- An affiliate program
That covers the core of what most course creators and coaches need to run a paid community: a feed for discussion, a place to host video lessons, live calls, and a way to charge members directly through the platform without stitching together a separate payment processor and course host.
What's not included
Skool's pricing page does not list per-member pricing, storage limits, or a lower-cost tier below Hobby. There is no free plan to run a community on indefinitely. If you want to test the format without paying, the 2 months free trial is the only route, and it still requires setting up billing before you commit to either plan.
Beyond what the pricing page states, some things worth checking directly with Skool before you build on it, since they are not part of the plan comparison: how payouts and refunds are handled, whether there is a payment processor fee on top of Skool's own transaction fee, and any limits on custom branding or domain use. Do not take a number on this for something the pricing page does not confirm.
It is also worth noting what Skool is not built to do. It is a community-and-course suite, not a general-purpose discussion forum. There is no mention on the pricing page of things like public search indexing for your content, per-board access controls, or a plugin ecosystem. If your priority is building a searchable, permanent archive of discussion that people can find through Google years later, that is a different product shape than what Skool is selling.
Weighing the flat fee against the transaction fee
The two-plan structure means your decision is really about how much revenue you expect to move through the platform, not about which plan has more features, since the feature list is identical. That is a simpler decision than most SaaS pricing pages force on you, but it also means you cannot buy your way into more features. Storage, live calls, courses, and members are unlimited on both plans according to the pricing page, so the only lever is the fee percentage.
If you are pre-revenue, or testing whether a paid community will work at all, the 2 months free trial is the way to find out before either fee structure applies to you.
How the math works for a creator selling a paid group
The transaction fee is the part that scales with your revenue, so it is worth running the numbers before you pick a plan.
Say you sell memberships at $50/month and have 100 paying members. That is $5,000/month in revenue collected through Skool.
On Hobby ($9/month, 10% fee):
- Flat fee: $9
- Transaction fee: 10% of $5,000 = $500
- Total cost: $509/month
- You keep: $4,491
On Pro ($99/month, 2.9% fee):
- Flat fee: $99
- Transaction fee: 2.9% of $5,000 = $145
- Total cost: $244/month
- You keep: $4,756
At $5,000/month in revenue, Pro costs less overall despite the higher flat fee, because the percentage difference outweighs it. The crossover point, where the two plans cost the same, is where the extra $90/month in flat fee equals the fee-percentage gap (7.1 percentage points) applied to revenue: roughly $1,268/month in revenue. Below that, Hobby is cheaper. Above it, Pro is cheaper, and the gap grows the more you sell.
If you charge less per member, or your revenue is under a few hundred dollars a month, Hobby's lower flat fee wins. If you are running a real paid business through Skool, the numbers point toward Pro fairly quickly. Run this with your own price point and member count, since a different membership price changes the crossover.
Who Skool is a good fit for
Skool fits creators and coaches who want the course, community, and billing in one place and are willing to pay Skool's cut in exchange for not stitching those pieces together themselves. If you already have a paid offer and want to launch quickly without wiring up a separate payment processor, course host, and forum, that convenience is real.
It fits less well if you do not need payments or a course player at all, if you want a free tier to grow an audience before you monetize, or if you want your community's content to be findable through search engines the way a public forum is. Skool is not built as a public, search-indexed space, and the pricing model assumes you are already charging for access.
It is also worth thinking about the two plans as a growth path rather than a one-time choice. A creator just starting out, with a handful of paying members and no certainty the offer will stick, has little to lose on Hobby's lower flat fee. Once revenue climbs past the crossover point worked out below, moving to Pro is a straightforward upgrade with no feature migration involved, since both plans include the same tools.
Cheaper and free alternatives
If you do not need the course player or built-in payments, or you want a free tier while you figure out whether a paid community is worth building, a few alternatives cost less or nothing:
Forumera has a free plan: unlimited members, threads and posts, built-in moderation tools, 6 UI languages, 10 themes, no ads. Free forums auto-archive after 90 days of inactivity. Pro is $19/month for a custom domain, no auto-archiving, and priority support. Forumera does not have a course player or built-in payments, so it is not a drop-in replacement for Skool if selling paid access through the platform itself is the point. It is a fit if what you actually need is a searchable, organized discussion space, and you plan to sell courses or memberships elsewhere.
Circle is a closer match to Skool: feed, courses, events, and payments in tiered plans by features and member count, with a trial instead of a free plan.
Mighty Networks is also a community-plus-courses suite with tiered plans, aimed at a similar audience to Skool.
If your community does not need payments or courses at all, it is worth asking whether you need a Skool-style suite in the first place. A plain forum, at a fraction of the cost, is often enough for discussion, moderation, and search visibility. See how Forumera compares to Circle and Mighty Networks if you are weighing that tradeoff.
Frequently asked
Does Skool have a free plan?
No. Skool offers a 2 months free trial per its pricing page, but there is no free tier to run a community on after that. Both plans, Hobby and Pro, are paid.
What is Skool's transaction fee?
As of September 2026, Skool's pricing page lists a 10% transaction fee on the $9/month Hobby plan and a 2.9% transaction fee on the $99/month Pro plan, applied to payments you collect through the platform.
Is Skool worth it compared to a plain forum?
That depends on whether you need the course player and built-in payments. If you do, Skool bundles them in a way a plain forum does not. If you only need discussion, moderation, and search visibility, a forum like Forumera costs less and has a free plan to start on.
What's a cheaper alternative to Skool?
If you do not need built-in payments or courses, Forumera's free plan or $19/month Pro plan covers the discussion side. If you want a similar all-in-one suite at a different price point, compare Circle and Mighty Networks, both linked above.
Ready to see if a plain forum covers what you need without Skool's transaction fee? Create your forum and try it free.