Skool Pricing and Review (2026): Hobby vs Pro, Fees, and Is It Worth It?

Skool pricing at a glance

Skool has two plans with the same core features. Hobby costs $9 a month plus 10% + 30¢ on every sale. Pro costs $99 a month plus 2.9% + 30¢ per sale, rising to 3.9% + 30¢ on transactions above $900. Paying yearly gets you two months free: $90 a year for Hobby and $990 for Pro. Both plans start with a 14-day free trial. Hobby is cheaper until your sales pass about $1,270 a month on monthly billing, or about $1,060 a month on yearly billing. Above that, Pro costs less.

These fees include card processing. Skool runs every payment through its own merchant account, so there is no separate Stripe bill. At $9 a month, Hobby is the obvious place to test whether a community will earn anything. Once it does, the 10% fee grows with every sale while the plan price stays fixed, so the fee decides which plan costs less.

The 14-day free trial doesn't give you much time to build a community, add courses and bring in members before you decide whether the platform is right for you. You also have to enter a card when you sign up. If you don't cancel before the trial ends, Skool starts billing you automatically, and every plan renews until you cancel.

What Skool actually costs at three revenue levels

The table below assumes an average sale of $100, so $1,000 a month is 10 sales, $5,000 is 50 sales and $20,000 is 200 sales. Each total is the plan price plus the percentage fee plus 30¢ per sale.

The 30¢ per sale is the same on both plans, so it cancels out. What's left is a $90 difference in plan price against a 7.1-point difference in fee rate. Divide one by the other and Pro becomes the cheaper plan at about $1,268 a month in sales. At $1,300 a month, Hobby costs $142.90 ($9 plan + $130 percentage fee + $3.90 per-sale fees) and Pro costs $140.60 ($99 plan + $37.70 percentage fee + $3.90 per-sale fees). On yearly billing the plan gap is $75 a month, so the switch point drops to about $1,056.

Sales above $900 on Pro

Pro's rate goes up by a full point on any single transaction above $900. On an $899 sale, Skool charges 2.9% ($26.07) plus 30¢, or $26.37. On a $910 sale the rate is 3.9% ($35.49) plus 30¢, or $35.79. That's $9.42 more in fees on a sale that's only $11 higher.

The higher rate adds up for high-ticket offers. Five $1,000 sales make $5,000 a month, the same revenue as the middle rows above. On Pro they cost $295.50 on monthly billing ($99 plan + $195 at 3.9% + $1.50 per-sale fees), against $259 for fifty $100 sales. On Hobby the same five sales cost $510.50, so Pro is still far cheaper. If a program's price sits between $900 and $999, pricing it at $899 keeps it on the lower rate.

Skool's help center says its rates are cheaper than running payments through Stripe yourself, because Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards and 0.5% for subscriptions. Skool doesn't add those charges on either plan.

Hidden costs and add-ons

Skool has costs beyond the plan price and the fee on each sale. The biggest is the cut Skool takes on members it finds for you.

Growth Boost is on by default. With it on, Skool lists your community in Discovery and the recommended groups sidebar and runs off-site ads for it. Skool pays for the ads, but it takes 30% of the first payment and every recurring payment from each member who joins through those channels. On a $10 membership, Skool deducts $3 plus fees for as long as that member stays subscribed. Members you bring in yourself pay only the normal fees. You can switch Growth Boost off at any time under Settings > Discovery.

On Pro, you can also pay members a commission for referring friends and colleagues to your community. You set the commission and can leave referrals off, but if you plan to grow through them, budget for the payouts.

The original Skool Games, a competition among creators to grow their communities, now runs inside Skoolers. Skoolers is a free private community for Skool owners, with training, meetups and real-time leaderboards that rank communities by earnings.

If you want to run more than one Skool community, you pay a separate subscription for each group. Two Hobby communities cost $18 a month before transaction fees when paid monthly, and three cost $27. Two Pro communities cost $198 a month, and three cost $297. One Hobby community and one Pro community cost $108 a month, or $1,296 a year on monthly billing.

Refunds cost you the fee. Skool lets you refund members at your discretion, but its transaction fees are non-refundable, so a refunded $100 sale on Hobby still costs you $10.30. Skool also issues a reverse invoice for each payout, which records your earnings and deductions.

Skool is the merchant of record, so it collects and pays EU VAT and US sales tax for you. VAT is added on top of your price: a $100 membership sold to a member in Germany is charged at $119. Every price on Skool is set in US dollars, and a single charge can be up to $100,000.

To get paid, you connect a bank account through Stripe Express. Skool pays out every Wednesday. US deposits usually land in 1 to 3 business days and international ones in 3 to 5, and your first payout can take up to 14 days while Skool runs its checks. Outside the US, payouts settle in your local currency with no conversion fee.

The Pro plan also includes a Zapier integration. Skool doesn't charge for it, but you may need a paid Zapier plan, and any CRM or email tool you connect has its own price.

What you get for the money

Skool doesn't limit its core features on either plan. Both include unlimited members, courses, videos and live calls, so the cheaper Hobby plan isn't a cut-down version.

Gamification is built in. Members earn a point each time someone likes their post or comment. As points add up, they move through levels and up the community leaderboard, where they're ranked against other members.

Owners can use levels to unlock courses, so a course might open only to members who reach level 4. Members who want that course have to post and comment until they get there.

Live calls and events run inside Skool. Skool Call hosts the call in the community itself, and the calendar lets you schedule events that members can RSVP to, so you don't need a separate Zoom subscription for group calls.

Tax is handled for you, even on the cheaper plan. Because Skool is the merchant of record, it calculates, collects and pays US sales tax and EU VAT, so you don't register for VAT or file sales tax returns yourself. Members can also use Skool's apps for iOS and Android on either plan.

Where it falls short

• The fees eat into revenue. Hobby's 10% + 30¢ takes a large cut of every sale. On Pro, the extra point on transactions above $900 makes high-ticket memberships and courses more expensive to sell.
• Marketing and sales tools are limited. Zapier works only on Pro, so connecting a CRM or email tool on Hobby isn't an option. Anything Skool doesn't do, you pay a third-party tool for.
• Getting discovered takes time. Discovery ranks groups by activity, so a new community has to build engagement on its own before Skool shows it to more people. If you're choosing between Skool and Circle instead, Skool vs Circle compares their fees at the same three revenue levels.
• Branding is limited. The custom URL is a skool.com address, and Skool's help center has no article on connecting your own domain or publishing a branded app. Members see Skool's name in the address bar and in the app store.
• Leaving takes work. If you cancel, Skool keeps your community saved as it is and you can reactivate it later. Its help center documents no export for posts or courses, so plan to move content by hand if you switch platforms.

Who Skool is for, and who should skip it

Skool is for coaches and course creators who want to sell their expertise through a community, where member engagement is what grows the business. It also suits creators starting without an audience who want Discovery to send them members, as long as they accept the 30% cut on each member it brings.

As Redditor davidonthebeach put it in December 2025: "If you're thinking about launching a Skool, or you launched and it's not growing, my honest advice: Just show up. Every day. For 40 days straight. Reply to every comment. Solve every problem. Make every member feel like they matter."

Skip Skool if:

• You mainly sell high-ticket courses, coaching, cohorts or digital products. The 3.9% rate on Pro sales above $900, and Growth Boost's 30% cut on members Skool brings you, can cut into your margins.
• You want one platform for your website, blog, community and courses. Skool has no website builder, blog or email marketing, so you would add other tools for those. Skool vs Kajabi compares it with a platform that includes them.
• A recognizable brand is central to your business. Skool doesn't document a way to use your own domain, and you can't change much of the look.

Is Skool worth it in 2026?

Skool is worth it if your members pay mainly to talk to each other and you want discussion and courses in one simple place. Start on Hobby while you test the idea, then move to Pro once you're selling more than about $1,270 a month. It isn't worth it if you sell high-ticket programs, need your own brand and domain, or want marketing tools built in. For those creators the fees and limits outweigh the fast setup.

How Heartbeat compares

Skool puts everything in one feed, with courses in a tab beside it. Heartbeat gives a community more than one place to talk: members talk in thread, chat and voice channels, meet at events held in the community or on Zoom, and take courses together, including cohort courses where each cohort gets its own dates and its own member group.

Badges and gamification, a custom domain and a member app for iOS and Android come with every plan, and on Scale the app can be your own branded app in the App Store and Google Play. Checkout handles monthly and annual subscriptions, one-time payments and installment plans. There's a 14-day free trial, and no card is needed to start.

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