With a Skool community, you earn what your members pay you, minus what Skool keeps. That's the whole formula, and it tells you very little until you put numbers in it: 30 members paying $19/month and 300 paying $49 are two completely different businesses.
That's why this article starts with a calculator. Enter how many paying members you have (or expect to have) and what you charge per month, and you'll see what you keep on each Skool plan. After that, we walk through how the math works, the ways Skool lets you charge, and above all, what makes those numbers go up or down.
One warning before we start: there's no “normal” number. Nobody can tell you how much you're going to make, and you should be wary of anyone who tries. What we can do is show you the math so you can run your own.
Skool's prices and fees were checked on its pricing page and help center on October 24, 2026.
Skool income calculator
Work out what you keep
Your members pay $950 a month.
| Hobby | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Skool keeps per month | $119 | $142 |
| You keep per month | $831 | $808 |
| You keep per year | $9,972 | $9,701 |
With these numbers, the Hobby plan leaves you more.
Paying Skool monthly, before taxes and without affiliate commissions or Growth Boost. Skool prices and fees as of October 24, 2026.
The calculator runs the same math you'll see further down, using Skool's prices with your plan billed month to month. It doesn't subtract taxes, what you pay your affiliates, or the Growth Boost fee: we cover all of that later.
The math, step by step
What you keep each month comes down to three numbers:
- What you charge: your paying members times your price. With 50 members at $19, that's $950 a month.
- What Skool keeps: your plan fee, a percentage of every payment, and a flat 30¢ per payment.
- What you keep: the first number minus the second.
Skool has two plans. On Hobby, you pay $9/month and Skool keeps 10% of every payment. On Pro, you pay $99/month and Skool keeps 2.9% (3.9% on payments of $900 or more). On both, add 30¢ per payment.
Here's the example of 50 members at $19:
| Hobby | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| What you charge | $950 | $950 |
| Plan fee | $9 | $99 |
| Skool's percentage | $95 | $27.55 |
| 30¢ per payment | $15 | $15 |
| You keep per month | $831 | $808.45 |
At that level of revenue, Hobby still leaves you more. Pro starts coming out ahead once your members pay you around $1,270 a month in total. The full details on both plans, annual billing, and the exact point where each one pays off are in our breakdown of Skool pricing.
Five ways to charge on Skool
Skool lets you charge in five different ways. Picking the right one matters as much as the price, because each one attracts a different kind of member.
Free
Nobody pays to join. You don't earn anything directly, but it's the easiest way to bring people together, and from there you can sell other things (a course, coaching, a product of your own). Plenty of paid communities started out free.
Monthly or annual subscription
The most common option: each member pays a fee every month or once a year. You can offer a seven-day free trial so people can join with no commitment. It's the option with the most predictable income, because every month you get paid again by everyone who stays.
Freemium
One community with two plans: a free one and a paid one. Everyone joins for free and, whenever they're ready, upgrades to the paid plan from inside the community to get whatever you've saved for it (the full courses, the calls, direct help from you). It lets people get to know you before they pay.
Tiers
Several paid plans in the same community, each with its own perks. Skool calls them Standard, Premium, and VIP. For example: the community and the courses on Standard, a weekly group call on Premium, and one-on-one sessions on VIP. That way each member pays for what they actually need.
One-time payment
A single payment to get in, with no recurring fee. It fits lifetime-access courses, cohorts that run for a few weeks, or seminars. On top of that, inside a free or subscription community, you can sell individual courses for a one-time payment.
You can combine these. A free community can sell individual courses; a subscription community can have tiers. If you're just starting out, one way to charge, clearly explained, usually works better than five at once.
Three examples, by the numbers
These are hypotheticals to show you how the math changes, not what a typical community makes. The figures come from the calculator, using whichever plan leaves more in each case.
A small community: 20 members at $19/month. It brings in $380. On Hobby, Skool keeps $53 and the owner keeps $327 a month, around $3,900 a year. On Pro, they'd keep $264: not worth it here.
A mid-size community: 100 members at $49/month. It brings in $4,900. On Pro, Skool keeps $271.10 and the owner keeps $4,628.90 a month. On Hobby, they'd keep $4,371: Pro saves them more than $250 a month.
A professional niche community: 30 members at $199/month. It brings in $5,970 with just 30 people. On Pro, Skool keeps $281.13 and the owner keeps $5,688.87 a month. Picture a small group of professionals paying for something very specific: direct access to someone with experience, feedback on their work, or connections in their industry.
The third example brings in more than the second with fewer than a third of the members. That's not a trick. On some topics, people will pay a lot for a small group that's run well, and on others, only a low price with lots of people works. Neither is better. It has to fit what you offer.
What actually moves your income
The calculator only has two boxes, but behind each one there are several things you can work on.
Your price
It's the first thing everyone thinks about and the easiest thing to change. Going from $19 to $29 won't make all your members leave, and each one leaves you $10 more a month. Cutting your price to attract more people rarely pays off on its own: you need a lot more members to earn the same amount, and each of them takes up the same amount of your time.
Before you set it, look at what similar communities charge and what you offer that they don't. And keep in mind how price increases work on Skool: if you raise your price, members who already pay keep theirs, and only the people who join afterward pay the new one. Raising it won't cost you the members you already have, but it won't increase what you collect from them either.
How many free members upgrade to paid
If you run a freemium community or sell courses inside a free one, your income depends on how many of your free members end up paying. For example, if 25 out of 500 free members move to the paid plan, you get paid by 25, not by 500.
That share goes up when the paid plan solves something the free one doesn't, and when it's obvious from the inside what you get by paying. A live call that only paid members can watch, or a course where free members only see the first lesson, usually works better than a “support me” pitch.
How many members stay each month
This one carries the most weight over time and gets the least attention. In a subscription community, people join every month and people leave every month. There's one formula worth keeping in your head:
Where your community levels off: new members per month ÷ the percentage who leave each month.
If 20 paying members join each month and 10% leave each month, your community will level off at around 200 paying members, no matter how much time goes by. If you get churn down to 5%, the same pace of new members takes you toward 400. In other words, getting half as many people to leave doubles your community without bringing in a single extra person.
And you don't see it right away. It shows up over the months. Here's how a community grows when it starts from zero and adds 15 new paying members every month, depending on how many leave:
| Paying members after | If 8% leave each month | If 4% leave each month |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months | 41 | 43 |
| 6 months | 74 | 81 |
| 12 months | 119 | 145 |
| 24 months | 162 | 234 |
| Where it levels off | about 190 | about 375 |
In the first few months there's barely any difference, which is why it's so easy to brush off. After two years, the community that loses fewer people has almost half again as many members, with exactly the same effort spent bringing them in.
That's why keeping members is worth as much as getting them. A community where something happens every week (calls, challenges, answers to people's questions) loses fewer members than one with nothing but a recorded course. We cover how to attract members and get them to stay in how to grow your Skool community.
Where your members come from
Every new member gets to you somehow, and some of those routes have a cost that doesn't show up in the calculator:
- The ones you bring in yourself (your social accounts, your email list, your videos): they only cost your plan's regular fee.
- The ones your affiliates bring in: on the Pro plan, your members can refer people in exchange for a percentage you choose. That percentage comes out of what you collect.
- The ones Skool brings in with Growth Boost: Skool advertises your community with its own budget and, in return, keeps 30% of what those members pay.
None of these is bad. A member who comes through an affiliate and leaves you 20% less is still a member who wouldn't have found you on their own. What matters is knowing where each one comes from, so your numbers don't surprise you.
From zero to your first dollars
If you're not charging anything yet, the calculator helps you set a goal. To reach it, these steps work better than hunting for the perfect price on day one:
- Pick a specific problem and who you solve it for. “Guitar for adults starting from scratch” is easier to understand than “music,” and easier to pay for. The clearer it is who your community is for, the easier it is for someone to think “this is for me.”
- Charge early, even if it's not much. Ten people who pay tell you more than a hundred who join for free: they confirm that what you offer is worth money, and they push you to take good care of them.
- Take the fear out of paying. The seven-day free trial lets people who don't know you yet come in and see what it's like inside before they decide.
- Raise your price as you offer more. Since current members keep the price they signed up at, you can raise it for new members as you add courses, calls, or more of your help, and reward your earliest members along the way.
- Ask the people who leave why they're leaving. It's the most useful information you'll ever get, and the hardest to come by. Two or three honest answers are enough to tell you what to change.
The first paying members are the hardest ones to get. How to find them and set up your community from scratch is in how to create a Skool community.
What the calculator leaves out
What you keep in the calculator isn't what ends up in your pocket. Three things are missing:
- Taxes. Skool charges your members VAT in the countries where it applies and takes care of filing it, but the money you get from Skool is your income, and you report it according to the rules where you live. This isn't tax advice: talk to a tax professional.
- Your other tools. If you pay for an email platform, your own website, or video tools, add them to your costs.
- Your time. A community takes work every week. If it leaves you $800 a month and you put 40 hours into it, you're making $20 an hour; if you put in 10, you're making $80. Running that math helps you decide on your price and what goes into each plan.
When you get paid
Skool charges your members in US dollars and pays you in your local currency, into the bank account you connect in your community settings. The money from a payment becomes available 8 to 14 days later, and every Wednesday Skool sends you everything that's available. It takes 1 to 3 business days to reach a US bank account and 3 to 5 business days to reach one outside the US.
Your first payout takes a little longer, because it goes through a verification step. All the timelines, and what to do if a payout fails, are in Skool pricing: plans and fees.
Be skeptical of big round numbers
On social media you'll see screenshots of Skool communities making five or six figures a month, and ads promising you'll get there too in 90 days. Some of those communities are real and doing very well. But they're the ones you get to see: nobody posts a screenshot of the months when nobody joined.
To figure out whether a claim is realistic, run the math backward. If someone says they make $10,000 a month charging $49, they have about 205 paying members who stick around and pay again every single month. Ask yourself whether you could bring that many people together in your topic, and how long it would take. If the answer is “I don't know,” start with a smaller goal: your first 10 paying members will tell you far more about your community than any screenshot.
Frequently asked questions
Can you make money on Skool?
Yes: by charging your members a subscription, a one-time payment, or for individual courses. Skool keeps your plan fee and a cut of every payment, and the rest is yours. How much you make depends on how many paying members you have and how much you charge.
How much can you make on Skool?
There's no typical number. Some free communities don't charge anything, others bring in thousands of dollars a month, and the ones that make the rounds on social media are the standouts, not the average. Put your own numbers into the calculator to see what yours look like.
How many members do I need to make $1,000 a month?
It depends on your price. On Hobby, at $19/month you need 61 paying members; at $49, you need 24. At that level, Hobby is still the better plan for you: Pro starts paying off at around $1,270 a month.
Should I charge monthly or once a year?
You can offer both and let each member choose. Annual billing locks in the whole year up front and racks up fewer flat fees; monthly billing leaves you more money if the member stays all twelve months. We run the numbers in Skool pricing.
Skool Hobby vs Pro: which plan makes me more money?
At low revenue, Hobby, because its plan fee is lower. Once your members pay you around $1,270 a month or more in total, Pro, because Skool keeps a much smaller percentage of every payment. The calculator tells you which one leaves you more with your numbers.
Do I need to list my community on SkoolRank to make money?
No. SkoolRank is an independent ranking of Skool communities and isn't affiliated with Skool. Listing your community here is free and helps more people discover it in its category. If you'd like, you can add your community.
