Skool pricing: plans, fees and what you keep from every payment

Skool has two plans for people who run a community. Hobby costs $9/month, and Skool keeps 10% of every payment your members make, plus 30¢. Pro costs $99/month, and Skool keeps 2.9%, plus 30¢. If you pay for the full year, they come out to $7.50/month and $82/month. Both start with a 14-day free trial.

That's the short answer. The long one matters more, because what you actually end up paying depends on how much you charge: with low revenue, Hobby is cheaper, and past a certain point, Pro saves you money every month. Below you'll find the math, with examples, plus what you should know before you pick a plan: what's non-refundable, how VAT works, and when the money reaches your bank.

Prices and terms were checked on Skool's pricing page and help center on October 22, 2026. Skool changes them now and then. If that happens, we'll update this article.

Skool's two plans at a glance

The most important part of that table is what stays the same: both plans come with unlimited members, courses, videos, and live calls. There's no starter plan that runs out of room as you grow. The difference comes down to how much Skool takes from each sale, whether your community can have its own URL and affiliates, and a set of plugins that only come with Pro. With Pro you can send every new member an automatic welcome message, show an onboarding video and another one to people who are about to cancel, connect Zapier to your other tools, track your Google ads, add a links section, and automatically approve people who ask to join.

One more detail doesn't show up in the table. According to Skool's payment terms, you need the Pro plan to transfer a community to someone else.

The 14-day free trial (and what happens if you cancel)

Both plans start with a 14-day free trial. When it ends, your subscription renews automatically every month or every year, depending on what you picked, until you cancel.

You can cancel anytime from the Billing tab in your community settings. What happens next is fair: you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for, and when that runs out, your community gets archived. Its content can still be read, but nothing new can be added. If you want to come back someday, you can reactivate it and pick up where you left off.

Use the trial for the things that matter: set up your About page, build your first course, invite your first few people, and find out whether Skool is a good fit for you. Fourteen days is plenty if you show up with a plan. If you need ideas for that early stretch, you'll find them in how to grow your Skool community.

Skool's fees: what it keeps from every payment

On top of the plan fee, Skool keeps a cut of every payment your members make. On Hobby, that's 10% plus 30¢ on every transaction. On Pro, it's 2.9% plus 30¢ on payments up to $899, and 3.9% plus 30¢ on payments of $900 or more.

Here's what that looks like in practice. Each row is a single payment (a monthly membership, a one-time purchase, whatever it is) and what you keep from it:

The last row matches the example Skool gives in its own help center: on Pro, a $999 payment leaves you $959.74.

Keep an eye on that flat 30¢. On a $999 payment you'll never notice it, but on a $9 payment it adds more than 3% on top. If you charge a small amount per member, the fees weigh more than the percentage makes it look.

Skool argues that its Pro fee works out cheaper than taking payments yourself through Stripe, because Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards and 0.5% for subscriptions. That's Skool's argument, and we're passing it along as exactly that. For your own case, run the numbers with your prices.

Billing your members monthly or once a year

That flat 30¢ is charged per payment, not per member. So the way you bill your members also changes what you take home. Compare a member who pays $29 every month for a year with one who pays $290 once for the whole year (two months free, the same deal Skool offers on its own plans):

In dollars, the monthly member leaves you more, because they pay more. But that only holds if they stick around all twelve months, and that's the real appeal of annual billing: someone who pays for a year can't leave in month two, you get the money up front, and you pay fewer flat fees. Lots of communities offer both options and let each member choose.

Skool Hobby vs Pro: when Pro pays for itself

The question people ask most is which of the two they should pick. The answer comes from some simple math.

Pro costs $90/month more than Hobby. In exchange, Skool keeps 7.1% less of every sale (Hobby's 10% minus Pro's 2.9%; the 30¢ is the same on both). Pro starts coming out cheaper once that 7.1% in savings is bigger than the $90 difference, and that happens when your members pay you around $1,270 a month in total.

With annual billing, the gap between the two plans shrinks to $74.50/month, and the break-even point drops with it: around $1,050 in monthly revenue.

To see it with real numbers, picture a community that charges each member $25/month, paying Skool month to month. Here's what Skool would cost you in total each month, adding up the plan fee and the transaction fees:

At 40 members, Hobby still wins. At 60, Pro takes over, and from there the gap widens with every new member. At 400 members, Hobby would cost you more than twice as much.

How many members you need before Pro pays off

The break-even point is a revenue figure, so the number of members it takes depends on your price. This table does the math for a few common price points. The second column assumes you pay Skool monthly; the third, that you pay annually:

For your exact price, here's the formula: multiply one month of revenue by 0.071. If the result is more than 90 (or more than 74.50 if you pay Skool annually), Pro is the cheaper plan for you.

Three examples, start to finish

A free community that's just getting started. You don't charge members anything, so there are no transaction fees. The only thing you pay is the plan: on Hobby, $9/month, which comes to $108 a year, or $90 if you pay for the year up front. Pro would only make sense here if you needed your own custom URL.

A $19/month community with 30 paying members. That's $570 a month coming in. On Hobby, Skool costs you $75 a month in total; on Pro, $124.53. Hobby is the better deal, and if the community grows, you can move to Pro once you pass 67 members.

A $297 one-time course that sells 10 spots a month. That's $2,970 a month coming in. On Hobby, Skool costs you $309 a month; on Pro, $188.13. Here Pro saves you more than $120 every month, around $1,450 a year.

Money isn't the only thing to weigh. There are four situations where Pro is worth it even if you haven't reached those revenue numbers yet:

• You want members to refer people in exchange for a commission. Affiliates are only available on Pro.
• You want a custom URL for your community, easier to remember and to share.
• You're going to transfer the community to someone else or to a different account.
• You want to automate: the welcome message, automatic approval for new members, and sending data to other tools with Zapier are only available on Pro.

And there's one where Hobby makes complete sense: your community is free, or you charge a small amount and you're just starting out. Paying $99/month to save a percentage of revenue you don't have yet doesn't add up.

Growth Boost: 30%, but only on members Skool brings you

Growth Boost is how Skool advertises your community for you: it places you higher in its search results and runs ads on Facebook and Instagram with its own budget. You turn it on with a toggle, and there's no flat fee.

What it costs you is a 30% fee on whatever the members Skool brings in pay you. The members you bring in yourself still only pay your plan's regular fee. Put another way, you pay nothing if Growth Boost doesn't get you anyone, and when it does, each of those members costs you a lot more than your usual fee.

If your numbers still work at 30%, it can be a good source of members. We cover how its levels work and what Skool wants to see before it invests more in you in how to grow your Skool community.

Your community's affiliate program

On the Pro plan, you can give your members a link to bring in other people and earn a commission on each one. You set the percentage in your community settings, and in a free community with paid courses, you can turn it on for just those courses.

That commission comes out of your revenue, so build it into your math: if you give your affiliates 20%, a member who arrives through an affiliate leaves you 20% less than one who found you on their own. On the other hand, these are people who probably wouldn't have found you any other way.

Think the percentage through before you announce it. You can change it whenever you want, but the change applies to all your affiliates, including the ones who were already promoting you, and cutting it rarely goes over well.

Taxes and VAT

This is one place where Skool takes a lot of work off your plate. According to its help center, Skool acts as the merchant of record, meaning it's the seller your members actually buy from: the member pays Skool, and Skool pays you your share.

That's why, in countries where Skool collects VAT, it adds the tax on top of the price you set and takes care of filing and paying it. In the European Union, members pay their own country's VAT, which ranges from 17% to 27%. For example, a $100/month membership paid by someone in Germany, where VAT is 19%, gets charged at $119. You still receive the same amount you would with no VAT: what you earn doesn't change.

A few things you should know:

• You can't choose not to charge VAT, and you can't include it in your price. It's a platform-wide rule.
• Members see the VAT at checkout, not on your About page.
• If the member is a business with a VAT number, they can enter it at checkout, and VAT gets applied differently.

What Skool doesn't do is report your own income. The money you get from Skool is your income, and how you report it depends on your country and your situation. This isn't tax advice: talk to a tax professional where you live.

How and when you get paid

All Skool prices are in US dollars, and your members pay in dollars. You, on the other hand, get paid in your local currency: outside the United States, Skool doesn't pay out in dollars.

To get paid, you connect your bank account from your community settings. Behind the scenes, Skool uses a Stripe Express account that it sets up itself. You can't use a Stripe account you already have.

Every Wednesday, Skool also issues an invoice for that payout, which you can download.

Where to see what you've earned (and why a payout fails)

In your community settings, the Dashboard tab shows your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and your course sales. The Payouts tab shows the balance you have waiting to be paid out, and if Skool needs more information to verify your account, that's where it asks for it.

When a payout doesn't arrive, it's almost always something simple, according to Skool: the account number was typed wrong, the wrong account type was selected, or the account holder's name doesn't exactly match the name on the account. If it's just running late, it's usually the bank: weekends and holidays stretch the timelines.

For a payout to go through, your Skool subscription has to be active. If your community is archived or there's a problem with the payment for your plan, you won't receive anything until you sort it out.

What Skool doesn't refund

Get this straight before you start:

• The plan fee isn't refunded, either in full or for the part you didn't use. If you cancel, you won't pay for the next period, but you don't get money back for the current one.
• Transaction fees aren't refunded either, even if you refund a member's payment.
• On the Pro plan, your first URL change is included; every change after that costs $100, counts as a separate purchase, and isn't refunded either.

The upside is that there's no lock-in: you can cancel whenever you want and you won't owe anything else.

Is Skool free?

It depends on who's asking.

If you're joining a community, Skool is free: having an account doesn't cost anything. Free communities really are free, and paid ones cost whatever their owner decides. That price can be a monthly or annual subscription (with a seven-day free trial if the owner turns it on), a one-time payment, a free plan with a paid upgrade, or several price tiers.

If you're creating a community, there's no free plan. You get a 14-day free trial, and after that, Hobby or Pro. The community you build can be free for your members, but you still pay for your plan.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Skool cost per month?

To create a community, $9/month on the Hobby plan or $99/month on Pro. If you pay for the full year, it's $7.50/month and $82/month. On top of that, Skool takes a fee from every payment your members make: 10% plus 30¢ on Hobby and 2.9% plus 30¢ on Pro.

Is Skool free?

For members, yes: an account costs nothing, and free communities really are free. For owners, no: there's a 14-day free trial, and after that you have to pay for the Hobby or Pro plan.

How much does Skool take from each sale?

On the Hobby plan, 10% plus 30¢. On Pro, 2.9% plus 30¢ on payments up to $899, and 3.9% plus 30¢ on payments of $900 or more. If Growth Boost brings you a member, the fee on that member is 30%.

Is the Skool Pro plan worth it?

In pure dollars, it pays off once your members pay you more than about $1,270 a month in total (about $1,050 if you pay Skool annually). Below that, Hobby is cheaper, unless you need affiliates, a custom URL, the ability to transfer your community, or plugins like auto DMs or Zapier, which are only available on Pro.

Can I charge in another currency, like euros or pounds?

No. On Skool, every price is in US dollars, and your members pay in dollars. What does change is what you receive: Skool pays you in your local currency.

What happens if I cancel Skool?

You keep access until the end of the period you paid for. After that, your community gets archived: its content can still be read, but nothing new can be added. You can reactivate it whenever you want.

Does Skool give refunds?

It doesn't refund the plan fee, either in full or in part, and it doesn't refund transaction fees. You can cancel anytime so you're not charged for the next period.

When do I get the money my members pay?

Skool pays out your available balance every Wednesday. The money from a payment becomes available 8 to 14 days later, and your first payout goes through an extra verification step that can hold it up a little. From there, it takes 1 to 3 business days to reach a US bank and 3 to 5 to reach a bank in another country.