How much is Skool per month, really?

The headline number: $99 per month, per community

Skool runs on one pricing plan for creators: $99 per month, billed monthly, no annual discount as of late 2025. That's it. There's no Starter, Pro, Business, Enterprise tier. There is no per-member fee, no per-seat fee, no storage tier, no API quota.

This is unusual. Most community platforms (Circle, Mighty Networks, Kajabi) tier their pricing aggressively — $39 for a starter, $99 for the real plan, $399 for the actually-useful plan, $999 for the team plan. Skool collapses that into one number on the assumption that simplicity sells, and so far it does — Skool has been one of the fastest-growing community platforms since 2023, and the $99 tier is the only thing on offer.

A few specifics to lock in:

• $99 is per community, not per account. If you run two communities, you pay $198/month.
• Billed in USD. International cards work; you may see a small FX markup from your bank.
• Cancellable anytime from Settings → Billing. No annual lock-in.
• Card or Stripe Link only — no PayPal, no ACH, no invoicing for monthly accounts.

The number hasn't moved since Skool launched its current pricing in early 2022. Founder Sam Ovens has stated publicly that they intend to keep it flat. Take that with the usual pinch of salt — pricing pages change — but as of 2026 the listed price is still $99 flat.

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What you get for $99 a month

Skool's $99 plan includes everything the platform offers — there's no premium feature locked behind a higher tier because there's no higher tier.

• Unlimited members. No cap. Communities of 50 and communities of 50,000 pay the same.
• Unlimited courses. Multi-module course delivery with video hosting included.
• Unlimited posts and comments. No storage tier on the discussion side.
• Native gamification. Levels, points, leaderboards built in.
• Native Stripe integration for charging members ($9–$997/month or one-time).
• Custom domain. Map yourcommunity.com to your Skool community.
• Mobile apps (iOS + Android) — your members get a real app, not a wrapped browser.
• Basic analytics — DAU/WAU/MAU, retention curves, post engagement.
• DM inbox — direct messages between members and creator.

What's notably missing from the list even though it's in the plan: the depth of features inside any of these. The course builder is intentionally simple — no quizzes, no drip schedules in the rich form Kajabi has, no certificates. Analytics is descriptive, not prescriptive. The DM inbox has no templates, no bulk actions, no scheduling. None of this is hidden behind a higher tier because there is no higher tier; it's just not built yet.

This is where third-party tools like tools4skool come in — a Chrome extension layer that adds DM automation, churn-saver sequences, comment-mining, and a CRM-style member pipeline on top of the native $99 plan. Free tier covers 1 sequence and 20 DMs/day; paid tiers run $29 / $59 / $149 a month for higher volume.

1. 1
   Start the free trial

   Sign up at skool.com, no card required. You get full creator access for 14 days.

2. 2
   Build before paying

   Set up branding, structure, your first course module, and invite a small alpha group inside the trial.

3. 3
   Add a card before day 14

   If you want to keep the community live past day 14, add a card in Settings → Billing. The first $99 charges immediately on the upgrade, then monthly on that anniversary.

4. 4
   Set member pricing if charging

   Settings → Membership → set monthly price ($9–$997) or one-time. Stripe handles the actual checkout.

5. 5
   Layer automation if scaling

   Above ~50 paid members, manual DMs and welcome flows become a bottleneck. Free tier of tools4skool covers 1 sequence + 20 DMs/day to test the workflow.

What $99 does not cover

The line items most creators forget when they budget Skool:

• Stripe transaction fees: 2.9% + $0.30 per charge. This is Stripe's standard pricing passed through. On a $97/month membership, the fee is ~$3.11, so you net ~$93.89 per member per month. On a $497 launch payment, the fee is $14.71. Skool itself takes nothing on top of Stripe's cut — they don't add a platform fee to creator earnings, which is genuinely a creator-friendly choice that most competitors don't make.
• International card processing. International cards add an extra ~1% Stripe fee. If half your members are non-US, plan for ~3.9% + $0.30 average.
• Email infrastructure. Skool sends transactional emails (welcomes, billing) but does not send marketing broadcasts. You still need an ESP — ConvertKit, Beehiiv, MailerLite — for newsletters and launches. Budget $30–$300/month depending on list size.
• Video hosting. Skool hosts course videos on its own infrastructure — included. But if you want commercial-grade hosting with chapter markers, in-depth analytics, custom players, you'll layer on Vimeo OTT or Bunny Stream. Optional.
• Domain. ~$15/year for a .com if you map a custom domain.
• Automation tools. This is the big one. Welcome DMs, churn-recovery messages, lead capture from comments, scheduled posts, member tagging — all manual on native Skool. Tools that automate this start at $0 (free tier of tools4skool) and go up from there.

Net picture: $99 is the Skool bill, but a serious creator running a $50k/month community is realistically spending $200–$400 a month all-in including ESP, automation, and the Stripe cut.

What your members pay (if you charge)

Skool lets you set member pricing anywhere from $9 to $997 per month, plus one-time payments and annual plans. As the creator, you set it. Skool does not take a percentage — only Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee, which goes to Stripe, not Skool.

Real-world price points across Skool communities:

• $9–$19/mo — beginner-tier communities, mass-market hobbies, language learning
• $29–$49/mo — most niche-creator communities, coaching adjacencies
• $97/mo — the de facto standard for professional/business communities (Hormozi-style)
• $197–$497/mo — high-touch coaching, agency-owner communities, specialised B2B
• $997/mo or one-time $1k–$5k — premium masterminds, often with calls included

Members can be charged monthly or annual. Annual plans typically discount 15–25%. Skool also supports one-time payments for cohort-based programs.

For members joining a free community: $0. Most Skool communities have a free tier even when they also offer paid — it's a common funnel pattern, and the platform is designed for it.

For members of paid communities, the cancellation policy is set by the creator, not Skool — covered in the cancel subscription guide.

Your true monthly cost as a creator

Let's run the math for three realistic scenarios.

Scenario A — Solopreneur, 50 paid members at $47/mo

• Gross revenue: 50 × $47 = $2,350/mo
• Stripe fees: 50 × ($1.36 + $0.30) = ~$83
• Skool: $99
• ESP (ConvertKit Creator): $29
• Automation: free tier of tools4skool, $0
• Net: ~$2,139/mo. Skool overhead ~5% of revenue.

Scenario B — Established creator, 300 members at $97/mo

• Gross: $29,100/mo
• Stripe: ~$1,025
• Skool: $99
• ESP: $79 (~5k subs tier)
• Automation: tools4skool Pro $59
• VA for community management: $400
• Net: ~$27,438/mo. Skool overhead ~0.3% of revenue.

Scenario C — Two communities, 500 + 200 members

• Gross: ~$60k/mo
• Stripe: ~$1,800
• Skool: $99 × 2 = $198
• ESP: $149
• Automation: tools4skool Agency $149
• Net: ~$57.6k/mo. Platform overhead well under 1%.

The punchline: Skool's flat $99 stops mattering as a percentage of revenue almost immediately. The actual cost lever for serious creators is automation — every hour spent on manual DMs, welcome flows, churn outreach, and tag management is hours you could spend creating content. That's why most creators above the $5k MRR mark layer automation on top of Skool itself.

The 14-day free trial

Skool offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. You sign up at skool.com, create a community, get full creator access for 14 days, and the platform asks for a card only when the trial ends.

What you can do in the trial:

• Build the entire community — branding, domain, structure
• Upload a course
• Invite members and run the community as if you were paying
• Test all the features (no feature gating during trial)

What you can't really test in 14 days: whether your community will retain members past month 1. That's the actual question for most creators evaluating Skool, and no platform trial answers it. You're essentially testing the editor, the UX, and your own ability to write good posts. The retention question only resolves around day 30–60 of running a real cohort.

A quiet trick: if you start the trial and decide Skool isn't quite right, you can cancel before day 14 and not be charged at all. There's no auto-charge surprise — Skool emails you a few days before the trial ends asking you to add a card, and only charges once you do.

You cannot extend the trial through normal channels. If you need more time, email support and explain — sometimes they grant 7 extra days, sometimes not.

How $99/month compares to alternatives

Quick price comparison for the equivalent feature set:

• Circle — $49/mo Basic (limited automation), $99/mo Professional (closer to Skool feature parity), $399/mo Business (workflows + paid memberships properly). For most serious creators on Circle, real cost is $99–$399.
• Mighty Networks — $41/mo Community plan, $98/mo Mighty Pro Plus, $339/mo Mighty Pro proper. Member cap on lower tiers. Cap-on-features at the higher tiers means you usually need the $98+ plan for what Skool gives you flat.
• Kajabi — $149/mo Basic (limited), $199/mo Growth, $399/mo Pro. Way more course features, way fewer community features. Different tool, really.
• Discord — $0 + $9.99 per member for Server Boosts if needed. Different model entirely; no payments, no courses. You'd use Whop or Patreon to charge.
• WhatsApp + manual tools — $0. Real cost is your time and the inability to scale past ~200 members.

For the specific niche Skool occupies — community-led courses with native payments — the $99 flat with no member cap is genuinely competitive. Where you save vs Circle/Mighty is that you don't get squeezed at the next tier. Where you lose vs Kajabi is course depth (no quizzes, no drip in the same form, no certificates).

If the deciding factor is automation depth, none of the platforms above ship strong native automation. Tools like tools4skool are how creators on every platform actually get to scale — auto-DMs, churn recovery, comment mining. Skool plus a $29–$149 automation layer typically still costs less than the equivalent tier on Circle or Mighty Networks alone.