Skool price: the actual cost in 2026

Owner plans — what you pay to host a community

Skool's owner pricing as of 2026:

• Hobby plan: $99/mo, capped at 50 members. The entry tier. Aimed at side-project communities and creators just launching.
• Pro tiers: scale up by member count. Skool keeps the structure simpler than competitors at the high end — flat-rate breakpoints rather than per-member tax. The exact price points have shifted over time; current tiers are listed at skool.com/pricing.
• Annual discount: typically two months free if you pay yearly upfront (so $99/mo becomes ~$990/yr).
• No multi-community discount: owners running more than one community pay the per-community plan rate.

The Hobby plan is enough for validation and early-stage communities. The 50-member cap forces a clear upgrade trigger — once you cross 50 paying members, you upgrade to Pro. At Pro scale, the platform fee is small relative to revenue (typically under 5% of MRR for a community priced at $97/mo with 200+ members).

This simplicity is one of Skool's clearest pricing wins. Competitors like Circle and Mighty Networks have more tier gradients, per-member fees on certain plans, and feature-locked pricing that can add complexity at scale.

See the pricing inside Skool itself.

14-day free trial — no card required. Most community owners decide whether Skool fits within the first week.

Start Skool free trial →

What members pay

Whatever the community owner sets. Skool itself doesn't charge members anything — they only charge the owner.

Typical member subscription ranges:

• Free communities: $0. Run as marketing funnels for higher-priced offers, or genuinely free hobby groups.
• Casual paid communities: $19–$49/mo. Tend to be higher-volume, lower-touch.
• Coaching and course communities: $49–$199/mo. The most common band.
• Premium / agency-style: $197–$497/mo. Higher-touch, smaller cohort, more access.
• Mastermind / executive: $500–$2,000/mo. Niche, high-trust, often application-only.

For members: look at what's actually inside the community, not just the price. A $99/mo community with weekly calls, current courses, and an active owner can be worth 10x its cost. A $49/mo community with thin content and a ghosted owner is a slow drain. Run due diligence before paying — check the About page promises, scroll the feed, look for member wins with specifics.

Stripe transaction fees

Skool routes member payments through Stripe Connect. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. This is Stripe's fee, not Skool's — Skool does not add an additional percentage.

Math examples:

• $59 member subscription: Stripe takes $2.01 (2.9% × $59 + $0.30). Owner gets $56.99.
• $97 member subscription: Stripe takes $3.11. Owner gets $93.89.
• $197 member subscription: Stripe takes $6.01. Owner gets $190.99.
• $497 member subscription: Stripe takes $14.71. Owner gets $482.29.

At scale, Stripe fees are predictable: roughly 3% of gross revenue. So a $50K MRR community pays ~$1,500/mo in Stripe fees on top of Skool's flat platform fee.

Refund warning: when you refund a member, Stripe keeps the original transaction fee. So a $59 refund actually costs you $61.01 in lost revenue ($59 refund + $2.01 fee Stripe doesn't return). Frequent refunds eat margin meaningfully.

International transactions and certain payment methods (Apple Pay, Google Pay) may have slightly different fee structures. Cross-border charges add ~1% in some regions. Check Stripe's fee schedule for your specific country.

Free trial — how it works

14-day free trial for owners. Key facts:

• No credit card required to start. Skool just asks for your email and the URL you want.
• Full feature access. Build courses, invite members, customise everything. Members pay you (or join free) during the trial like they would on a paid plan.
• Payments work during the trial. If you onboard Stripe and accept member payments during the trial, those go to your bank normally.
• Trial converts to paid on day 15 unless you add a card and confirm.
• If you don't add a card, the community pauses — not deletes. You can come back later by upgrading.

What 14 days is enough for: building basic structure (categories, About page, first courses), inviting first 5–20 members, soft pre-launch.

What 14 days is not enough for: validating demand from cold start, breaking even on member revenue, building an audience. If you're starting cold, validate demand on email or social first, then use the trial purely for product setup.

There's no permanent free owner tier. Skool is a paid product for hosts.

Hidden and secondary costs

Beyond the platform fee and Stripe, the costs that often surprise new owners:

• Custom domain (Pro feature): $10–$20/yr at the registrar. Skool doesn't charge extra for the connection — you set up a CNAME record and Skool serves your community at the custom URL.
• Failed payment retries: Stripe Smart Retries can bill multiple times. Owners occasionally see bursts of small declines that look like fraud and aren't.
• Email broadcast: Skool only sends transactional emails (joined, cancelled, payment receipt). For newsletters or sequence emails, you pay separately for ConvertKit, Beehiiv, MailerLite, or similar — typically $29–$99/mo at small scale.
• Scheduling tool: if you're upselling 1:1 calls from your community, Calendly or similar adds $10–$20/mo.
• Video extras: Skool hosts video natively, but if you do heavy production, Loom Pro ($15/mo), Descript ($24/mo), or Riverside ($29/mo) often join the stack.
• Automation tooling: native Skool has no DM sequences, churn tooling, or member CRM. The cost shows up in time, or in an external layer.

For automation, the typical bolt-on is tools4skool — a Chrome extension that adds DM sequences with multi-condition triggers, a 60-second churn-saver, churn-risk scores, comment miner, slash commands, scheduled posts, and Kanban CRM. Free plan: 1 sequence and 20 DMs/day. Paid tiers $29 / $59 / $149 per month.

A small-but-professional stack at small scale: Skool Hobby ($99) + tools4skool free + Stripe (per-transaction) + Loom free + Notion free = $99/mo total until you cross specific scale thresholds.

Real proof point: Kate Capelli — $59/mo subscription returned $4,000/mo in additional revenue in 2 weeks (7,000% ROI) using welcome sequences, churn-saver, and comment miner.

Skool's pricing versus competitors

Quick pricing positioning at a $97/mo community with 200 members ($19,400/mo gross):

• Skool: ~$99–$200/mo platform fee (Pro tier) + ~$580/mo Stripe = ~$700/mo total platform cost. Net to owner ~$18,700/mo.
• Circle: $89–$360/mo plan + per-member fees on certain tiers + ~$580/mo Stripe = $700–$1,200+/mo platform cost.
• Mighty Networks: $41–$360/mo plan + payment processing. Cheaper at small scale, comparable at larger scale, expensive on Mighty Pro.
• Kajabi: $149–$399/mo + payment processing. More expensive in absolute terms but includes a richer course platform and email tooling.
• Patreon: takes 5–12% of member revenue plus payment fees. At $19,400 gross, Patreon's cut is $970–$2,330/mo — much higher than Skool's flat fee.
• Discord paid servers: takes 10% of member revenue. At $19,400 gross, that's $1,940/mo. Most expensive at scale.

The key insight: Skool's flat-rate model wins past 100 members because the platform cost stops scaling with revenue. Percentage-based platforms (Patreon, Discord, some Mighty plans) get expensive fast. Other flat-rate platforms (Circle, Mighty Networks at lower tiers, Kajabi) are competitive at small scale but tend to add per-member or feature-locked fees as you grow.