Skool fees: what you actually pay every month

The Skool platform fee — $99/month, flat

Skool charges every community owner $99/month. Flat. There are no plan tiers (unlike Mighty Networks or Circle). There is no per-seat pricing. You pay $99 whether your community has 5 members or 5,000.

The $99 includes: unlimited members, unlimited posts, unlimited courses, unlimited DMs, unlimited storage for course videos, mobile apps for your members, and Stripe Connect billing. Skool does not gate features behind higher plan tiers — what you see in your free trial is what you keep.

The trial is 14 days. After that, the card you entered at signup is charged $99 monthly. Annual billing isn't published as a default option, though Skool occasionally runs annual deals.

Start your own Skool community in 60 seconds.

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

Start Skool free trial →

Stripe processing fees — separate from Skool

If you run a paid community, every member's monthly charge runs through Stripe. Stripe's standard rate in the US is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge. International cards add 1% on top, currency conversion adds another 1% if you're paid in a different currency than the member's card.

These fees come out of the gross charge before payouts hit your bank. Example: a member pays $99/month → Stripe takes about $3.17 (2.9% × 99 + 0.30) → you net roughly $95.83 → Skool's $99 platform fee comes out of your bank account separately, not from member charges.

Stripe pays you on its normal payout schedule (2–7 days for US accounts, longer for some countries). Skool itself never holds your money — it's pure Stripe Connect.

Skool does not take a revenue share

This is the single biggest financial differentiator versus competitors. Skool keeps the flat $99/month and nothing else. If you run a paid community at $50/month and have 1,000 members, that's $50,000/month gross, of which Skool takes $99 and Stripe takes about $1,750 — you net $48,150.

Compare to Mighty Networks (which used to take a percentage on lower plans), Patreon (5–12% of every member charge depending on plan), or Substack (10% of every paid sub). At scale, Skool's flat fee is meaningfully cheaper.

This is also why Skool has become the default for higher-priced communities ($100+/month). The percentage-based platforms eat real money once your group is large.

Tax, VAT, and sales tax considerations

Skool itself doesn't handle sales tax for you. If your members are in jurisdictions that require VAT or US state sales tax on digital subscriptions, that's your responsibility (or Stripe's, if you've enabled Stripe Tax — Stripe Tax adds 0.5% on top of base processing).

For most creators selling globally to under a few thousand customers, Stripe Tax is the path of least resistance. Larger operators eventually move to a Merchant of Record (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy) — but that's its own platform decision and means leaving Skool's native checkout.

Skool fees vs Mighty Networks, Circle, Patreon

Headline numbers at typical mid-tier plans:

• Skool: $99/mo flat, 0% revenue share. Members billed via Stripe (2.9% + $0.30).
• Mighty Networks Business: $99/mo, plus a 3% transaction fee on lower tiers; higher tiers ($179+) drop the % fee.
• Circle Business: $89–$199/mo, 0% revenue share. Stripe fees apply.
• Patreon: Free to start; 5%/8%/12% of every charge depending on plan, plus payment processing.
• Substack: 10% of every paid subscription, plus Stripe fees.

For a $20/month community with 500 members ($10,000/mo gross), the platform takes:

• Skool: $99
• Mighty (Business): $99 + 3% × $10k = $399
• Patreon (Pro): 8% × $10k = $800
• Substack: 10% × $10k = $1,000

This is why higher-revenue community creators tend to land on Skool or Circle.

Your real total monthly cost

Beyond the visible fees, the real cost is your time. Manual member onboarding, manual welcome DMs, manual churn outreach, manually answering the same five questions in DM every week — that's the line item nobody puts on a pricing page.

A realistic operator running a 500-member paid community on Skool spends 15–25 hours/week on community ops if they're doing it manually. Most of that is automatable. tools4skool — the Chrome extension we built — replaces the manual DM grind with triggered sequences (welcome, churn-saver, comment-miner). Free tier is enough for most early communities; paid tiers start at $29/month, which is a small line item next to recovered hours.