Teachable vs Thinkific vs WordPress: Which Suits Your Course Business? (2026)

Teachable and Thinkific rent you a finished course school for a monthly fee. WordPress gives you a site you own, but you put the course school together yourself from a plugin, hosting and a payment gateway. All three can sell a course well. The differences are in the fine print: a fee per sale on one plan, features held back for a higher plan, extra card fees on payment plans, and who looks after the site. This comparison puts those side by side, with a year-one cost for two sizes of course business.

How we put this comparison together

• Teachable and Thinkific: vendor facts, not tested. We don’t have an account on either, so everything about them here comes from their official pricing pages and help centers, checked on October 9, 2026, in US dollars. We say “Teachable says” or “Thinkific says” where it matters.
• WordPress: our own tests. We built, sold and finished paid test courses with Tutor LMS and LifterLMS on a private WordPress install in October 2026. The details are in our Tutor LMS review, LifterLMS review and payments guide. WordPress plugin prices were checked on the vendors’ sites on October 4–6, 2026.
• Costs: the year-one tables were added up by a script, not by hand, from list prices and US card fees.
• Independence: neither Teachable nor Thinkific paid for or reviewed this page, and we have no affiliate deal with either. The Tutor LMS Pro link is an affiliate link: we joined Tutor’s program on October 7, 2026, after our tests. It doesn’t change any number below.

At a glance

	Teachable	Thinkific	WordPress
Cheapest plan	Starter: $39/month, or $29 billed yearly	Basic: $54/month, or $40 billed yearly	LMS plugin $0–$259/year, plus hosting
Fee per sale	7.5% on Starter, 0% on higher plans	0% on Thinkific Payments; 1–5% with your own Stripe account	None
Card fees (US)	2.9% + 30¢	2.9% + 30¢, plus 0.7% on payment plans	Your gateway’s, e.g. Stripe 2.9% + 30¢
Course limit	5 products on Starter, 10 on Builder	Unlimited courses on every plan	None
Payment plans	A pricing type on its checkout	From Start ($109/month)	Depends on the plugin
Sales tax	Calculated, collected and remitted on all plans	Optional tool, 0.5% of each taxed sale	Yours, or a merchant of record’s
Free trial	7 days	30 days	Free plugins to try
Who runs it	Teachable	Thinkific	You

Sources: Teachable’s and Thinkific’s pricing pages and help centers, October 9, 2026. WordPress: our tests and plugin pricing pages, October 4–6, 2026.

Teachable: plans and fees

Teachable has three self-serve plans, plus a Custom plan you arrange with its sales team. Its pricing page lists them like this:

Plan	Monthly	Billed yearly	Fee per sale	Products	Admins
Starter	$39/month	$29/month	7.5%	5	1
Builder	$89/month	$69/month	0%	10	1
Growth	$189/month	$139/month	0%	50	5

Source: teachable.com/pricing, checked October 9, 2026. Every plan has a 7-day free trial, a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited students through Teachable’s checkout.

What Teachable’s help center adds:

• The 7.5% is taken on the price including tax, according to its Teachable Pay article. Card processing is on top: 2.9% + 30¢ for a US card, 3.49% + 49¢ for US PayPal, and 3.9% + 30¢ for an international card.
• Sales tax is handled on every plan. Teachable says it calculates, collects and remits US sales tax, VAT and GST for you. If you sell to buyers in many countries, this is the strongest reason to pick it.
• Only courses, coaching products and digital downloads count as products. Bundles, memberships and the community don’t use up the limit.
• Payment plans are one of four pricing types, with up to 36 monthly payments. Teachable’s pricing page doesn’t say they’re limited by plan.
• Course certificates are on the Growth plan’s feature list, not on Starter’s or Builder’s.

Watch out for: Builder costs $50 a month ($600 a year) more than Starter but drops the 7.5% fee. Once you sell more than $8,000 a year, the fee costs more than the upgrade, so Builder is the cheaper Teachable plan.

Thinkific: plans and fees

Thinkific also has three self-serve plans, plus a Plus plan you arrange with sales. Its pricing page lists them like this:

Plan	Monthly	Billed yearly	Payment plans	Certificates	Admins
Basic	$54/month	$40/month	No	No	1
Start	$109/month	$82/month	Yes	Yes	2
Grow	$219/month	$164/month	Yes	Yes	6

Source: thinkific.com/pricing, checked October 9, 2026. Every plan allows unlimited published courses and up to 10,000 current students, and comes with a 30-day free trial.

What Thinkific’s help center adds:

• Use Thinkific Payments, or pay a second fee. On Thinkific Payments, a US business pays 2.9% + 30¢ per card payment. Connect your own Stripe account instead, and Thinkific adds a “third-party payment gateway fee” on top of Stripe’s: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow, for creators in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU.
• Payment plans and subscriptions cost 0.7% more per payment on Thinkific Payments. International cards add 1.5%, and currency conversion 1%.
• Sales tax is an optional tool. Thinkific’s Sales Tax and VAT solution costs 0.5% of every sale where tax is assessed.
• Thinkific Payments is open to businesses in 36 countries, mainly in North America and Europe, plus Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. Elsewhere you use a third-party gateway, and Thinkific says the extra fee doesn’t apply where its own payments aren’t available.
• Basic also leaves out paid memberships, and allows only 5 coaching or webinar products.

The trade-off: Thinkific’s Basic plan costs $15 a month more than Teachable’s Starter but takes no cut of your sales, as long as you use Thinkific Payments. For most new course sellers that makes it the cheaper of the two, until you need a payment plan or a certificate.

WordPress: what you get and what it costs

WordPress itself is free. To sell courses, you add an LMS plugin, a way to take payments, a theme and hosting. Here’s what we found when we did it:

• The software can cost nothing. Tutor LMS’s free version can sell through WooCommerce. In our test, a completed WooCommerce order enrolled the student in the course straight away. WooCommerce’s Stripe plugin is free, so you pay only Stripe’s card fees.
• The free versions differ a lot. LifterLMS’s free version gave us certificates, drip schedules, free preview lessons and memberships, but charging cards needs a paid add-on from $149 a year. Tutor LMS keeps certificates, drip and Stripe for Pro, from $199 a year.
• Payment plans work without a paid gateway. LifterLMS’s free manual gateway ran a three-payment plan by bank transfer in our coaching test. You record each payment by hand.
• There’s no fee per sale and no course limit. Your gateway charges its card fee, and that’s all.

Watch out for: on WordPress, the platform’s jobs become yours. You keep WordPress and the plugins updated, take backups, choose hosting that copes with logged-in students, and answer students’ login and payment questions. Sales tax is yours too, unless you sell through a merchant of record. Our guide to selling courses on WordPress walks through every step, and our LMS plugin comparison helps you pick the plugin.

What year one really costs

Two examples, both selling to US buyers who pay by card in one payment. They use list prices with monthly billing for the hosted platforms, and US card fees of 2.9% + 30¢ a sale. The WordPress (WP) rows use WooCommerce or the LMS’s own checkout with Stripe; add hosting and a domain to them.

A small launch: a $49 course sold 120 times ($5,880).

Setup	Software	Fee per sale	Card fees	Year one
WP + Tutor LMS free	$0	$0	$207	$207 + hosting
WP + LifterLMS + Stripe	$149	$0	$207	$356 + hosting
WP + Tutor LMS Pro	$199	$0	$207	$406 + hosting
Thinkific Basic	$648	$0	$207	$855
Teachable Starter	$468	$441	$207	$1,116
Thinkific Basic + Stripe	$648	$294	$207	$1,149
Teachable Builder	$1,068	$0	$207	$1,275
Thinkific Start	$1,308	$0	$207	$1,515

A growing business: a $199 course sold 300 times ($59,700).

Setup	Software	Fee per sale	Card fees	Year one
WP + Tutor LMS free	$0	$0	$1,821	$1,821 + hosting
WP + LifterLMS + Stripe	$149	$0	$1,821	$1,970 + hosting
WP + Tutor LMS Pro	$199	$0	$1,821	$2,020 + hosting
Thinkific Basic	$648	$0	$1,821	$2,469
Teachable Builder	$1,068	$0	$1,821	$2,889
Thinkific Start	$1,308	$0	$1,821	$3,129
Thinkific Basic + Stripe	$648	$2,985	$1,821	$5,454
Teachable Starter	$468	$4,478	$1,821	$6,767

What changes these numbers:

• Yearly billing cuts the hosted plans by about a quarter: Teachable Builder drops to $828 a year, Thinkific Basic to $480.
• Payment plans add 0.7% to each installment on Thinkific Payments, and need Thinkific’s Start plan or higher.
• Sales tax tools cost nothing extra on Teachable and 0.5% of taxed sales on Thinkific. On WordPress, they cost your time, or a merchant of record’s fee (Paddle and Lemon Squeezy charge 5% + 50¢ a sale).
• WordPress hosting varies widely with how many students are online at once, which is why it’s left out above. See step 2 of our WordPress guide.

Which one suits whom

Best for: Teachable suits a creator who sells to buyers in many countries and wants sales tax off their plate, and who will sell enough to justify Builder. It’s also the simpler choice if you sell a handful of products and want the sales page, checkout and student app in one place.

Best for: Thinkific suits a creator with many courses (there’s no course limit on any plan) in a country Thinkific Payments supports, who wants to start cheaply on Basic without a cut of sales.

Best for: WordPress suits anyone who already runs a WordPress site, wants the lowest running cost as sales grow, or wants courses next to a blog, a shop or a membership. It also suits sellers in countries the hosted platforms’ own payment systems don’t cover: a bank transfer you approve by hand worked in both of our WordPress test setups.

The trade-off: the hosted platforms sell you time. If the hours you’d spend on updates, backups and plugin settings are worth more to you than the fees, a hosted platform is the better deal, even when WordPress is cheaper on paper.

What we didn’t test

• We haven’t used Teachable or Thinkific: no account, no test course, no test purchase. We can’t tell you how their course builders or student areas feel to use, only what their own pages say.
• We didn’t check Teachable’s or Thinkific’s prices outside the US, or their Custom and Plus plans.
• Our WordPress costs leave out hosting, because it varies so much with the number of students online at once.

FAQ

Is Teachable or Thinkific cheaper?

For a new seller, Thinkific Basic usually is: $54 a month and no cut of sales on Thinkific Payments, against Teachable Starter’s $39 a month plus 7.5% of each sale. If you need payment plans or certificates, compare Thinkific Start ($109) with Teachable Builder ($89) instead, and check which features each one lists.

Does Thinkific charge transaction fees?

Not on Thinkific Payments, apart from the card processing fee (2.9% + 30¢ in the US). If you connect your own Stripe account, Thinkific says it adds 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow.

Is WordPress cheaper than Teachable?

In both of our examples, yes, before hosting: $207–$406 against $1,116–$1,275 for the small launch, and $1,821–$2,020 against $2,889–$6,767 for the bigger one. Hosting narrows that gap, and the work of running the site is yours.

Can I move from Teachable or Thinkific to WordPress later?

Yes, but plan it. You’ll rebuild the courses in your LMS plugin, import your students and set up new payments. If you have running subscriptions or payment plans, ask your old platform and your payment provider how they can be moved before you switch.

Which is best for selling outside the US and Europe?

Check payments first. Thinkific Payments is open to businesses in 36 countries. On WordPress, Stripe isn’t available everywhere either, but PayPal or a bank transfer you approve by hand can fill the gap, as our payments guide explains.