Teachable vs Your Own App: Revenue Math

Key Takeaways:

Teachable's Starter plan costs $39/month plus a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale, and caps you at 100 students
A $200 course sold once earns you ~$171 after all fees. A $9.99/month app subscription earns more than that in 20 months, per subscriber, and keeps going
Teachable gives you a web page. A subscription app gives you an App Store listing, push notifications, and a revenue stream that grows while you sleep
Courses reset to zero after launch week. Apps compound every month with every new subscriber

Who Is Teachable For?

Teachable is a hosted course platform that lets creators sell online courses, coaching programs, and digital downloads through a drag-and-drop builder. Ankur Nagpal built it in 2014. Hotmart acquired it in 2022. Since then, pricing has been restructured multiple times. The most recent overhaul, in June 2025, eliminated the free plan entirely and added hard student caps across every tier. If you just need to host a course and collect payment, Teachable works. But if you want to build a business that earns while you're not posting, you need to understand what you're actually comparing.

What Does Teachable Cost in 2026?

Here's the current pricing breakdown:

Plan	Monthly Price	Transaction Fee	Student Cap	Products
Starter	$39/mo	7.5%	100	5
Builder	$89/mo	0%	1,000	10
Growth	$189/mo	0%	5,000	50
Advanced	$399/mo	0%	5,000	100

Every plan also charges Stripe processing fees: 2.9% + $0.30 per US transaction. International cards jump to 3.9% + $0.30. That 7.5% Starter fee stacks on top of processing. Sell a $200 course to 50 students? You're paying $39 in subscription, $750 in transaction fees, and ~$305 in processing. Out of $10,000 in gross revenue, you keep $8,906. That's an 11% effective rate before you've spent a dollar on marketing. On the Builder plan at $89/month, that same $10,000 leaves you $9,606. Better, but you're still paying for a platform that caps you at 1,000 students and 10 products.

How Does Subscription App Revenue Compare?

The math behind subscription apps works differently. Instead of selling a product once and hoping the buyer comes back for another purchase, you earn recurring revenue every month from every active subscriber. Let's run the numbers side by side. Scenario: Creator with 50,000 Instagram followers, strong engagement, niche expertise.

Metric	Teachable Course	Subscription App
Price	$197 (one-time)	$9.99/month
Conversion rate	2% of audience	2% of audience
Customers	1,000	1,000
Month 1 revenue	$197,000	$9,990
Month 6 revenue	~$0 (launch over)	$9,990
Month 12 revenue	~$0	$9,990
Year 1 total	$197,000	$119,880
Year 2 total	~$0 (need new course)	$119,880
2-year total	$197,000	$239,760

The course looks better in month one. It always does. That's why creators keep building them. But look at year two. The course revenue resets to near zero unless you build and launch an entirely new product. The app keeps earning. And this model assumes zero new subscribers after month one, which never happens. App Store discoverability alone brings in subscribers who have never heard of you. After Apple's 15% small business commission (for developers earning under $1M/year), that $9.99/month becomes ~$8.49 per subscriber. At 1,000 subscribers, that's $8,490/month. Predictable. Recurring. Growing. As we broke down in App vs Course: The Revenue Math for Creators, subscription revenue compounds. Course revenue spikes and crashes.

$Course revenue spikes then flatlines while subscription app revenue climbs steadily over 24 months$

Courses spike. Apps compound.

Built by Foundry builds subscription apps for creators. $0 upfront. Three weeks to App Store. You own the business.

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What Can't Teachable Do?

This is where the comparison gets uncomfortable for Teachable. No App Store presence. Teachable has a mobile app, but it's the Teachable app, not yours. Your school is buried inside a generic interface alongside thousands of other creators. Students can't search for your brand in the App Store and find your product. You miss the entire discovery channel that brings in subscribers who've never seen your content. No push notifications under your brand. You can't ping a student's phone at 7 AM with a workout reminder or a daily tip. That engagement loop, the one that turns casual buyers into daily users, doesn't exist on Teachable. No recurring subscription billing through native mobile. Teachable offers memberships, but they're web-only recurring payments. No native iOS or Android billing. No auto-renew through the App Store. No frictionless one-tap subscribe that iPhone users expect. Hard student caps force expensive upgrades. Hit 100 students on Starter? Time to upgrade to $89/month. Hit 1,000? That's $189/month. Your platform cost scales with your success, eating into the margins that were supposed to be yours. No content engine. A course sits on a shelf. An app generates content for you. Every user interaction, every leaderboard update, every before-and-after result is a social media post you didn't have to brainstorm. Teachable gives you nothing to post about after launch week. Read more about this in how your app becomes your content calendar.

Does Teachable's Course Builder Justify the Cost?

The builder itself is good. Drag-and-drop, clean interface, supports video, text, quizzes, and certificates. If all you need is a place to park course content behind a paywall, Teachable's builder earns its reputation. But a course builder isn't a business model. It's a delivery mechanism. The real question: what happens after someone buys your course? On Teachable, they finish it (maybe) and move on. You need a new product to sell them something again. On a subscription app, they keep using it every day. They keep paying every month. And their usage gives you content to create, which attracts more subscribers, which compounds your revenue further. Our full Teachable review rated the platform 3.0 out of 5. Strong on delivery, weak on everything a creator needs to grow.

Who Should Stick with Teachable?

Teachable makes sense in a narrow set of situations:

You're testing an idea and need the cheapest way to sell a digital product
You already have a marketing stack (email, ads, social) and just need course hosting
Your expertise fits a one-time knowledge transfer (a certification course, a masterclass)
You don't have 50K+ engaged followers yet and need to prove demand first

If any of these describe you, Teachable is fine. Start there. Validate. But if you have an engaged audience, a clear niche, and expertise people would pay for monthly, you're leaving money on the table. A lot of money.

Your expertise is worth more than a one-time sale.

We build subscription apps for creators. $0 upfront. Revenue share. Learn how it works.

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What Does the 2-Year Revenue Model Actually Look Like?

Let's get specific. Same creator. Same 50K audience. Same 2% conversion. Different product choices.

Timeline	Teachable Course ($197)	Subscription App ($9.99/mo)
Month 1	$171,394 (after fees)	$8,491 (after Apple 15%)
Month 3	$174,000 (trickle sales)	$25,473
Month 6	$176,000	$50,946
Month 12	$178,000	$101,892
Month 18	$178,500	$152,838
Month 24	$179,000	$203,784

The course maxes out. The app passes it around month 21 and keeps climbing. And again: this assumes zero subscriber growth after launch. Real apps grow through App Store search, word of mouth, and the creator's ongoing content. Kayla Itsines started with PDF workout guides. She could have stayed on a course platform forever. Instead, she built the Sweat app, grew it to 450,000+ paying subscribers, and sold it for a reported $400 million. The subscription model made that possible.

What About the "Teachable Is Easier" Argument?

Fair point. Teachable is simpler to set up. Upload videos, set a price, share the link. Building an app takes a development partner, a product strategy, and about three weeks of build time. It requires more upfront thinking. But "easier" isn't the same as "better." A lemonade stand is easier to set up than a restaurant. That doesn't make it a better business. The question isn't which is easier to start. The question is which builds a business you'd want to own in two years. A Teachable school with 5 courses and 3,000 students? Or a subscription app with 2,000 active subscribers paying $9.99/month and growing through the App Store? One is a content library you manage. The other is a business that compounds while you sleep.

$A smartphone displaying a subscription renewal notification glows with orange light next to fading course receipts$

Ready to run the numbers for your niche? We build custom subscription apps for creators. $0 upfront, three weeks to the App Store, and we handle all the tech forever. You bring the expertise. We build the business.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Teachable good for creators in 2026?

Teachable is good for creators who need simple course delivery and already have their own marketing. It's not built for creators who want recurring revenue, App Store distribution, or a product that grows independently of their content calendar. The 7.5% Starter transaction fee and hard student caps make it expensive at scale.

How much does Teachable take from each sale?

On the Starter plan ($39/month), Teachable charges 7.5% per sale plus Stripe processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30. A $200 course sale nets you about $171. Higher-tier plans ($89+/month) eliminate the transaction fee but add monthly costs that scale as your student count grows.

Can I build a subscription business on Teachable?

Teachable offers memberships with recurring billing, but only through web-based payments. There's no native App Store subscription, no push notifications, and no branded mobile app. For creators who want true subscription revenue with mobile distribution, a custom app delivers significantly higher lifetime value per customer.

How long does it take to build a creator app?

Most development agencies quote 6 to 12 months and $50,000 to $200,000. Built by Foundry ships in 3 weeks at $0 upfront using a revenue-share model. The creator owns the business. We handle design, development, App Store submission, and ongoing updates.