If you have spent any time researching online course platforms, you already know that the sticker price on a pricing page rarely tells the whole story. Podia and Teachable are two of the most popular platforms for creators who want to sell online courses, digital downloads, and memberships, and both of them look deceptively affordable at first glance. The real cost only becomes clear once you factor in transaction fees, payment processing charges, and the tools you will need to buy separately if a plan does not include them.
This comparison breaks down exactly where your money goes on each platform, so you can figure out which one actually costs less at your specific revenue level. Fees are not a fixed number that applies to everyone equally — a creator making $500 a month experiences a completely different cost structure than one making $10,000 a month, and the “cheaper” platform can flip depending on which bracket you fall into.
How Podia’s Pricing and Fees Work
Podia dropped its free plan a while back, so every creator now starts on a paid tier. The entry-level Mover plan sits in the low-$30s per month when billed annually, and it comes with a transaction fee of around 5% on every sale. That fee disappears entirely once you move up to Podia’s top plan, which costs roughly $75 a month billed annually. In between those two tiers, you are essentially paying for the privilege of using Podia’s checkout, and the transaction fee is Podia’s way of monetizing lower-tier accounts that have not yet generated much revenue.
What makes Podia’s math interesting is what is bundled into each plan. Email marketing, including newsletters, basic automations, and drip sequences, is included from the entry tier upward. That matters because email marketing tools are not cheap on their own — a basic plan from a dedicated email provider can run you $20 to $50 a month depending on your list size. When you add that avoided cost into the equation, Podia’s real cost per month often ends up lower than the sticker price suggests, especially for creators who would otherwise be paying for a separate email tool.
Podia also does not put a cap on the number of products you can sell, regardless of your plan. You can list courses, digital downloads, coaching packages, webinars, and community access all from the same account without hitting an artificial ceiling that forces you to upgrade.
How Teachable’s Pricing and Fees Work
Teachable’s entry-level Starter plan is typically priced a few dollars below Podia’s cheapest option, but it comes with a steeper transaction fee, often quoted between 5% and 7.5% depending on when you check the pricing page (Teachable has adjusted this more than once in recent years). Like Podia, Teachable eliminates the transaction fee once you reach its higher “Builder” tier, which lands in a similar price range to Podia’s zero-fee plan.
The catch with Teachable’s entry tier is that it does not include native email marketing tools. If you are on the Starter plan, you will need to connect an external service like ConvertKit or Mailchimp to send anything beyond basic transactional emails (things like order confirmations and password resets, which Teachable handles automatically). That external tool typically costs another $29 to $49 a month, which needs to be added on top of Teachable’s advertised price to get an honest total.
Teachable does have some strengths that partially offset this. Its affiliate program tools are generally considered more robust than Podia’s, with more flexibility to customize links and commission structures for partners who promote your courses. If affiliate-driven sales are central to your strategy, that feature gap is worth weighing against the extra cost of an email tool.
Comparing the Real Cost at Different Revenue Levels
The cheapest plan on paper is not necessarily the cheapest plan in practice, so it helps to run the numbers at a few realistic revenue points.
At low revenue — say, under $1,000 a month in course sales — the percentage-based transaction fees barely register, and the base subscription price is what matters most. In this bracket, whichever platform has the lower monthly subscription cost usually wins, and that edge often goes to Podia’s Mover plan or Teachable’s Starter plan depending on current pricing.
At moderate revenue — a few thousand dollars a month — the transaction fees start to bite. A 5% fee on $5,000 in monthly sales is $250, and a 7.5% fee on the same revenue is $375. That difference alone can be more than the monthly subscription cost of either platform, which is why serious creators tend to upgrade to a zero-fee tier as soon as they can justify the expense.
At high revenue — $10,000 a month or more — the zero-fee plans on both platforms become the obvious choice, since even a 2% or 3% difference in transaction fees would cost hundreds of dollars a month. At this level, the decision usually comes down to which platform’s zero-fee tier includes the features you actually need, rather than which one is marginally cheaper.
Standard Payment Processing Fees Apply Regardless
It is worth remembering that both platforms rely on Stripe or PayPal to actually move money, and those processors charge their own fee on top of whatever Podia or Teachable charges. The typical rate is around 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. This fee is unavoidable no matter which platform you choose, so it should not factor into your comparison between Podia and Teachable — but it does mean neither platform is ever truly “0% fees” once you account for payment processing.
Hidden Costs Beyond the Transaction Fee
Transaction fees get the most attention, but they are not the only cost that can differ between platforms. Consider the following:
Email marketing: As covered above, Podia includes this on paid plans while Teachable requires an external tool on its lower tier, which adds a real monthly cost that many comparisons overlook.
Payout timing: Some creators report that Teachable holds funds for a short period before releasing them to a connected bank account. If cash flow matters to your business, this delay is worth asking about directly, since it can create friction even if the total fees are similar.
Custom domains and branding: Both platforms support custom domains on most paid tiers, but double-check whether your target plan includes this, since building a course brand on a “myschool.podia.com”-style subdomain undercuts the professional feel many creators are going for.
App integrations: If you rely on Zapier to connect your course platform to other tools in your business, confirm which plan tier unlocks that integration, since it is sometimes gated behind a mid-tier or top-tier plan on both platforms.
Which Platform Is the Better Fit for Different Creators
If you are just starting out and have not yet validated that people will pay for your course, the lower entry price matters more than a marginally different transaction fee, since your total sales volume will be small either way. In this scenario, either platform’s cheapest tier is a reasonable place to begin.
If you already have an audience and expect to hit a few thousand dollars a month relatively quickly, it is worth budgeting for the zero-fee tier on whichever platform you choose from day one, since the transaction fee savings will offset the higher subscription cost within the first month or two of meaningful sales.
If you want to avoid paying for a separate email marketing tool and prefer to keep your entire business in one dashboard, Podia’s built-in email features give it an edge, particularly for solo creators who do not want to manage multiple subscriptions and logins.
If affiliate marketing is a core part of how you plan to sell your course, Teachable’s more mature affiliate tooling may be worth the trade-off, even if the raw transaction fee percentage is slightly less favorable on its entry tier.
A Practical Way to Decide
Rather than trying to memorize exact percentages that change periodically, the most reliable approach is to estimate your expected monthly revenue for the next three to six months, then calculate the total cost — subscription plus transaction fee plus any external tools you would need — for each platform’s relevant tier. Whichever number is lower for your specific situation is your answer, and that answer can genuinely differ from one creator to the next even though both platforms are aimed at the same audience.
It is also worth taking advantage of any free trial period both platforms offer before committing. A short trial will not tell you everything about long-term costs, but it will let you experience the course builder, checkout flow, and dashboard firsthand, which matters just as much as the fee structure when you are going to be using this software every day.
Common Questions Creators Ask Before Switching
A few questions come up repeatedly when creators are trying to decide between these two platforms, and they are worth addressing directly since they often matter more than the headline transaction fee.
Can you negotiate the transaction fee down? Neither platform offers individual negotiation on published pricing tiers. The only way to reduce or eliminate the fee is to upgrade to the plan tier where it disappears entirely, which is why so much of this comparison focuses on finding your realistic break-even point rather than assuming the cheapest listed plan is automatically the cheapest option for you.
What happens to your existing students if you switch platforms later? Both Podia and Teachable allow you to export student data and course content in some form, but migrating an active course with paying subscribers is rarely seamless. Recurring payment relationships, in particular, do not always transfer cleanly, and you may need to manually re-enroll subscribers on the new platform. This is a strong argument for choosing carefully upfront rather than treating either platform as a low-cost experiment you can easily reverse once you have real paying customers.
Does the transaction fee apply to every kind of sale? Generally yes — course sales, digital downloads, and coaching packages sold through either platform’s checkout are all subject to whatever transaction fee applies to your current plan tier, on top of standard payment processor fees. There is no carve-out for lower-priced products, which is worth remembering if your business model relies on selling a high volume of low-ticket items, since the percentage fee applies uniformly regardless of price point.
Reading Past the Marketing Pages
Both Podia and Teachable maintain active affiliate and partner programs, which means a large share of the comparison content you will find elsewhere online is written by people earning a commission for directing you toward one platform or the other. That does not necessarily make the information inaccurate, but it is worth reading any comparison, including this one, with the understanding that pricing pages change periodically and that the most reliable numbers are the ones listed directly on each platform’s own pricing page at the moment you are ready to sign up, rather than numbers quoted in an article that may be several months old by the time you read it.
Final Verdict
Neither platform is universally cheaper — the honest answer depends on your revenue level, whether you need built-in email marketing, and how much you value a mature affiliate program. Creators making modest sales who want an all-in-one dashboard tend to find Podia’s bundled email tools save them money overall. Creators who already have a separate email platform they like, or who lean heavily on affiliates to drive sales, may find Teachable’s fee structure and affiliate tools work out just as well or better. Run the numbers for your own revenue bracket before committing, and remember to check both platforms’ current pricing pages directly, since course platform pricing has shifted more than once in the past couple of years and is likely to keep changing.
