Skool Pricing 2026: $9 vs $99 and the Real Fee Math

Skool pricing is short: Hobby costs $9 per month, Pro costs $99 per month, and both start with a 14-day free trial. Yearly billing drops the effective rate to $7.50 and $82 per month, marketed as two months free. There is no free plan for hosting a group.

The sticker price is the small part. The real cost lever is the transaction fee on member payments: Hobby keeps 10% + $0.30 of every charge, Pro keeps 2.9% + $0.30. Once your community bills about $1,268 a month, Pro becomes the cheaper plan overall.

Both plans include unlimited members, unlimited courses, video hosting, events, and Skool payments. I verified every number on the official pricing page and Skool’s payment help docs in August 2026.

Expand

Skool’s two public plans: Hobby at $9 per month and Pro at $99 per month, both behind the same 14-day trial.

What Skool Hobby Includes at $9 a Month

Skool Hobby costs $9 per month, or $90 per year on the yearly toggle. It includes unlimited members, unlimited courses, gamification, events, and native payments. The catch is the fee: Hobby keeps 10% + $0.30 of every member transaction, more than three times what Pro takes on the same charge.

• Unlimited members, courses, and video hosting from day one.
• Native member payments in USD, at the 10% + $0.30 Hobby fee.
• One admin seat. Extra admins and moderators are a Pro feature.
• No custom group URL and no built-in affiliate program for your group.
• 14-day free trial, then $9 auto-renews until you cancel.

What Skool Pro Adds at $99 a Month

Skool Pro costs $99 per month, or $990 per year billed annually. The member-payment fee drops to 2.9% + $0.30 for charges up to $899 and 3.9% + $0.30 above $900. Pro also unlocks a custom URL, multiple admins, group ownership transfer, and the built-in affiliate program for your community.

For a paid community, the fee drop is the feature. Every $1,000 a Hobby group bills costs $100 in fees; the same $1,000 on Pro costs $29. The other Pro features decide edge cases, but the 7.1-point fee gap decides the plan.

Skool Fees

Skool charges one fee on top of the subscription, and it lands on every payment your members make. Hobby keeps 10% + $0.30 per transaction. Pro keeps 2.9% + $0.30, and single charges above $900 move to 3.9% + $0.30.

That percentage is all-in. Skool does not add a separate Stripe processing charge underneath it, so what you see is what leaves your revenue. Fees run in USD only and stay with Skool even when you refund the member.

Say your group bills $2,700 a month from 100 members at $27 each. Hobby takes $300 of that once the 30 cent charges are counted, Pro takes $108. If your numbers look different, the Skool fee tool I built does this math for any price and member count.

The fees come off before money moves: whatever survives them joins your balance and rides Skool’s Wednesday payout cycle to your bank, with the first payout taking up to 14 days.

The Hobby vs Pro Fee Math (Where $99 Beats $9)

The two plans differ by $90 a month in subscription cost and 7.1 points in transaction fees. Divide $90 by 0.071 and you get $1,268: the monthly member revenue where Pro’s lower fee pays for its higher subscription. Below that number, stay on Hobby. Above it, Pro wins every month.

Rows exclude the flat $0.30 per transaction, which both plans charge equally and which cancels out of the comparison.

Your numbers will not land exactly on these rows. Punch your own member count and price into the free Skool cost calculator and it returns the exact monthly cost of both plans side by side.

Skool Yearly Pricing: Two Months Free

The yearly toggle prices Hobby at $90 per year and Pro at $990 per year, an effective $7.50 and $82 per month. That is a 16.7% saving, which Skool markets as two months free. The trade-off is commitment: Skool refunds nothing for full or partial billing periods, annual terms included.

Expand

Skool’s yearly toggle in July 2026: Hobby drops to $7.50 per month and Pro to $82 per month, the two-months-free rate on $90 and $990 a year.

Take the yearly deal only after the 14-day trial plus at least one stable month of revenue. Locking $990 into an unvalidated community is how the no-refund rule gets expensive. If you later want out entirely, closing everything down is manual: the full Skool exit walkthrough covers canceling, archiving, and deleting the account.

Skool Price History: One $99 Plan Until 2025

Skool sold one $99 per month plan from its 2019 founding until mid-2025. The Internet Archive’s June 7, 2025 snapshot of skool.com/pricing still shows a single plan with a 2.9% fee. The $9 Hobby plan arrived in July 2025, per multiple independent reviews, splitting fees into 10% versus 2.9%.

The single-plan era explains why older Skool reviews quote $99 as the only way in: anything written before July 2025 predates Hobby. It also frames the commitment question. Skool changed pricing and program terms inside one year, and the no-refund policy applies to annual billing all the same. A month later, the $100M Money Models launch produced the 90-day trial that briefly replaced the 14-day one, which is the promo older posts still advertise.

Costs That Are Not on the Pricing Page

Four costs surprise new Skool owners. Transaction fees are non-refundable even when you refund the member. All billing runs in USD only, so owners outside the US eat currency conversion in both directions. Single charges cap at $100,000. And hosting has no free tier: joining groups is free, running one is not.

That last point answers the common "is Skool free" question. Membership in someone else’s free community costs nothing, which is where the confusion comes from. Hosting always bills after day 14.

Still mapping what those payments actually buy? The what-is-Skool explainer covers the five tabs and the points system the fees sit on top of.

What Skool Members Pay to Join a Community

Hosting fees are only half of Skool pricing; the other half is the price members pay to join. Across the 1,000 communities on Skool's public Discovery list in my July 2026 pull, 77.7% charge for access, the median price is $27 per month, and the average is $42.91.

Joining adds no Skool fee on top: members pay the sticker price the creator sets, in USD, and the platform's cut comes out of the creator's side. The price map of 1,000 trending Skool communities breaks the same pull down by category, size, and age.

How Skool Pricing Compares to Circle, Mighty Networks, and Whop

Skool’s $9 entry undercuts every direct competitor’s paid tier. Circle starts at $89 per month billed annually, Mighty Networks at $95 per month billed monthly, Kajabi at $143 per month billed annually. Whop flips the model: no subscription at all, roughly 2.7% + $0.30 per transaction instead.

Prices verified on each official pricing page in August 2026. If the platform choice is still open, I compare nine tested options with fees and who each one fits on the best Skool alternatives page.

Which Skool Plan Should You Pick?

Pick by monthly member revenue, not by feature lists. Under $1,268 a month, Hobby’s $9 subscription wins even with the 10% fee. Past $1,268, Pro’s 2.9% fee makes it the cheaper plan overall. Start the 14-day trial on Hobby unless you already run a proven paid offer.

• Choose Hobby if: you run a free group, or a paid one billing under $1,268 a month.
• Choose Pro if: member billing clears $1,268 a month, or you need the group affiliate program, custom URL, or extra admins.
• Choose neither if: you need email funnels, white-label apps, or deep branding. My Skool review names the better-fit platforms for those jobs.