WhichLMS

Pricing and fees

Course platform pricing calculator: Thinkific vs LearnWorlds vs Teachable, Podia and LearnDash

A comparable LMS budget is subscription plus platform fees over twelve months, computed from four numbers you already know: learners, admin seats, sales per month and average order value. Enter them below. The calculator picks the cheapest published plan that fits each platform and shows the math. Quote-based tiers are shown as custom pricing, never guessed.

In this guideTeachablePricing →PodiaPricing →LearnWorldsPricing →ThinkificPricing →LearnDashPricing →

Your estimate

Your numbers

Only applied to LearnDash: hosting, maintenance, backups.

What the plan must include

Assumptions: yearly totals in USD; card processing fees (about 2.9% + 30 cents) are excluded everywhere; platform fees and per-sale fees are computed from your sales inputs; quote-based tiers show as custom pricing, never as zero.

What the calculator counts, and what it does not

Fees as published on each pricing page; card processing is always on top.
PlatformPlatform or transaction fees
ThinkificThinkific Payments processes cards at standard processor rates (about 2.9% + 30 cents per card transaction). Using your own Stripe or PayPal instead adds a platform surcharge: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start, 1% on Grow, none on Plus.
LearnWorldsNo platform transaction fee above Starter; Starter charges 5 USD per course sale. Payment processor fees apply separately.
TeachableStarter takes a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder and Growth take no platform fee, but payment processing (about 2.9% to 4.99% depending on method) still applies.
PodiaMover takes a 5% transaction fee; Shaker and Earthquaker take none. Stripe or PayPal processing (about 2.9% + 30 cents) applies separately.
LearnDashPayments run through your own Stripe or PayPal integration; no platform fee, only processor fees.

Three worked examples

The same model, three real situations. Reproduce them by typing the numbers into the calculator above.

1. Simple need: one teacher, steady sales

500 learners, 1 admin, 20 sales per month at $150, annual billing, platform payments. Thinkific Basic lands around $480 per year because it takes no platform fee at this size. LearnDash Essentials is about $859 including a $600 self-hosting budget. LearnWorlds Starter reaches about $1,488 because of its $5 per-sale fee, Podia Mover about $2,304 with its 5% fee, and Teachable Starter about $3,048 because 7.5% of $36,000 in sales is $2,700. The fee, not the subscription, decides this scenario.

2. B2B training company

1,500 learners, 6 admin seats, group selling, branding removal and certificates required. Published plans that fit: Thinkific Grow at about $1,968 per year and LearnWorlds Learning Center at about $2,988. LearnDash Elite fits on paper at about $1,199 including the $600 ops budget, if you accept running WordPress yourself. Teachable and Podia drop out: no published group seat selling.

3. Quote territory

15,000 learners with SCORM required. No published plan covers it: Thinkific Plus and LearnWorlds Corporate both answer with custom pricing. The honest output is two quote requests, not a number. Bring the procurement checklist to that call.

The factor that flips your plan

Watch the input that sits closest to a cap. At 900 monthly active learners you are one growth quarter away from LearnWorlds Starter's 1,000 cap. At 5 admin seats, Thinkific Start's 2 seats are long gone and Grow's 6 are tight. Selling above roughly $1,500 per month makes any percentage fee hurt more than a plan upgrade. Run the calculator twice: today's numbers, and the numbers you expect in a year.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the calculator exclude card processing fees?
Every platform passes card processing through at roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, whether it is Stripe, PayPal or the platform's own payments. Since it hits all five platforms about equally, it cancels out in a comparison. Platform-specific fees, like Teachable Starter's 7.5% or LearnWorlds Starter's $5 per sale, do change the ranking, so those are counted.
What does custom pricing mean in the results?
Thinkific Plus, LearnWorlds Corporate and Teachable Custom have no published price: you get a quote after a sales call. The calculator never converts an unknown price into zero or a guess. When your requirements only fit a quote-based tier, the honest budget is a quote request.
Is annual billing always worth it?
On these platforms annual billing saves roughly 20 to 25 percent versus paying monthly, except Podia which listed no annual discount at our last check. The trade-off is commitment: pay monthly while you validate the platform, switch to annual once you have decided to stay.
Why is LearnDash counted differently?
LearnDash is a WordPress plugin, not a hosted service. The license is a yearly flat fee per site, and you run hosting, updates, backups and payment integration yourself. The calculator adds your own WordPress operations budget, set to $600 per year by default, so the total stays comparable with SaaS subscriptions.

Keep deciding

Thinkific plan comparison: Basic vs Start vs Grow vs Plus

What forces each Thinkific upgrade: admin seats, group selling, branding removal, API and SCORM. Prices, fees and caps per plan, with the math.

LMS transaction fees explained

The three fee layers on course platforms: card processing, platform transaction fees, and the break-even math for when a fee-free plan beats a cheap one.

Hosted LMS vs WordPress LMS: ownership and total cost

SaaS subscription versus a LearnDash license plus hosting, updates and backups. The yearly cost, the responsibility split, and who owns your data.

Best LMS for a training company selling to businesses

Selling training seats to companies? A grid that separates seats, client autonomy, per-client reporting and data separation across the main platforms.