Course Platform Fees Compared: What You Actually Keep (2026)

If you searched "course platform fees," you are probably staring at a pricing page trying to figure out what a percentage actually means for your bank account. That is harder than it should be, because platforms structure fees differently on purpose – a flat monthly price feels cheaper than a revenue share right up until sales grow, and a revenue share feels safer right up until it quietly takes a third of every dollar earned. This article breaks down how the major fee models work, shows real numbers for Gumroad, Teachable, Udemy, and Digistore24, and walks through what a self-hosted WordPress setup with MemberJet actually costs – including the parts that are not free.

One disclosure upfront: hafenstudios makes MemberJet, a free, self-hosted WordPress course plugin. We have an obvious interest in this comparison. That is exactly why the numbers below are grounded in the same rate data behind our own fee calculator, not adjusted to make anyone look worse than they are. If you are weighing an all-in-one platform like Kajabi rather than a pure marketplace or checkout tool, our separate Kajabi comparison covers that specific case.

Two fee models, and why the difference matters

Nearly every course platform's pricing boils down to one of two shapes, or a combination of both.

Revenue share. The platform takes a percentage of every sale, sometimes with no monthly fee at all. Sell nothing, pay nothing; sell a lot, pay a lot. It feels low-risk when starting out, which is exactly why marketplaces like Udemy lean on it – and exactly why it gets expensive once you are actually successful.

Flat fee plus transaction fee. The platform charges a fixed monthly subscription, then adds a smaller percentage or fixed amount per sale. This rewards volume: the monthly fee stays constant no matter how much you sell, so your effective cost per sale drops as sales grow – the opposite bet from revenue share.

A few platforms, including Digistore24 and Gumroad, use a hybrid: a percentage plus a small fixed amount per transaction, with no separate subscription. That sits between the two extremes and scales predictably with revenue.

Real rates: what each platform actually charges

These are the standard, publicly listed rates for each platform's most common plan as of July 2026. Platforms adjust pricing over time, so treat this as a snapshot rather than a permanent fact – the calculator above lets you edit any rate if a platform has since changed it.

A quick note on Udemy: instructors keep only 37% of a sale made through the open marketplace without their own coupon or referral link – the platform takes the other 63%. Sales driven with your own promotional link get a much better split, typically 97%. The 63% figure reflects marketplace-driven traffic, the scenario most new instructors experience while still building an audience.

Worked example: $100 course, 50 sales a month

Numbers are easier to feel than percentages. Here is what each platform's fees look like on a course priced at $100, selling 50 units a month – a realistic mid-size course business, not a hypothetical outlier.

At this volume, Teachable's flat monthly fee wins out over three years because its 7.5% transaction rate is lower than Gumroad's or Digistore24's combined percentage-plus-fixed structure, and its $36 monthly cost gets diluted across 50 sales a month. Udemy is in a different category entirely: at a 63% marketplace cut, you would need to sell your course at nearly triple the price just to net the same amount the other three platforms deliver at $100. That is the practical cost of relying on Udemy's built-in audience instead of building your own.

Run the same scenario at a $30 or $300 course price, and the ranking can shift – flat-fee platforms like Teachable get relatively more expensive at low prices, since the fixed $36 is a bigger share of a smaller total. That is the kind of shift a static table cannot show you but the fee calculator can, live, with your own numbers.

The self-hosted alternative, honestly priced

The pitch you will hear for self-hosting is usually "no fees." That is not quite true, and it is worth being straight about what actually changes.

What goes away: the platform's revenue share or per-sale transaction cut. If you run WordPress with a course plugin like MemberJet, nobody takes a percentage of your course sales just for hosting the checkout button. MemberJet itself is free under the GPLv2 license, with no license fee standing between you and launching.

What stays: two real costs that do not disappear just because you own the software.

• Hosting. Decent hosting for a course site with video and member logins runs roughly $10–$30 a month depending on traffic and provider – a fixed cost, not a percentage.
• Payment processing. Someone still has to move money from your customer's card to your bank account and handle chargebacks. If you route sales through a processor like Digistore24, MemberJet connects to it directly through its IPN interface – but you still pay Digistore24's processing fee on each sale, the same 7.9% + $1 rate shown above. Self-hosting removes the course-platform layer, not the payment-processing layer underneath it.

Run the same $100-course, 50-sales-a-month scenario through WordPress plus MemberJet plus Digistore24 as the processor, and the monthly cost lands around $455 (processing fee plus a modest hosting bill) – close to what Digistore24 costs on its own, since you are still paying that same processor. The difference is what you are not paying on top of it: no separate platform subscription, no marketplace cut, and no lock-in if you later switch hosts or processors. Over three years that is roughly $16,380, similar to using Digistore24 directly – the real savings versus Teachable are modest at this volume, and the real savings versus Udemy's marketplace cut are dramatic.

So the honest framing is not "self-hosting is free." It is "self-hosting removes one layer of fees and gives you ownership of your data in exchange for a small amount of setup and maintenance work." At low-to-mid sales volume, the fee savings alone might not justify switching. The ownership argument – no platform can lock you out, change your pricing, or shut down the platform you built your business on – is a separate, often stronger reason to consider it.

How to actually choose

Marketplaces like Udemy make sense with no existing audience, trading a large revenue share for built-in traffic – just treat that 63% cut as a customer-acquisition cost, not a hosting fee. Flat-fee platforms like Teachable make sense once sales volume is consistent enough that a fixed monthly cost beats a percentage. Percentage-plus-fixed processors like Digistore24 or Gumroad suit simplicity and no monthly commitment. Self-hosting with WordPress and MemberJet makes sense when lock-in, data ownership, or GDPR control matter as much as the fee math – the savings are real but, depending on your processor, may be smaller than the ownership benefit.

None of these is a wrong answer. They are different trades between convenience, cost, and control, and the right one depends on where your course business actually is right now.

For a closer look at replacing an all-in-one platform specifically, rather than a marketplace or checkout tool, see our Kajabi alternative comparison. For MemberJet's own pricing and what stays free versus what the paid Pro tier adds, see our pricing page.

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