What does Thinkific cost?
·Founder, Stakk
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28 October 2026
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8 min read
Thinkific now starts at $109 a month. Its pricing page lists Start at $109, Grow at $219 and Expand at $499, plus a Plus plan priced on a sales call. Paid yearly, the first three come down to $82, $164 and $374 a month. The $54 Basic plan that used to be the cheapest way in is no longer on the page, and Expand is new. There is no free plan, only a 30-day free trial. On Thinkific Payments, the page quotes 2.9% per sale. Checked 26 October 2026.
Every price here comes from Thinkific's own pricing page, read on the day this was written. If another page still tells you Thinkific starts at $54 a month, it was written before this change.
How much is Thinkific a month?
Thinkific costs $109 a month on its cheapest plan, Start. Thinkific's pricing page lists three plans with a price and one you get by talking to sales.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $109 a month | $82 a month (Thinkific says you save $330) | Unlimited courses, digital downloads and coaching products, order bumps, a custom domain, 2 admin seats, course sales split with 1 partner. Thinkific branding stays on your site |
| Grow | $219 a month | $164 a month (save $660) | Thinkific branding removed, 6 admin seats, splits with up to 3 partners |
| Expand | $499 a month | $374 a month (save $1,500) | 15 admin seats, splits with up to 10 partners |
| Plus | Talk to sales | Talk to sales | Admin seats "by plan", a custom student limit, unlimited partner splits |
The yearly toggle reads "Annual (Save 25%)". Yearly only saves money if you keep the plan for the whole year, so if you are not sure yet, the monthly price is the safer test.
Start, Grow and Expand each cap you at 10,000 current students. Thinkific counts a current student as someone who still has access to at least one course on your site. On Plus, the limit is custom.
Is there still a Thinkific Basic plan?
Not on the pricing page. When we read Thinkific's pricing on 11 September 2026, the cheapest plan was Basic, at $54 a month or $40 a month paid yearly. By 26 October 2026, Basic was gone from the page. Start at $109 is now the lowest price shown, and a new plan, Expand at $499, sits between Grow and Plus.
Our own arithmetic on Thinkific's published prices: Start at $109 a month today, minus Basic at $54 a month on 11 September 2026.
Basic was cheap for a reason. In September it allowed up to 5 digital downloads and 5 coaching or webinar sessions, and it left out certificates, graded quizzes and payment plans. Start was already the plan most of those things lived on.
What the pricing page does not say is what happens to sellers who joined on Basic before it went. If that is you, ask Thinkific before you assume anything about your price. For a new seller, the change is simple: the cheapest way onto Thinkific now costs about twice what it did in September. If that has you weighing other platforms, see our Thinkific alternatives.
Does Thinkific take a cut of your sales?
Only the processing fee, if you use Thinkific Payments. The pricing FAQ says: "When using our built-in processor, Thinkific Payments, we offer pricing in line with other processors like Stripe and Paypal at 2.9%." The page lists no other percentage taken from your sales, and it adds that "Customers processing payments on Thinkific Payments will not incur a third-party payment gateway fee."
Connect Stripe or PayPal yourself and the answer changes. The same FAQ says "an additional third-party payment gateway fee applies and it varies per plan type." The page does not give that fee for any plan, so we can't tell you the number. If you want to keep your own Stripe account, get that figure from Thinkific before you choose a plan.
The 2.9% is all the page shows for Thinkific Payments. It does not list a fixed amount per sale, or what international cards cost.
One more line from the FAQ: "No extra hold period by Thinkific." How fast a sale reaches your bank differs a lot from one platform to the next, and our breakdown of which platforms hold your money and which pay you directly covers that side of the choice.
Which Thinkific plans have order bumps and upsells?
All of them. The pricing page puts order bumps on Start, Grow, Expand and Plus, described as "Offer add-ons during checkout to increase order value." It puts After-Purchase Flows on all four as well: "Create a custom Thank You page, add product upsells, or send buyers to a specific product or custom URL after purchasing."
So the selling tools are not what you pay more for on Thinkific. The bigger plans buy you branding, seats and partner splits. Start keeps Thinkific's branding on your site, and Grow and up remove it.
One thing the pricing page does not say is how an after-purchase upsell gets paid for. It does not say whether the buyer taps once against the card they just used, or goes through a second checkout. If the one-tap part matters to you, test it during the trial.
That is a lower bar than some course platforms set. Podia's pricing page lists upsells only on its Shaker and Earthquaker plans, not on its entry Mover plan, and we looked at whether Podia has order bumps in a separate post.
Is Thinkific free?
No. Thinkific's FAQ answers "Does Thinkific have a free plan?" with: "No, instead, you can explore the whole platform with a 30-day free trial." It adds that you can build courses, host communities and test the AI tools "for a full month before you pay a cent."
Each paid plan has a "Start your free trial" button. When the 30 days end, the cheapest way to stay is Start at $109 a month, or $82 a month on yearly billing. Since Basic left the page, there is no plan under that.
If you want to sell a course for $0 a month, the closest thing we found is the Systeme.io free plan. It includes 1 course, 3 sales funnels and up to 2,000 contacts, with no transaction fees, and Systeme.io says it "never expires and does not require a credit card." Our Systeme.io pricing breakdown covers what happens when you outgrow it.
When is Thinkific worth $109 a month?
When you sell courses, or when you sell enough each month that $109 is less than a per-sale cut would take. Here is the second part as a sum, against Stakk's 10% + $0.50, which includes card processing. Thinkific's page gives its rate as 2.9% and shows no fixed amount, so the Thinkific column uses 2.9% alone.
| Plan | Monthly fee | Cost of a $27 sale | Cost of a $47 sale | Cost of a $97 sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stakk | $0 | $3.20 | $5.20 | $10.20 |
| Thinkific Start, on Thinkific Payments | $109 | $0.78 | $1.36 | $2.81 |
| Thinkific Grow, on Thinkific Payments | $219 | $0.78 | $1.36 | $2.81 |
On a $27 product, Stakk costs about $2.42 more per sale than Thinkific. Divide Start's $109 by that and you get 45.1. So from the 46th sale of a $27 product in a month, Thinkific Start costs less than Stakk. On a $47 product, it is from the 29th sale. On a $97 product, from the 15th. On yearly billing, at $82 a month, the $27 line moves to the 34th sale.
If your account also pays a fixed amount on each sale, each of those points moves a few sales later. Below them, the per-sale fee costs less, and in a month with no sales it costs nothing.
If your course is really a paid community, compare Skool's fees as well. It charges in a different way from both of these.
When would I send you somewhere else?
When you sell a course. Stakk does not host courses: no lessons, no student logins, no progress tracking, no quizzes, no certificates. It also has no communities, no subscriptions or recurring billing, no email marketing, US dollars only, and no prices above $999. It stores no files either. You paste a link to your product, and Stakk emails it to the buyer after payment. If your product is a course, Thinkific or Teachable is the better home for it, and Stakk is the wrong choice. And if cost is the whole decision, the Systeme.io free plan has no transaction fees, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card sale with "no setup fees, no monthly costs." Both take less from a sale than our 10% + $0.50.
What Stakk does is narrower. It puts an order bump and a post-purchase upsell on every account, with no plan to upgrade to. The bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two. The upsell is one tap against the card the buyer just used. It is a second charge and carries its own fee. The money lands in your own Stripe account, not a balance we hold. The layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.
Selling downloads, not a course?
If what you sell is a template, a guide or a preset pack, Thinkific's $109 a month pays for a lot of course tools you will not use. On Stakk there is no monthly fee and no plan. You pay 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, nothing when you do not sell, and the order bump and post-purchase upsell are on from day one. You can have a product live in about ten minutes.