Udemy Turned Its First Profit Last Year. Instructor Payouts Fell $23 Million.

The number instructors wanted was $168 million.

That is what Udemy says instructors collectively earned in 2025, with the company's top 11 instructors each earning more than $1 million and nearly 1,600 instructors earning more than the average annual income in their home country.

A year earlier the same disclosure read differently. In 2024, instructors earned $190.6 million, the top 13 each cleared $1 million, and nearly 1,700 beat their country's average income.

Two years earlier it read better still: in 2023, instructors earned $208.2 million.

So the pool has shrunk by roughly $40 million in two years. And in the same stretch, Udemy did something it had never done since going public.

The first profitable year

Net income was $3.8 million in 2025, compared with a net loss of $85.3 million the prior year. Revenue came in at $789.8 million and total gross margin hit 66%, up from 63%.

That is an $89 million swing into the black, and the filing does not leave the cause to interpretation.

On the enterprise side, the 10-K attributes the improvement in segment adjusted gross margin primarily to the reduction in instructor revenue share from 20% to 17.5% for all subscription offerings, effective January 1, 2025. The consumer segment margin improvement is credited to the same cut, alongside the shift toward consumer subscriptions.

The pricing analysis at Ruzuku puts the whole-company version plainly: net income improved by $89.3 million in 2025, and Udemy attributes the swing to "the reduction in the instructor revenue share for all subscription offerings," among other factors.

This was the plan, announced out loud. Udemy told investors in late 2023 it would cut the instructor subscription share from 25% to 15% by 2026, with the first step to 20% on January 1, 2024, and said the adjustment was expected to improve future gross margin.

What came with it was a promise. When the new model was announced, Udemy said "total instructor payouts will equal or exceed their current levels each year." Class Central's analysis found the change cost instructors about $30 million in 2024, pushing total payouts back to 2022 levels.

2025 pushed them lower again.

Where the money actually goes now

The headline percentages on Udemy's rate card have not changed. Instructors still receive 97% on sales made through their own coupon or referral link, and 37% on sales where no instructor promotion was used.

The mix is what moved. Consolidated subscription revenue reached $566.0 million in 2025, or 72% of total revenue, a 600 basis point expansion. Subscription consumption does not pay 37%. It pays a share of a pool.

Ruzuku's read of the final annual report is the cleanest blended figure available: content costs were 32% of consumer segment revenue in 2025, down from 35% in 2024. On the enterprise side the same filing shows 16% of segment revenue going to content costs, against consumer's 32% — and says enterprise revenue is expected to keep growing faster.

That is the structural point, and it has nothing to do with how good your course is. The segment Udemy expects to grow is the one that pays instructors about half as much.

Meanwhile the consumer marketplace that pays the better rate is shrinking. Consumer segment revenue fell 9% to $265.8 million. Paid consumer subscribers more than doubled to 343,000, while monthly average buyers slipped to 1.25 million in Q4. More subscribers, fewer buyers.

The arithmetic nobody puts on a landing page

Supply went up while the pool went down. Instructors were publishing more than 6,300 new courses a month in 2025, up from more than 5,000 a month the previous year. Udemy ended 2025 with more than 90,000 instructors and over 290,000 courses; split evenly, the $168 million pool works out to less than $1,900 each — though the real distribution is far more concentrated.

Eleven millionaires. Nearly 1,600 people out-earning their country's average. Everyone else dividing what is left, against a catalog growing by 75,000 courses a year.

Where the money does still sit is specific and job-shaped. The categories making real money are concentrated in job-linked technology, certification and workplace-software topics, with AI-assisted work producing the strongest new growth. GitHub Copilot is the standout: Udemy Business consumption grew 13,534% year over year, with leading courses already at six-figure student counts.

The last cut landed in January

On January 1, 2026, the final step took effect: the instructor pool for every subscription product is now 15% of monthly subscription revenue, split by share of minutes consumed. Marketplace sales were unchanged at 97% instructor-promoted, 37% otherwise.

This is also the second time. In 2019, Udemy cut the instructor revenue share from 50% to 25%.

And there is no longer a standalone Udemy to appeal to. Coursera and Udemy announced their merger agreement on December 17, 2025, and the transaction closed on May 11, 2026. Class Central valued the all-stock deal at roughly $1.8 billion, down from $2.5 billion at announcement.

The comparison inside that deal is the one worth pinning to the wall. In 2025 Udemy generated more revenue than Coursera, $790 million against $757 million, but Udemy's instructors received an estimated $169 million while Coursera's partners received an estimated $271 million. Across the same period, instructor payouts as a share of Udemy revenue fell from 38% in 2020 to around 21% in 2025.

For anyone deciding whether to hand a marketplace the next six months of their life: the upload is still free, the audience is still enormous, and the published rate card still says 37%. The audited number says 32 cents on the consumer dollar, 16 on the enterprise one, and a pool that is getting smaller while the catalog gets bigger.