Your Free Students Now Cost 50 Cents a Month Each. That's the Cheap Reading.

The most standard move in course marketing — the free mini-course at the top of the funnel — now has a meter running on it.

Teachable rewrote its usage-fee terms, and the page reads "Last updated September 28, 2026." The practical effect, according to two independent reads of the policy, is that a student who never paid you anything has a monthly price attached to them for as long as they stay enrolled.

The widely quoted version: $0.50 per student per month, above an allowance of 100, for every student added outside a paid Teachable checkout — free products, 100% coupons, admin imports, API enrollments and buyers migrated from another platform. Students who paid more than $0 through Teachable's own or custom payment gateways never count.

The count starts at zero when a school moves onto the policy; only students added afterward count. The charge is applied to the billing-period peak above 100.

The arithmetic gets uncomfortable fast. A billing-period peak of 500 countable students adds $200 a month. A 1,000-student free course means 900 chargeable heads, or $450 a month, sitting on top of Builder's $89 monthly price before anybody buys anything.

The number on Teachable's own page is not one number

Here is where the desk had to slow down.

Teachable's published fee schedule is not a flat fifty cents. Active students are billed at $0.10/month on Starter and Builder and $0.05/month on Growth and Advanced. Imported students are billed at $1.50/month on Starter, $1.00 on Builder, $0.75 on Growth and $0.50 on Advanced.

Read that way, $0.50 is the cheapest line in the table, not the standard rate. On the entry plan, an imported student is listed at three times the figure circulating in comparison posts.

The definitions matter as much as the prices. An "active student" is one currently participating in at least one product, service or offering, and can be imported or not. An "imported student" is anyone added by a method other than Teachable's native checkout — an administrative import or the API, for example.

So there are two meters, measuring overlapping populations, and a creator with a big free list can be standing in front of both.

The exemption is the actual story

Buried at the top of the same page is the clause that decides whether any of this touches you. If your school sells more than $10,000 a year, the fees don't apply — but that exemption only covers accounts that sold at least that amount, each year, on Teachable Native Gateways, and it's subject to the Fair Use Policy.

Which flips the entire framing. This is not a tax on big course businesses. Teachable's own FAQ says the student limits lift once a school sells $10,000 a year on the platform, so the caps squeeze small and free-heavy schools and stop mattering once you're selling.

The other trap is contamination. A free, imported or manual enrollment makes a student count even if they also pay for another enrollment. Give a paying customer a bonus course via 100% coupon and, on that reading, you've just moved them into the billable column.

The 280-student line

One comparison, built from both companies' pricing pages on October 14, found the crossover point. On monthly billing, Teachable Builder costs $89 plus $0.50 for each free student above 100, while Kajabi Basic costs a flat $179 up to 2,500 contacts. The two bills meet at 280 free students.

For anyone running a lead magnet, 280 is not a large number. It's one decent webinar.

Everyone moved at once

The free door has been closing across the category for two years, quietly, platform by platform.

Teachable's own free plan disappeared in the June 2025 restructure that retired Basic, Pro and Pro+. Podia removed its free plan in October 2024. Thinkific removed its free plan in 2025 and now runs a 14-day trial, with paid plans starting at $49/month, or $36 annually.

Kajabi pulled the Kickstarter plan from public pricing in January 2026, pushing the entry price to $179 a month, or $143 billed annually — the highest starting price in the mainstream course platform market. Existing customers were not grandfathered, which caused real anger in creator communities.

The community platforms did the same thing. Mighty Networks removed its $49 Community Plan entirely; the entry point is now Launch at $95 a month, or $79 annually, with a 2% fee on all payments. Circle retired its old $39–49 Basic plan in 2024, putting its floor at $89 a month.

That leaves one genuinely cheap door, and it isn't free either. Skool's Hobby plan is $9 a month and takes 10% + 30¢ of every sale, card processing included. On $1,000 a month in member payments, that fee alone costs $100 — the same as upgrading to Pro.

Before you start deleting students

The obvious reflex is to purge the dead weight from a free course and get back under the allowance. Teachable appears to have anticipated it.

The imported-student count is based on unique students imported during any twelve-month period, including students who were later removed or deleted, and Teachable "may charge for any period in which additional usage fees were not previously collected."

And if you exceed a limit and don't resolve it: Teachable says it will charge for the additional usage, and reserves the right to block your site from accepting new customers if it can't reach an agreement within 15 days of first contact.