What a 30-member community really costs
A $49/month community with 30 paying members brings in $1,470/month. Here is what each platform takes out of it once you add the subscription, the platform's transaction fee, and card processing where it is billed on top.
Skool's transaction fees are all-in — Skool acts as the merchant, so there is no separate Stripe charge behind the 10% or the 2.9%. Circle and Mighty Networks charge a platform fee and leave you paying processing separately, which is why their totals land higher than their sticker price suggests.
Skool Pro is cheaper — above $3,500 a month
Most comparison pages will not tell you this, so here it is plainly. Skool Pro's flat $99 + 2.9% beats Whop's 5.7% + $0.30 once your community clears roughly $3,500/month in revenue. Below that, the $99 floor is doing you damage. Above it, the flat fee is genuinely the better deal.
| Monthly revenue | Members at $49 | Whop cost | Skool Pro cost | Skool Hobby cost | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $490 | 10 | $31 | $116 | $61 | Whop |
| $1,470 | 30 | $93 | $151 | $165 | Whop |
| $3,528 | 72 | $223 | $223 | $383 | Break-even |
| $4,900 | 100 | $309 | $271 | $529 | Skool Pro |
| $14,700 | 300 | $928 | $615 | $1,569 | Skool Pro |
Whop: 3% platform fee on gated sales plus 2.7% + $0.30 processing. Skool Pro: $99/month plus 2.9% + $0.30 all-in. Skool Hobby: $9/month plus 10% + $0.30 all-in. Monthly billing, domestic cards, one community.
Whop beats Skool Hobby at every revenue level
This one is not a judgement call, it is arithmetic. Skool Hobby costs $9/month plus 10% all-in. Whop costs $0/month plus roughly 5.7%. The gap is $9 plus 4.3% of your revenue, at every single volume — there is no crossover point where Hobby wins.
Skool's own $9 tier is the cheapest way onto Skool and the most expensive way to process a payment in this comparison. It exists to get you onto the platform, and the 10% is designed to push you toward the $99 plan. Sources put the Hobby-to-Pro break-even at around $1,200 to $1,300 per month.
Six reasons people leave Skool
The $99 floor is unconditional
You pay it in your first month with zero members and in a month where every member churns. On annual billing it is $990 up front. For anyone validating an idea, that is the wrong shape of cost entirely.
Each community is another $99
There is no bundle and no multi-community discount. Running three communities costs $297/month in subscriptions before a single transaction fee. If you plan to launch several products, this compounds fast.
You cannot bring your Discord
Skool is a walled garden. It cannot gate an existing Discord server, a Telegram channel, a TradingView script or a software licence — your members have to move onto Skool. If your community already lives somewhere, that is a hard migration.
3.9% on high-ticket sales
Skool's help centre confirms a second tier: transactions above roughly $899 are charged 3.9% + $0.30 rather than 2.9%. Their own example puts a $999 sale at a $959.74 payout. If you sell cohorts or annual plans, that is the rate that applies.
Missing course features
No quizzes, assignments, certificates or drip content. No email marketing, no funnels, no custom domain, no CRM integrations. Skool is deliberately minimal, which is a feature until it is a blocker.
No marketplace to find you buyers
All the traffic has to be yours. Skool has no meaningful buyer-side discovery engine, so your $99/month buys you software, not customers.
What Skool does better than anything else
Skool is not overpriced software with nothing behind it. Four things it genuinely wins on:
Gamification that actually works
Points, levels and leaderboards are Skool's real product, and they drive daily engagement that plain forum tools do not get close to. If churn is your problem rather than fees, this is worth more than the $99.
Fees that are genuinely all-in
Skool acts as the merchant, so there is no separate Stripe charge behind the headline rate. It also absorbs Stripe's international-card and subscription surcharges that most platforms pass to you — a real advantage if your members are global.
Tax compliance handled
Skool calculates, adds and remits VAT and sales tax where required. On platforms where you connect your own processor, that becomes your problem, and it is not a small one once you sell across borders.
Radical simplicity
Two plans, identical features, no configuration. You can have a community running in under an hour. Every platform that beats Skool on price costs you time somewhere else.
Why Whop suits most people leaving Skool
Whop is free to open, charges 3% on sales that use its access automations plus 2.7% + $0.30 processing, and has no per-community fee. For a community under roughly $3,500/month, or anyone running more than one product, it is the cheaper structure.
Where it beats Skool
- No monthly floor at all — you pay nothing in a month with no sales
- Unlimited products and communities without another subscription each time
- Gates your existing Discord, Telegram, TradingView scripts and licence keys instead of forcing a migration
- A buyer marketplace that sends real traffic, with no extra commission since the 30% marketplace fee was removed in May 2025
- Whop reported over $400M paid out to creators in 2025
Where it does not
- Above roughly $3,500/month in a single community, Skool Pro's flat fee is cheaper
- No gamification, points or leaderboards — Skool's engagement engine has no Whop equivalent
- Not a merchant of record in the way Skool is; your tax position is different
- Payouts carry their own fees, and international cards add roughly 1.5% plus about 1% on conversion
- The audience skews young and business-oriented — a fitness or parenting community will not find members in the marketplace
Go deeper
No monthly floor
Opening a Whop costs nothing and takes about ten minutes. Keep your Skool community running while you test it — run both for a month and compare the payouts.
Start selling on Whop →