Thinkific pricing in 2026: plan prices, sale fees and the full yearly cost
Thinkific raised its prices on August 13, 2026, for the first time since 2022, and its entry plan, Start, now costs $109 a month, or $978 a year paid up front. Grow costs $219 a month or $1,968 a year, Expand costs $499 a month or $4,488 a year, and Plus is priced by quote. There is no free plan, and every account begins with a 30-day free trial.
By Ryan Scott, founder of LockersUpdated November 11, 20266 min read
Thinkific plan prices after the August 2026 increase
On Start, Grow and Expand, Thinkific also adds a fee to each sale you take through your own Stripe account, and removing Thinkific's branding or adding a branded phone app means a higher plan or a paid add-on. At $1,000 a month in course sales, a year on Start paid yearly with Stripe comes to $1,218 before card processing. The same year on Lockers Basic comes to $670, and you can build your community and courses on Lockers Free for $0 before you sell anything.
| Plan | Paid monthly | Paid yearly (one charge) | Communities and spaces | Admins | Course video bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $109 a month | $978 a year ($82 a month) | 1 community, 10 spaces | 2 | 200 GB a month |
| Grow | $219 a month | $1,968 a year ($164 a month) | 3 communities, 20 spaces | 6 | 400 GB a month |
| Expand | $499 a month | $4,488 a year ($374 a month) | 10 communities, 200 spaces | 15 | 1,000 GB a month |
| Plus | By quote | By quote | Unlimited | By contract | From 7,500 GB a month |
Start, Grow and Expand each allow up to 10,000 current students. Thinkific counts a current student as one person with unexpired access to at least one course, and that includes people in your free courses and people on a free trial of a paid subscription. Someone who belongs only to your community, with no course enrollment, does not count.
Every plan includes unlimited courses, quizzes, assignments, certificates, paid memberships, live events inside the community and a custom domain. Grow removes Thinkific's branding from your site, and it is also the first plan with the API and webhooks, bulk email to students and phone support. Exams and single sign-on are on Plus.
Yearly billing saves 25%, and Thinkific takes it as one charge at the start of the year. Twelve monthly payments on Start come to $1,308, which is $330 more than the yearly price.
The 2% to 0.5% fee Thinkific adds to Stripe sales
When you take payments through your own Stripe account, Thinkific adds a gateway fee of 2% on Start, 1% on Grow and 0.5% on Expand, and Plus has none. The fee applies to creators in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU, and Thinkific waives it after your first $1 million in sales in a calendar year. Stripe's own processing fee is charged on top.
Thinkific Payments, its built-in processor, has no gateway fee. US card processing on it starts at 2.9% plus 30¢, with extra charges for international cards, currency conversion, and subscriptions or payment plans. When Thinkific's sales tax and VAT tool runs on a sale to a buyer in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU or Switzerland, it adds 0.5% of the buyer's total, even when the tax comes to zero. Refunds cost nothing to send, and Thinkific keeps the original processing fees.
Costs outside the Thinkific plan price
A branded mobile app is a $199 a month add-on, which is $2,388 a year, and it is included only on select Plus contracts. A second community means moving from Start to Grow, because Start includes one. Taking Thinkific's name off your school also means Grow, and so does connecting other tools through the API.
A creator who wants Thinkific's branding removed and a branded app pays for Grow plus the app: $1,968 plus $2,388, or $4,356 for the year before any fee on a sale.
Thinkific starts with a 30-day trial and prorates upgrades
The 30-day free trial covers Start, Grow and Expand, and you can change plans or cancel during it. After the trial, the plan bills monthly or yearly. Upgrades are prorated. A downgrade removes the higher plan's features right away, and a cancellation keeps your plan until the end of the period you paid for, while add-ons stop at once. When a paid term ends, the site owner loses access to course management, though students can keep the products they bought.
What a year of Thinkific costs at $1,000 a month in sales
A year at $1,000 a month in course sales, or $12,000 for the year, shows how much of each platform's cost comes from the plan price and how much from fees on sales.
| Platform and plan | Plan for the year | Platform fee on $12,000 | Year total before card processing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific Start, paid yearly, with Stripe | $978 | $240 (2%) | $1,218 |
| Thinkific Start, paid yearly, with Thinkific Payments | $978 | $0, plus 0.5% where the tax tool runs | $978 to $1,038 |
| Thinkific Grow, paid yearly, with Stripe | $1,968 | $120 (1%) | $2,088 |
| Lockers Basic, paid yearly | $70 | $600 (5%) | $670 |
| Lockers Pro, paid yearly | $670 | $120 (1%) | $790 |
On Thinkific, most of the year's cost is the plan price, which you pay whether you sell one course or a hundred. On Lockers Basic, $600 of the $670 is the 5% fee on sales you have already made, so the cost rises only when your sales do.
Lockers costs $0 until you sell and $70 a year on Basic
Lockers puts your community, your courses and your calendar in one place called a Locker, and the first plan is free for as long as you use it. Free includes unlimited members, unlimited courses, a community feed, events with registration and direct messages, and it never asks for a card. So you can build your course and run a free event for your first members before you pay anything, then move to Basic when you want hosted video and course sales.
Selling starts on Basic, at $7 a month or $70 a year. Basic adds course sales and event ticket sales in a Locker that is free to join, with a 5% platform fee on each sale, and unlimited hosted video for your lessons. Each video can be up to four hours long.
Pro is $67 a month or $670 a year, and it drops the platform fee to 1% on every sale, membership renewals included. On yearly billing, Pro costs less than Basic once your sales pass $1,250 a month, because the 4 percentage points you save on each sale then exceed the $600 difference in plan price.
What Lockers Pro includes for $67 a month
At $670 a year, Pro costs about a third of Thinkific Grow's $1,968, and it includes the API and webhooks that Thinkific keeps for Grow and higher plans.
- Paid memberships, monthly or yearly, that include every course in the Locker
- Your own domain
- The API and webhooks, to connect your CRM, calendar and other tools
- Live hosting with recording for up to 100 people, with 200 attendee-hours included each month
- Quizzes, written assignments, completion certificates and lesson scheduling
- An AI lesson tutor that answers members' questions from your lesson text and transcripts
- Learning reports that show who has started and who has finished each course
- 25 GB of file storage, with hosted video unlimited and separate
Every plan has unlimited members and unlimited courses, so your plan price stays the same as your student count grows.
Start your Locker before you pay for a plan
Create your Locker at lockers.social/start, choose your address, and open the Classroom to start a course in Course studio. When you are ready to sell, choose Basic or Pro from Admin, connect Stripe, and set the course price. Upgrading keeps everything in the same Locker, with your members, lessons and events in place.
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