Podia vs Teachable: what you actually keep
Last updated: September 23, 2026
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Teachable. If you sign up through one of them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what you pay, and it does not change the arithmetic on this page. Every review states how close we got to the product. Learn more.
How well we know this tool: Not hands-on — published pricing only — all figures are computed from each vendor's own pricing page. We opened a Podia trial in August 2026 but did not use it for this page, and we have never held a Teachable account. What this means.
Podia and Teachable are built the same way at the bottom of the range: a cheap entry plan that takes a cut of every sale, and a dearer plan that takes none. Which of the four is cheapest is not a property of the platform. It is a property of your monthly revenue. On annual billing the first line is crossed at $520 a month — 3 sales at $200 — and the last one at $540.
The short answer
There is no single winner here, and the arithmetic will not produce one. On annual billing and published pricing, the plan that leaves you the most money changes hands 2 times as revenue rises:
| Monthly revenue | Keeps the most | Transaction fee | Plan price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to $520 | Teachable Starter | 7.5% | $29 /mo |
| $520 to $540 | Podia Mover | 5% | $42 /mo |
| Above $540 | Teachable Builder | — | $69 /mo |
Two things in that table matter more than the ordering. First, the middle band is $20 wide. Podia Mover is the outright cheapest option only inside that sliver, so "Podia is cheaper" and "Teachable is cheaper" are both true statements about different sellers, and neither is a fact about the platforms.
Second, above $540 a month the only comparison still worth making is between the two fee-free plans, and that gap never moves at all. Teachable Builder and Podia Shaker both take 0% of your sales, so the only difference left is the plan price — a flat $15 a month on annual billing, $10 on monthly, forever. That is the entire fee case between them at scale, and it is small enough that a single feature you would otherwise pay for elsewhere outweighs it.
What we assumed
- Annual billing for the main tables, because it is cheaper on both platforms. Monthly billing moves the crossovers, and it moves them in Podia's favor — there is a section on that below.
- The platform's own checkout, at the card processing rate each company publishes. All four plans here carry 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale.
- An average sale of $200, so $2,000 a month is 10 sales and $10,000 is 50. The flat $0.30 per sale means the number of sales changes your take-home even at the same revenue.
- Nothing about features. This is fee arithmetic. It cannot tell you whether a platform is pleasant to use, and this article does not pretend otherwise.
The formula behind every figure on this page:
Monthly cost = plan price + revenue × (transaction fee + card processing) + sales ×
$0.30
What you keep = revenue − monthly cost
What each plan leaves you
| Plan | Sticker | Keep at $500 | Keep at $1,000 | Keep at $2,000 | Keep at $5,000 | Keep at $10,000 | Fee on sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podia Mover | $42 /mo | $418 83.5% | $878 87.8% | $1,797 89.8% | $4,556 91.1% | $9,153 91.5% | 5% |
| Podia Shaker | $84 /mo | $401 80.2% | $886 88.5% | $1,855 92.8% | $4,764 95.3% | $9,611 96.1% | — |
| Teachable Starter | $29 /mo | $418 83.7% | $866 86.6% | $1,760 88.0% | $4,444 88.9% | $8,916 89.2% | 7.5% |
| Teachable Builder | $69 /mo | $416 83.2% | $901 90.0% | $1,870 93.5% | $4,779 95.6% | $9,626 96.3% | — |
Annual billing, $200 average sale. Highlighted rows lead at one of the 5 revenue levels.
At $500 a month the whole table spans $18, and the closest three rows sit within $2.50 of each other. Choosing on fees at that level is choosing on noise. At $10,000 the same table spans $710 a month, or $8,520 a year, and the choice starts to be worth arguing about.
Where the money goes at $5,000 a month
Three costs come out before you see anything, and only the first is on the pricing page.
| Plan | You keep | Total cost | Plan fee | Transaction fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Builder | $4,779 | $222 | $69 | — | $153 |
| Podia Shaker | $4,764 | $237 | $84 | — | $153 |
| Podia Mover | $4,556 | $445 | $42 | $250(5%) | $153 |
| Teachable Starter | $4,444 | $557 | $29 | $375(7.5%) | $153 |
The card processing column is identical on all four rows, because both companies publish the same 2.9% plus $0.30. It changes what you keep. It cannot break the tie between them, so ignore it when you are choosing and remember it when you are forecasting.
Staying on the entry plan at this revenue costs $208 a month on Podia ($2,496 a year) and $335 a month on Teachable ($4,020 a year). Those are the numbers to compare against whatever the higher plan unlocks.
Every crossover, solved
A transaction fee is a percentage and a plan upgrade is a flat number, so for any pair there is exactly one revenue where they cost the same:
Crossover revenue = (difference in plan price) ÷ (difference in transaction fee rate)
| Cheaper below | Cheaper above | Crossover, annual billing | Crossover, monthly billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter | Podia Mover | $520 (3 sales) | $400 (3 sales) |
| Teachable Starter | Teachable Builder | $533 (3 sales) | $667 (4 sales) |
| Podia Mover | Teachable Builder | $540 (3 sales) | $800 (4 sales) |
| Teachable Starter | Podia Shaker | $733 (4 sales) | $800 (4 sales) |
| Podia Mover | Podia Shaker | $840 (5 sales) | $1,000 (5 sales) |
These crossovers do not depend on your average sale price. Both companies publish the same card processing rate on all four plans, so the per-sale $0.30 cancels out of the subtraction and only the transaction fee difference is left. Your average price changes your take-home; it does not move the line.
Podia Shaker and Teachable Builder are missing from that table because they never cross. Both take 0% of sales at the same processing rate, so the cheaper plan price wins at every revenue from zero upwards. There is no level at which the arithmetic reverses.
Monthly billing moves the line toward Podia
Committing to a year is cheaper on both platforms, but it is not free — it is a year of commitment to software you may not be using in three months. If you pay monthly, the picture changes:
| Monthly revenue | Keeps the most, paying monthly | Plan price |
|---|---|---|
| Up to $400 | Teachable Starter | $39 /mo |
| $400 to $800 | Podia Mover | $49 /mo |
| Above $800 | Teachable Builder | $89 /mo |
The window where Podia Mover leads widens from $20 on annual billing to $400 on monthly — from $400 to $800 a month. If you are early, unsure, and unwilling to prepay a year, that is the one genuine pricing argument for Podia in this comparison, and it disappears the moment you commit annually.
What is not in our data
We hold 2 Podia plans and 3 Teachable plans. Podia publishes a tier above Shaker — Earthquaker — and it is deliberately absent here. Its annual price is on the pricing page but its monthly price was not retrievable from that page, and a plan we can only half-verify is a plan we do not publish. If you are large enough for that tier, this article does not cover you and you should read the price off Podia's own page.
Teachable's Growth plan is in our data and is left out of the tables for a different reason: it charges the same 0% on sales and the same processing rate as Builder, at $70 a month more. On fees alone it can never overtake Builder, at any revenue. It is a features purchase, and features are not what this page measures.
Who this is not for
- Anyone below the first crossover. At $500 a month the four plans are within $18 of each other, and every crossover on this page sits above that. Pick whichever one you can stand to use, and revisit this page when you are selling more.
- Anyone who needs a specific feature. Communities, email sending limits, student counts, quizzes, affiliate tooling, drip scheduling — none of it is priced here, and any one of those can be worth more than the $15 a month that separates the two fee-free plans.
- Anyone selling outside the United States, or in another currency. Cross-border and currency-conversion card surcharges are billed on top of the published domestic rate, and we do not have a verified figure for either platform. Neither those surcharges nor VAT and GST handling are in these numbers.
- Anyone who wants a verdict. The honest output of this arithmetic is a crossover, not a recommendation. If you wanted to be told which one to buy, this page will disappoint you.
- Anyone who wants an opinion on how these platforms feel to use. The box at the top of this article is not a formality — no account was opened on either platform for this comparison, so nothing here is a judgement about the products.
Check the numbers yourself
Every price on this page comes from the vendors' own pricing pages, checked September 23, 2026:
- Podia — https://www.podia.com/pricing
- Teachable — https://teachable.com/pricing
Watch for one trap if you check them: on both sites the price you see depends on a monthly/annual toggle that rewrites the page, so a screenshot or a saved copy captures only one of the two answers. Every plan on this page is recorded with both.
Our course platform fee calculator runs this same formula on your own revenue, sale count and billing choice, and the wider comparison puts these four plans against Kajabi and Thinkific.
One of these two pays us. The other does not.
Teachable pays us a commission if you start a trial through our link. Podia does not pay us anything — we applied and have not been accepted, and the plans above are worked out the same way either way.
At $5,000 a month the most you keep is on Teachable Builder, and Teachable is the one that pays us. We are not asking you to take that on trust. The gap is $15 a month against Podia Shaker, it comes from published prices, and at other revenue levels in the table above the winner changes. Move the revenue and you can watch it change.
- Start a Teachable trial — affiliate link
It costs you nothing extra, and it changes nothing above. If the cheaper plan for you is the one that pays us nothing, that is what the table says and we have left it saying it.
Prices checked September 23, 2026 against each vendor's public pricing page. If a number here is out of date, tell us at hello@feesandfigures.com and we will fix it and note the change at the top of this article.