Fees & Figures

Which countries can use Thinkific Payments, and what you pay outside them

Last updated: September 23, 2026

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Thinkific. 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: Free trial — 30-day trial on the Start plan, August to September 2026, opened from Japan. We read the payment settings and the billing page and kept screenshots of both. We did not connect Stripe or PayPal or take a payment, so the fee figures here are arithmetic on Thinkific's published rates rather than something observed on a payout. What this means.

Thinkific's pricing page prices card processing at 2.9% through Thinkific Payments, and says that using Stripe or PayPal instead carries a gateway fee. Whether you can use Thinkific Payments at all depends on where your business is based, and that list lives on a help page. This article lists the 36 countries, shows what the payment settings look like from outside them, and answers the question that matters for the arithmetic — whether the gateway fee follows you — in Thinkific's own words rather than ours.

Correction, September 14, 2026. An earlier version said that a seller anywhere outside Thinkific's gateway fee list does not pay the fee for keeping Stripe. Thinkific's exemption covers countries where Thinkific Payments is not available. The 6 countries that have Thinkific Payments but are not on the fee list are not covered by it, and, as the section on them says, we cannot tell you whether sellers there pay.

The 36 countries

Thinkific's summary sentence, from its supported-countries page:

Thinkific Payments is the default payment processor for creators located in USA, Canada, UK, EU, Switzerland, Norway, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.

The full list on the same page:

That is the 27 EU member states without exception, plus Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. Note what the sentence and the list say and do not say: the page is about where your business is located, and it does not describe a country-by-country signup test we could run. We are in none of the 36, which is why we can show you the other side of the line.

What the payment settings look like from outside the list

On a Thinkific site opened from Japan, on the Start plan, the payment settings show a single block headed “Third-party payment providers” with two entries, Stripe and PayPal. There is no Thinkific Payments section and no button to set one up. Four sentences on that screen are worth quoting:

The word “also” in the first sentence is the reason we are not writing “Thinkific Payments is hidden outside the list” as a finding. It could be that the screen is the same everywhere and the Thinkific Payments block only appears once you set it up. We saw one account in one country; the sentence is consistent with both readings.

Is the gateway fee charged outside the list?

The settings screen says third-party providers “charge a gateway fee on all transactions”, and Thinkific publishes the rates: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start, 1% on Grow. Read those two things together and the natural conclusion is that a seller outside the list, who can only use Stripe, pays the fee on everything. That conclusion is wrong, and we know because we drew the same one about Kajabi a fortnight ago and had to correct it. The answer for Thinkific was on the fee FAQ all along; we had read that page only as far as the rate table on 3 September, and it was the Kajabi correction that sent us back to the rest of it. Thinkific asks itself the question directly:

TCommerce is not available in my country, will I still be charged this fee?
No, you will not be charged a fee if you are not able to use TCommerce in your country.

The same page names the countries where the fee does apply: 30 of them. “This fee was rolled out for customers in the US, Canada, and the UK on July 3, 2024.” Then, “…as of November 6th, 2024, the third-party payment gateway fee applies to EU customers who continue using Stripe” — the 27 EU states, all of them. It also puts a ceiling on it: “This fee will only apply to your first $1M in sales made through Thinkific in a calendar year, after that we will waive the fee.” And it exempts the top plan: “No, at this time, the third-party payment gateway fee will not apply to Plus customers.”

So for a seller outside the 36 countries, on Thinkific's published terms, the costs are the plan and whatever Stripe charges in your country; Thinkific publishes no other fee for that case. The gateway fee is a cost for sellers inside the fee list who keep their own Stripe instead of moving to Thinkific Payments.

What that is worth, in dollars

Annual billing, $200 average sale, your own Stripe connected either way. The only thing that changes between the two columns is whether the gateway fee is charged. Stripe's own rate is held at 2.9% + $0.30 in both columns, which is the rate Thinkific publishes for US sellers; if Stripe charges you more in your country, both columns move down together.

Plan Keep, where Thinkific Payments is unavailable Keep, in a fee country Gateway fee
Thinkific Basic $4,808 96.2% $4,558 91.1% $250 5%
Thinkific Start $4,766 95.3% $4,666 93.3% $100 2%
Thinkific Grow $4,684 93.7% $4,634 92.7% $50 1%

At $5,000 a month and 25 sales. The "Gateway fee" column is the monthly difference and the rate behind it.

On Basic that is $250 a month, or $3,000 a year, that a seller in the fee list pays for keeping Stripe and, by Thinkific's FAQ, a seller where Thinkific Payments is not available does not. It is the inverse of what you would expect a country restriction to cost: being outside Thinkific Payments' 36 countries takes Thinkific Payments away from you, and the FAQ says it does not add a fee. The 6 countries that have Thinkific Payments but are not on the fee list are in the next section.

6 countries in the gap

The two lists are not the same length. Thinkific Payments is available in 36 countries; the gateway fee is charged in 30. Every fee country is a Thinkific Payments country, which is consistent. But Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland can use Thinkific Payments and are not named in the fee list.

We cannot tell you whether a seller in those 6 countries pays the gateway fee on Stripe. The FAQ's exemption is for people who “are not able to use TCommerce”, which they are able to. The fee list does not name them. The page also says the fee will follow as TCommerce reaches new countries, with “ample notice”. If you are in one of them, that is one email to Thinkific's support before you decide between Stripe and Thinkific Payments, and we would rather say so than guess.

PayPal: two limits, and one thing we saw that the help page does not say

Thinkific's page on alternatives for unsupported countries lists PayPal first, with conditions:

You can accept payments through PayPal on the Grow plan and higher.

One-time payments only means no subscriptions and no payment plans through PayPal. USD only means a seller who prices in another currency cannot use it at all. The first limit is repeated on the settings screen; the USD limit we have seen only on this help page. The second is the one that decides it for anyone not selling in dollars.

The plan condition is the part we cannot reconcile. The help page says PayPal is available “on the Grow plan and higher”. Our trial site was on Start, one plan below Grow, and its payment settings showed the PayPal section — the one-time-purchases note, then fields for a PayPal email, a merchant ID and an IPN URL. We did not enter a PayPal account, so we do not know whether the fields would have accepted one or refused at the next step. Showing a form is not the same as letting you use it, and a help page can be older than the product. We are recording both and deciding neither.

The other routes Thinkific lists for unsupported countries are Stripe Atlas, an external payment gateway of your own and CheckoutJoy from the Thinkific App Store. We have not opened any of them and they are outside this page.

Tax on the trial's invoice

The trial's billing page also carried a tax line for the Start plan's invoice; that line, and Thinkific's own words on tax on your plan and on your sales, are in Thinkific pricing.

Who this is not for

What this page cannot tell you

Check it yourself

The country list and the default-processor sentence are on Thinkific's supported-countries page. The fee list, the rates, the $1M cap, the Plus exemption and the answer about unsupported countries are on the third-party payment gateway fee FAQ. The PayPal conditions and the other routes are on the alternate payment options page. All three were read on 2026-09-13. Plan prices come from https://www.thinkific.com/pricing/, checked September 23, 2026. The settings and billing screens are from our own trial, September 2026.

To put your own revenue through the same formula, our course platform fee calculator has a checkbox for using your own payment provider. What each Thinkific plan costs, and what Start and Grow add, is on Thinkific pricing.

If you are going to sign up anyway

This is our affiliate link: start a Thinkific trial. If you subscribe through it, Thinkific pays us a commission, and it costs you nothing extra. It also changes no number on this page; the finding that the fee does not follow you outside the list is Thinkific's sentence, not ours, and it is the opposite of what would make Thinkific look expensive.

If you are outside the 36 countries, read the PayPal section before you use the link. We are paid the same whether you do or not.

Country lists and quotes read 2026-09-13; prices checked September 23, 2026 against the vendor's public pages. 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.