Whop vs Teachable (2026): Which Is Better for Selling Courses?

Teachable vs Whop: the short version

Teachable vs Whop is a choice between a course platform with a monthly plan and a platform that charges only per sale. Teachable costs $39 to $189 a month on its public plans, and Teachable Payments then takes 2.9% + 30¢ per US card sale, plus 0.7% on renewals. Whop has no plan fee and takes 2.7% + 30¢, plus 0.5% on subscription charges.

For course-only sellers, that makes Whop the cheaper option at every revenue level we checked, by the widest margin on Teachable's Starter plan. What Teachable's price buys that Whop charges extra for is tax: Teachable Payments collects and remits sales tax and VAT for 0.5% of taxed sales, while Whop's tax service costs 2%. If you're weighing more than these two, our ranked Teachable alternatives cover Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia and others, and Whop vs Kajabi compares Whop with the priciest course platform of the group.

What you pay on each platform

Teachable's cost is a plan plus processing and, for some schools, usage fees. Whop's cost is processing only, plus payout and optional add-on fees.

Prices as of October 2026, from each company's pricing and help pages. Sources at the end of this page.

Teachable's Advanced plan, $399 a month or $309 billed yearly, is still listed as self-serve in Teachable's help center but no longer appears on the pricing page, which shows a Custom plan instead.

A $49 membership at three revenue levels

Whop costs less than all three public Teachable plans at each level below. We used the same assumptions on both sides: a $49 monthly membership, US cards, Teachable billed monthly on Teachable Payments' default Standard bundle, and no add-ons, payout fees, taxes or currency conversion.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Monthly cost = plan price + revenue × fee rate + charges × $0.30, where charges = revenue ÷ $49. The fee rate is 3.2% on Whop (2.7% card plus 0.5% billing), 3.6% on Builder and Growth (2.9% card plus 0.7% on renewals) and 11.1% on Starter, which adds its 7.5% transaction fee. At $10,000 a month, Whop costs $129 a month less than Builder, or $1,548 a year, and $829 a month less than Starter. Billing Teachable yearly takes $10, $20 or $50 a month off Starter, Builder and Growth, which doesn't change the order.

A $199 course sold once

The gap narrows for one-time sales, because neither platform adds its subscription surcharge. Whop charges 2.7% + 30¢ and Teachable Builder 2.9% + 30¢, so most of what you save on Whop is Builder's plan price.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Costs the headline rates leave out

Both platforms have charges outside these tables. On Teachable:

• The Standard bundle adds 0.5% to sales where tax is assessed, and the Global bundle, which adds local payment methods and buy now, pay later, charges 2.8% on every sale instead.
• Schools created since September 3, 2026 pay $0.50 a month for each student added without a Teachable purchase beyond the first 100, and $15 a month per terabyte of video above 1,000 GB. Older schools keep plan-based student limits until their first renewal on or after April 30, 2027.
• Refunds don't return processing fees. According to a Teachable email posted on r/elearning, Teachable also stopped returning its own transaction fees on refunded sales from November 6, 2025.

On Whop:

• Whop lists $0.07 per transaction for Radar fraud screening, about $14 a month at $10,000 in $49 memberships.
• Payouts cost $2.50 for next-day ACH or 4% + $1 for instant, and currency conversion adds 1%.
• Buy now, pay later costs 15% per financed sale once you're approved.

Plug in your own numbers with the Whop vs Teachable fee calculator, and see Teachable's full price list and 2025 to 2026 changes or Whop's complete fee schedule.

Courses and the student experience

Both platforms handle a standard video course with quizzes and certificates. They differ on where certificates sit in the pricing and on extra assessment tools.

Teachable's course tools include drip schedules, auto-graded quizzes, short-answer assessments, compliance settings and AI course-creation tools. Certificates start on Growth at $189 a month. Students learn on the web or in Teachable's iOS and Android apps, and the iOS app supports offline viewing. Builder caps you at 10 published products and Growth at 50, though memberships, bundles and community don't count toward those caps.

Whop's Courses app takes uploaded or embedded video, text, PDF and multimedia lessons, knowledge checks and graded quizzes. It issues completion certificates, can require lessons in order, watermarks videos and sets caption languages, and Whop's API supports lessons that open a set number of days after a student starts. There's no plan to upgrade for any of it, and students use the Whop app on iOS and Android.

Bottom line: a tie for most video courses. Teachable adds compliance settings and offline viewing on iOS; Whop includes certificates without a $189 plan.

Payments, tax and payouts

Teachable gives you more tax handling and a no-reserve policy. Whop gives you more payment methods and no plan-based limits.

Teachable Payments runs on Stripe, and your earnings land in a Stripe Express account connected to your school. Payouts arrive daily, about 2 business days after each sale, but a new account's first payouts can take 4 to 6 weeks while Stripe verifies it, and Teachable holds payouts if your tax forms are missing once earnings pass $500. Teachable holds no reserve. Refunds are capped at $10,000 a day and blocked while your balance is negative.

The default Standard bundle takes cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link, and PayPal works only for one-time US dollar purchases through the Custom Payment Gateway, which connects your own Stripe Standard account. On Teachable Payments, Teachable calculates, collects and remits sales tax and VAT in more than 45 markets. On the custom gateway, tax is yours.

Whop says it is the merchant of record on Whop Payments. Checkout accepts cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, crypto and ACH, with buy now, pay later for approved sellers. Standard payouts take up to 5 business days and instant payouts a few minutes, to more than 200 countries. You verify your identity before withdrawing, new accounts can have part of their balance held in reserve, and checkout links are capped at $2,500 per payment until Whop approves more. Tax on direct sales is yours unless you pay 2% for Whop Tax Service; on Discover marketplace sales, Whop has collected and remitted applicable US sales tax itself since March 1, 2026.

Bottom line: Teachable if you sell across borders and want tax off your plate; Whop if you want more ways for buyers to pay and no plan gates.

Limits, community and growth

Teachable meters several things Whop doesn't. Products are capped at 5, 10 or 50 by plan, students added without a purchase can trigger usage fees, and its help center says Community is in maintenance mode, with no new features or bug fixes and no access for new schools. The move to Teachable Payments also removed gifting, the student referral program and post-purchase upsells.

Whop publishes no caps on products, members or courses. A course can sit inside a product next to Chat, Forums, Events with livestreams, or access to a Discord or Telegram community. Whop's Discover marketplace has charged 0% commission since May 12, 2025, and its affiliate program lets other people sell your course for a commission you set, plus a 1.25% affiliate processing fee.

Bottom line: Whop if your course comes with a community or you're outgrowing Teachable's caps.

When Teachable is the better choice

Teachable is the better pick if any of these describe your school.

• You sell to buyers in many countries and want tax off your plate. Teachable Payments remits sales tax and VAT for 0.5% of taxed sales, a quarter of what Whop Tax Service charges.
• You want your payments in your own Stripe account. Teachable's Custom Payment Gateway allows that on any plan, for a 2% fee on US schools; Whop runs every sale through Whop Payments.
• You're new and selling high-ticket courses. Teachable Payments holds no reserve, while Whop can hold part of a new account's balance and caps each checkout at $2,500 until it approves more.
• You have a large subscriber base on Teachable Payments. Every subscriber would have to sign up again, and creators who moved report heavy drop-off: one said about 400 of 9,000+ students followed them, another that about a quarter joined.
• Your school predates September 3, 2026, sits within its usage limits and sells mostly one-time courses on Builder, where Whop saves you little more than the plan price.

When Whop is the better choice

Whop is the better pick in these situations.

• You're on Teachable Starter. Its 7.5% fee makes $10,000 a month in memberships cost $1,210 in fees, against $381 on Whop.
• Most of your revenue is subscriptions, where Teachable's 0.7% renewal surcharge and plan fee add up.
• Your course comes with a community, or you want to sell Discord or Telegram access alongside it.
• You've hit Teachable's product caps or usage fees from free and imported students.
• Your buyers want to pay with PayPal, crypto or ACH. Teachable takes PayPal only for one-time US dollar purchases through your own gateway.

Whop's limits, stated plainly:

• New accounts can face reserves and a $2,500 per-checkout cap, and some sellers on r/whop reported 90-day holds and slow answers from support in 2026.
• You can't connect your own Stripe account.
• Collecting and remitting sales tax costs 2% per transaction, or it's your job.
• Moving from Teachable means rebuilding courses, re-uploading or embedding videos, and asking subscribers to re-subscribe, because nobody can add members to Whop for you.

Our seller-side Whop review covers holds and support complaints in more depth.

What creators say

Public threads show friction on both sides. These are individual reports, not a survey.

About Teachable:

• In an r/elearning thread the day after Teachable announced its current plans in May 2025, creators described bills rising two to three times on about 30 days' notice.
• In July 2025, a creator said they downgraded from Growth to Builder and were then charged $189 again, which they put down to a 1,000-student limit on Builder, and that support wouldn't refund it.
• In November 2025, a creator who moved two courses, coaching and a digital product to Skool said fees had tripled in four years and that about a quarter of their students had joined the new group.

About Whop:

• In August 2026, a seller reported a 90-day reserve after about $20,000 in sales with no disputes, and trouble getting answers.
• In September 2026, a seller said Whop's AI support wouldn't pass a fee question to a person.

Switching from Teachable to Whop

Teachable has no course export, so a move starts with files. Export your users from Users, then Export CSV, and download the file within 24 minutes of the email arriving; export transactions from Sales; and download course files one block at a time while your plan is still active. The free migration wizard turns the users file into Whop claim links, creates your products and plans, and rebuilds each course outline, while you upload or embed the videos. Subscribers re-subscribe on a Whop plan whose free trial ends on their next Teachable renewal; cancel each Teachable subscription from Sales as they join, since Teachable says student subscriptions can keep billing for up to 30 days after your plan ends. Our Teachable to Whop migration plan covers each step, and the member CSV converter cleans the users export first.

How we compared

We compared Teachable's and Whop's published pricing pages and help-center articles, checked on October 2 and 3, 2026. We didn't run a paid school on either platform for this page, so feature notes come from official documentation and the creator reports come from public Reddit threads.

The fee tables are calculated, not measured, and they use identical assumptions for both platforms: US cards, Teachable billed monthly on its default Standard bundle, no add-ons, taxes, payout fees or currency conversion, rounded to whole dollars. We earn a referral commission if you create a Whop through our links, and nothing from Teachable. This page explains published fees. It isn't financial or tax advice.

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