# Course platform fees explained: subscriptions, transaction fees and payment processing

> Course platform fees have three layers: the subscription, the platform's cut of each sale and payment processing. How to add them up, with dollar examples.

Published 2026-10-02 · by Renu Rawat · 17 min read
Source: https://prolaud.com/blog/course-platform-fees-explained

Course platform fees are easy to misread, because the number in large type on a pricing page is only one of the things you will pay. A plan can look cheap and cost the most, or look expensive and cost the least, and which one it is depends on a figure the pricing page cannot know: how much you sell.

This guide explains the three layers of cost, how to find each one on a pricing page, and how to add them up at different sales volumes. The rates used in the examples are made up for the arithmetic and labelled as illustrations throughout. They are not any named platform's or processor's prices. Replace them with the real figures from the pages you are comparing, read on the day you compare them.

## The three layers of cost

Every sale on a course platform passes through up to three charges. They are set by different companies, calculated in different ways and grow at different speeds, which is why adding them in your head goes wrong.

**Three layers, two companies. Only the first is the same from month to month.**

| Layer | Who charges it | How it is calculated | What makes it grow |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Subscription | The platform | A fixed amount per month or per year | Moving to a higher plan |
| 2. The platform's cut | The platform | A percentage of each sale | Every dollar you sell |
| 3. Payment processing | The payment processor | A percentage plus a small fixed amount per charge | Every dollar and every transaction |

*One $200 sale under illustrative rates: a 5% platform cut and processing at 3% plus $0.30. The subscription sits outside the bar because it is charged per month, not per sale.*

The sum in the figure is short enough to check. Five percent of $200 is $10. Three percent of $200 is $6, plus $0.30 is $6.30. Take both from $200 and $183.70 is left. The subscription is then paid out of whatever all your sales in the month leave behind.

## Layer 1: the platform subscription

The subscription is what you pay to use the software: the course builder, the student area, the website, the live classroom if there is one. It is the most visible number and the most predictable, since it does not change with your sales.

Two details change what it really costs. The first is the billing period. A price shown as a monthly figure is often the yearly plan divided by twelve. In an illustration, a plan advertised at $32 a month, billed yearly, is 12 x $32 = $384 paid at once, while the same plan billed month to month at $40 is 12 x $40 = $480 over a year. The yearly plan saves $96, and it also commits you for twelve months before you know whether the platform suits you.

The second is the limit that decides which plan you need. Plans are usually capped on something: students, courses, administrators, storage, hours of live teaching. The plan you will pay for is the lowest one whose caps you fit under, which may not be the one in the first column. Our article on what teaching online actually costs (/blog/affordable-educator-platforms) goes through these limits in detail.

## Layer 2: the platform's cut of each sale

The second layer is a percentage the platform keeps from every sale. It goes by several names: transaction fee, commission, revenue share, platform fee. Whatever it is called, it is the platform's own charge, on top of anything the payment processor takes.

This is the layer that scales with your success. A platform that takes 5% (an illustration) keeps $50 of every $1,000 you sell and $500 of every $10,000. Nothing about the service changes between those two months; only the bill does.

- It is often tied to the plan. A lower plan may carry a percentage that a higher plan drops. In that case you are choosing between paying more per month and paying more per sale.
- It can depend on how you take payment. Check whether the stated rate applies to every payment method the platform supports, or only to one of them.
- It can apply to more than course sales. Ask whether the same percentage is charged on payment plans, bundles and anything else you sell.
- Marketplaces work differently. A marketplace that lists your course to its own audience keeps a share for finding the buyer. That is a payment for distribution, and it should be compared with what you would spend to find those students yourself.

## Layer 3: payment processing

The third layer is the fee charged by the company that actually moves money from a student's card to a bank account. It is normally a percentage of the charge plus a small fixed amount for each successful transaction. It exists on every platform, including the ones that advertise no fees, because no platform moves card payments for nothing.

The fixed amount matters more than its size suggests, because it weighs more heavily on small prices. Using an illustrative rate of 3% plus $0.30:

**Illustrative processing rate, not any processor's published one. The same rate is nearly twice as heavy on a $10 item as on a $200 course.**

| Price of the item | 3% of the price | Plus fixed $0.30 | Fee as a share of the price |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $10 worksheet pack | $0.30 | $0.60 | 6.00% |
| $50 workshop | $1.50 | $1.80 | 3.60% |
| $200 course | $6.00 | $6.30 | 3.15% |
| $1,000 program | $30.00 | $30.30 | 3.03% |

A processor's published rate is usually for a standard domestic card. Cards issued in another country, currency conversion and disputed payments can each carry their own extra charge. If you expect students from several countries, read that part of your processor's price list as well, not only the headline rate.

Payment plans interact with the fixed amount too. A $600 course paid in one charge costs 3% of $600, which is $18, plus $0.30: $18.30. The same course paid in three installments of $200 costs 3 x $6.30 = $18.90. The difference is $0.60, the two extra fixed amounts. That is a small price for letting more students start, but it is worth knowing where it comes from.

## How to read a pricing page

A pricing page is written to be compared at a glance, and the glance is where mistakes happen. Read it with a pen, and do not stop until you have written down all three layers for the plan you would actually buy.

1. Find the plan you fit. Check the caps on students, courses, administrators, storage and live teaching against your real numbers, then note which plan that puts you on.
2. Write down the subscription for that plan, both ways. The month-to-month price and the yearly total. If only one is shown, switch the toggle at the top of the page.
3. Find the platform's cut for that plan. Look for the words transaction fee, commission or revenue share. If the row is missing, look in the footnotes, the comparison table further down, and the help center.
4. Find who processes payments and at what rate. If the platform uses its own payment service, its rate is the one that applies. If you connect your own processor, the rate is on the processor's website.
5. Read every footnote and asterisk. Conditions on a headline rate usually live there: which plan, which payment method, which products.
6. List what is an add-on. Extra administrators, email sending, a custom domain, removing the platform's branding, a mobile app. Add the ones you need to layer 1.
7. Check the terms, not only the pricing page. Payout timing, refund handling and what happens to your data if you leave are usually in the terms of service.

> **A quick check:** If you cannot write the three numbers on one line (so much a month, so much percent to the platform, so much percent plus so many cents to the processor), you are not ready to compare. Ask the platform's support team to confirm them in writing. A clear answer is a good sign; a vague one is information too.

[See plans](https://prolaud.com/pricing) — Prolaud charges a subscription and nothing per sale. You connect your own Stripe or Razorpay account, students pay you directly, and you pay only your payment processor's standard fee.

## Working out the real cost at different sales volumes

Now put the layers together. The example uses one $200 course and three invented plans. None of them is a real company's pricing; they are shaped to show how the three layers interact.

> **The assumptions, all illustrative:** Plan A: $0 a month, and the platform takes 10% of each sale. Plan B: $40 a month, and the platform takes 5%. Plan C: $120 a month, and the platform takes 0%. Processing on all three: 3% plus $0.30 per charge, which is $6.30 on a $200 sale. Swap in real figures before you decide anything.

Take ten sales in a month as the worked case. Revenue is 10 x $200 = $2,000. Processing is 10 x $6.30 = $63 on every plan. Plan A adds 10% of $2,000, which is $200, for a total of $263. Plan B adds $40 plus 5% of $2,000, which is $40 + $100 = $140, for a total of $203. Plan C adds its $120 subscription and nothing else, for a total of $183. The same steps give the other rows.

**Total monthly cost: subscription, plus the platform's cut, plus processing. Illustrative plans and rates.**

| Sales in the month | Revenue | Processing (any plan) | Plan A total | Plan B total | Plan C total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2 | $400 | $12.60 | $52.60 | $72.60 | $132.60 |
| 10 | $2,000 | $63.00 | $263.00 | $203.00 | $183.00 |
| 30 | $6,000 | $189.00 | $789.00 | $529.00 | $309.00 |
| 100 | $20,000 | $630.00 | $2,630.00 | $1,670.00 | $750.00 |

Read down each column. Plan A is cheapest at two sales and most expensive from ten sales on. Plan C is the reverse. Nothing about the plans changed between the rows; only the volume did. That is the whole reason a pricing page cannot tell you which plan is cheapest.

It helps to turn the totals into a single percentage of revenue, the effective rate, because that is the figure you can compare with your own margin.

**Effective rate: total monthly cost divided by revenue. A pure percentage plan never gets cheaper as you grow; a flat plan always does.**

| Sales in the month | Plan A | Plan B | Plan C |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2 ($400) | 13.15% | 18.15% | 33.15% |
| 10 ($2,000) | 13.15% | 10.15% | 9.15% |
| 30 ($6,000) | 13.15% | 8.82% | 5.15% |
| 100 ($20,000) | 13.15% | 8.35% | 3.75% |

Over a year the gap is larger than a monthly view suggests. At ten sales a month, Plan A costs 12 x $263 = $3,156 and Plan C costs 12 x $183 = $2,196, a difference of $960. At thirty sales a month it is 12 x $789 = $9,468 against 12 x $309 = $3,708, a difference of $5,760 for the same software and the same students.

### Finding your break-even point

You do not need a table to compare two plans. Because processing is the same on both, it drops out, and you only need the revenue at which the platform charges are equal. Divide the difference in subscription by the difference in the platform's cut.

- Plan A against Plan B. The subscriptions differ by $40 and the cuts by 5 percentage points. $40 / 0.05 = $800 a month, or four sales of $200. Below that, A is cheaper; above it, B is.
- Plan A against Plan C. $120 / 0.10 = $1,200 a month, or six sales.
- Plan B against Plan C. The subscriptions differ by $80 and the cuts by 5 points. $80 / 0.05 = $1,600 a month, or eight sales.

*Platform charges only, since processing is equal on all three. The percentage plans are slopes and the flat plan is a level line; the dots are the break-even points worked out above.*

Run the same division with the real figures from the two plans you are choosing between. If your expected monthly revenue sits well to one side of the break-even point, the choice is made. If it sits close, pick on features instead, because the cost difference will be small either way.

## What "0% transaction fee" covers and what it does not

"0% transaction fee" is a statement about layer 2 only. It means the platform does not keep a percentage of your sale. It is a real saving, as the tables above show, and it is also narrower than it sounds.

**Zero in layer 2 says nothing about layers 1 and 3.**

| It does cover | It does not cover |
| --- | --- |
| The platform's own percentage of each sale | The payment processor's fee, which is still charged on every transaction |
| Sales on the plan the claim is attached to | Other plans, if the claim applies only to some of them |
| The payment route the claim is attached to | Other payment routes, if a different one carries a fee |
| Nothing else | The subscription, add-ons, currency conversion and dispute charges |

So when you see the claim, ask three things. On which plans is it true? With which payment methods is it true? And who is the payment processor, at what rate? A platform that answers all three plainly has nothing to hide in the claim. "No fees" with no further detail is not an answer, because someone is always paying the processor.

## The costs that are not on the pricing page

A few costs sit outside all three layers. They are smaller than the main ones in a normal month and larger in a bad one.

- Refunds. When you refund a sale, find out whether the processing fee comes back to you. If it does not, refunding a $200 course in our illustration costs you the $6.30 already paid. Ask the same question about the platform's cut.
- Disputes. If a buyer disputes a charge with their bank, processors commonly charge a fee for handling it, whatever the outcome. Clear receipts and an easy refund route keep these rare.
- Payout timing. Money that reaches you in two days and money that reaches you in thirty are not the same thing to a small business. Check the payout schedule, any minimum balance, and whether new accounts wait longer.
- Currency conversion. If you charge in one currency and bank in another, the conversion has a cost, usually built into the exchange rate you are given.
- Tax handling. Some platforms act as the seller on your behalf and deal with sales tax or VAT for you, and part of what they charge pays for that work. If you take payment into your own account, you are the seller and those duties are yours. Neither is wrong; they are different services at different prices.
- The tools the platform does not include. If live classes, email, quizzes or certificates need separate subscriptions, those belong in layer 1 of your comparison. Our piece on running your classroom and checkout as two systems (/blog/classroom-and-checkout-one-system) covers the time cost as well.
- Leaving. Check that you can export your students and their payment history yourself. A platform that is cheap to join and hard to leave has a cost you only meet later.

## When a percentage is the right choice

None of this makes a percentage plan a bad deal. It is the right choice in at least three situations, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

The first is when you are not yet sure anyone will buy. A plan that costs nothing in a month with no sales carries no risk, and in the illustration it stays the cheapest option up to $800 a month. The second is when the percentage buys you something: an audience you could not reach alone, or tax handled on your behalf. The third is when your sales arrive in bursts, with long quiet stretches in which a flat subscription would be paid for nothing.

What a percentage should not be is a default you never revisit. The moment to check is when your monthly revenue passes the break-even point and stays there for a few months. That is when the plan that protected you at the start begins to charge you for doing well. If you are still at the stage of testing an idea, how to sell online courses (/blog/how-to-sell-online-courses) covers getting to the first paying group.

## Where Prolaud sits in the three layers

For transparency, since this is our blog: Prolaud charges in layer 1 and nothing in layer 2. There is a subscription, shown on the pricing page (/pricing), and Prolaud takes 0% of your sales. Layer 3 is between you and your processor. You connect your own Stripe account, which charges in US dollars by card, or your own Razorpay account, and you pay that processor's standard fee. The money goes to your account directly and is never held by us.

Courses, live classes, cohorts, quizzes, certificates and a website come in one product rather than as separate tools, and payment plans are supported, with later installments collected automatically. Apply the same pen-and-paper check to us as to anyone else. Our plans have limits, for example on live classes and custom domains on the lowest plan, and a few specialist add-ons, such as exam proctoring, are optional paid plugins. Connecting Stripe means pasting your account keys rather than a single click. And because you are the seller, any sales tax or VAT that applies to you is yours to handle.

## Questions to ask before signing up

Send these to any platform you are seriously considering. Written answers are worth more than a sales call.

1. What percentage of each sale do you keep, on the plan I would be on?
2. Is that percentage the same for every payment method and every kind of product?
3. Who is the payment processor, and what do they charge per transaction?
4. Does the money go to my own processor account, or do you collect it and pay me out?
5. If you pay me out, on what schedule, and is there a minimum balance or a holding period?
6. When I refund a student, which fees are returned to me and which are not?
7. Which limits on this plan would force an upgrade: students, courses, administrators, storage, live hours?
8. Which features I have seen in the demo are add-ons, and what does each cost?
9. What is the price billed monthly, and what is the total billed yearly?
10. Can I export my students and their payment history myself, at any time?
11. Who is the seller on the receipt, and who is responsible for sales tax?
12. If prices change, how much notice do existing customers get?

## The short version

- Course platform fees have three layers: subscription, the platform's cut of each sale, and payment processing. Add all three.
- The cheapest plan depends on your sales volume, which the pricing page does not know.
- To compare two plans, divide the difference in subscription by the difference in the platform's cut. That is your break-even revenue.
- "0% transaction fee" removes the platform's cut. The processor still charges on every sale.
- The fixed part of a processing fee weighs most on low prices.
- Get the three numbers in writing before you sign up, and read the refund, payout and export terms.

[See what is included](https://prolaud.com/features) — Courses, live classes, cohorts, quizzes, certificates and a website in one product. Payment goes into your own account, and Prolaud takes 0% of it.

## Keep reading

- How to sell online courses: a practical guide for independent teachers (/blog/how-to-sell-online-courses)
- Bring your own payment gateway: the real trade-offs (/blog/bring-your-own-payment-gateway-course-platform)
- Affordable educator platforms: what teaching online actually costs (/blog/affordable-educator-platforms)
- What it costs to run your classroom and your checkout as two systems (/blog/classroom-and-checkout-one-system)
- Payment plans: let students pay in installments (/features/payment-plans)

## Frequently asked questions

### What fees do online course platforms charge?

Up to three. A subscription for using the software, charged monthly or yearly. A percentage of each sale that the platform keeps, often called a transaction fee or commission. And a payment processing fee, charged by the company that moves the money, usually a percentage plus a small fixed amount per transaction. Not every platform charges the second, but the third always exists.

### What is a transaction fee on a course platform?

It is the share of each sale that the platform keeps for itself. It is separate from the payment processor's fee and is charged in addition to it. A platform with a 5% transaction fee, as an illustration, keeps $10 of a $200 sale before processing is deducted. Some plans carry one and some do not, so check the plan you would be on.

### Does a 0% transaction fee mean I keep 100% of the sale?

No. It means the platform takes nothing from the sale. The payment processor still deducts its fee on every transaction, and you still pay the platform's subscription. On a $200 sale with illustrative processing of 3% plus $0.30, you would receive $193.70 from that sale, not $200.

### Are payment processing fees the same on every platform?

Not necessarily. If you connect your own processor account, you pay that processor's published rate wherever you use it. If the platform runs its own payment service, it sets the rate, and that rate can differ from what you would pay with your own account. Ask who the processor is and what they charge before comparing anything else.

### Is a free plan with a percentage cheaper than a paid plan?

At low sales, yes. At higher sales, usually not. To find the crossover, divide the paid plan's monthly price by the percentage the free plan takes. In the illustration above, a $120 plan against a 10% cut breaks even at $120 / 0.10 = $1,200 a month in sales. Above that figure the paid plan is the cheaper one.

### How do I calculate the real cost of a course platform?

Estimate your monthly sales revenue and the number of transactions. Add the subscription, the platform's percentage of that revenue, and the processing fee on each transaction. Divide the total by your revenue to get an effective rate. Repeat for each plan you are considering, at both your current volume and the volume you expect in a year.

### Why does the processing fee seem higher on cheap products?

Because part of it is a fixed amount per transaction. With illustrative processing of 3% plus $0.30, a $10 product pays $0.60, which is 6% of the price, while a $200 course pays $6.30, which is 3.15%. If you sell many low-priced items, the fixed part is a meaningful share of each sale.

### Do I get the fees back when I refund a student?

It depends on the processor and the platform, and policies differ. Some return the fee with the refund and some keep it. Check both: the processor's refund terms for its own fee, and the platform's terms for any percentage it took. Then decide your refund policy knowing what each refund will cost you.

### Should I pay yearly to get the lower price?

Only once you are confident in the platform. A yearly plan lowers the cost per month and commits you for twelve months. A sensible path is to pay monthly while you test it with real students, then switch to yearly when you know it fits. Compare the yearly total with twelve monthly payments, not the two per-month figures.