Last Updated: October 2026 | Prices, plan limits and affiliate terms checked on Thinkific’s official pricing, help center and affiliate pages.
Key Takeaways
- Thinkific no longer has a free plan. Every account starts with a 30-day free trial of the full platform.
- Paid plans cost $54, $109 and $219 per month (Basic, Start, Grow), or $40, $82 and $164 per month billed annually. Thinkific Plus is custom-priced.
- Thinkific Payments charges 2.9% per sale. If you use Stripe instead, Thinkific adds a 5%, 2% or 1% gateway fee depending on your plan.
- Basic, Start and Grow each allow up to 10,000 current students, with 100, 200 and 400 GB of monthly course video bandwidth.
- Affiliates earn 30% lifetime recurring commission (Plus referrals pay $150 per month) with a 90-day cookie, paid through PartnerStack.
Is Thinkific still worth paying for in 2026? For most course creators who want their own branded school rather than a marketplace listing, yes, but the platform has changed a lot since the old reviews you’ll find online. The free plan is gone, entry pricing now starts at $40 a month on annual billing, and the “0% transaction fees” pitch only holds if you use Thinkific’s own payment processor. This Thinkific review covers current pricing, what each plan actually includes, payment fees, support, pros and cons, and what the affiliate program pays if you plan to recommend it.
Content Outline
What Is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a hosted platform for creating and selling online courses, communities, memberships, digital downloads, coaching and webinars. You build everything inside Thinkific (course builder, site builder, landing pages, checkout and student area), connect your own domain, and keep the student relationship. There is no public course marketplace, so students arrive through your own audience, ads, email list or affiliates.
Thinkific says it serves tens of thousands of customers in more than 100 countries, and that those customers have earned $4.23 billion and reached 214 million learners on the platform. Those are the company’s own figures, but they show it is an established tool rather than a startup experiment.
Thinkific Pricing 2026: Plans and What They Cost
Thinkific has three self-serve plans plus a sales-led Plus tier. Annual billing saves 25%. There is no free plan, but every plan can be tried free for 30 days, and you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time, including during the trial.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Key limits | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $54/mo | $40/mo (save $173/yr) | Unlimited courses, 1 community (5 spaces), 5 digital downloads, 5 coaching/webinar products, 1 admin, 100 GB video/mo | Your first course and a small audience |
| Start | $109/mo | $82/mo (save $330/yr) | Adds live Zoom lessons, certificates, assignments, bundles, payment plans, memberships, HTML/CSS editor; 10 spaces, 2 admins, 200 GB video/mo | Most solo creators (Thinkific’s “Most Popular”) |
| Grow | $219/mo | $164/mo (save $660/yr) | Removes Thinkific branding, 3 communities (20 spaces each), group orders and invoicing, API and webhooks, phone and priority chat support, 6 admins, 400 GB video/mo | Growing course businesses and B2B sales |
| Plus | Custom | Custom | SSO, SCORM, learning paths, HubSpot and Salesforce integrations, 10,000+ seats, dedicated success team | Academies and companies |
Basic, Start and Grow all cap you at 10,000 current students, meaning learners with unexpired access to at least one course. A branded iOS and Android app is a separate add-on at $199 per month (included on select Plus contracts). Prices checked October 2026 on Thinkific’s pricing page.
Payment processing and the third-party gateway fee
Thinkific’s built-in processor, Thinkific Payments, charges 2.9% per transaction, in line with Stripe and PayPal. Sales through Thinkific Payments also unlock TCommerce extras such as order bumps, gifting, Buy Now Pay Later and abandoned-cart emails.
If you keep using Stripe, Thinkific adds its own third-party payment gateway fee on top of Stripe’s normal charges: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow, with no fee on Plus. The fee applies to your first $1M in sales each calendar year and has been in force for creators in the US, Canada and the UK since July 3, 2024, and in the EU since November 6, 2024. In practice, Basic users should plan on Thinkific Payments if it is available in their country.
Thinkific Features Worth Knowing
Course builder
The drag-and-drop course builder handles video lessons, quizzes, in-course discussions and drip-scheduled content on every plan. Start adds completion certificates, assignments, live Zoom lessons and compliance tools that stop students skipping lessons. Thinkific also includes AI helpers such as a course outline generator to speed up the first draft.
Communities, memberships and digital products
Every plan includes at least one community with spaces, threaded replies and live events. Paid memberships, subscriptions and course bundles start on the Start plan, which is why Start is the realistic plan for anyone selling recurring access. Basic limits you to five digital downloads; Start and above are unlimited.
Site builder, landing pages and email
You can build your whole site on Thinkific or keep your existing website (for example WordPress) and use Thinkific only for the school, on your own custom domain. Landing pages, email automation and analytics integrations such as Google Analytics and Meta Pixel are included. Advanced HTML/CSS editing starts on Start, and removing Thinkific branding needs Grow.
Integrations and API
Thinkific connects to other tools through its App Store and Zapier. Zapier actions, bulk CSV enrollment, the standard API and webhooks all require Grow or higher. Native CRM integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, SSO and SCORM are reserved for Thinkific Plus.
Thinkific Customer Support
Support now depends on your plan: Basic and Start get email and chat, Grow adds phone and priority chat, and Plus customers get a dedicated customer success team. Every plan also has the help center knowledge base and Thinkific Academy, which is included with every plan and teaches you how to launch and sell courses. Older reviews claiming Thinkific has no chat or phone support are out of date.
How to Create a Course on Thinkific
- Start the 30-day free trial and pick the plan you want to test (you can change it later).
- Create a course, add chapters and lessons, and upload videos, PDFs and quizzes in the course builder.
- Set the price: free, one-time, payment plan or subscription (payment plans and memberships need Start or higher).
- Connect Thinkific Payments (or Stripe, with the gateway fee), and add your custom domain.
- Build the sales page with the landing page builder, publish the course and send traffic to it.
Thinkific Pros and Cons
Here is how Thinkific stacks up after checking the current plans and terms, rather than the 2022 feature list that most comparison posts still repeat.
Pros
- 30-day free trial of the full platform before you pay
- Unlimited courses on every paid plan
- Courses, communities, memberships, coaching and downloads in one place
- Instant access to your revenue with Thinkific Payments
- Phone and priority chat support from the Grow plan
Cons
- No free plan any more
- 5% gateway fee on Basic if you sell through Stripe
- No course marketplace, so you bring your own students
- Branding removal, API and Zapier actions need the $164+/mo Grow plan
- Branded mobile app costs an extra $199 per month
Thinkific Affiliate Program: What It Pays
Because AffiliateBay readers usually want to promote tools as well as use them, here are Thinkific’s current affiliate terms, taken from its official affiliate page. The program runs on PartnerStack and is free to join.
| Term | Thinkific affiliate program |
|---|---|
| Commission | 30% lifetime recurring on monthly and annual paid plans |
| Thinkific Plus referrals | $150 per month recurring instead of 30% (up to $1,800 per referral per year) |
| Cookie window | 90 days (a later click on another affiliate’s link takes over the credit) |
| Payout threshold | $25 |
| Payout methods | PayPal or Stripe |
| Payout schedule | 30-day hold, verified at month end, paid on the 13th |
| Network | PartnerStack |
At list price, a referral on the monthly Start plan ($109) is worth about $32.70 a month, and a Grow plan billed annually ($1,968 a year) is worth about $590 a year, for as long as the customer keeps paying. If you want more recurring offers like this, see our list of the best recurring affiliate programs and this roundup of SaaS affiliate programs that still pay well.
Thinkific vs Other Course Platforms
Thinkific’s closest rivals are Kajabi and Teachable. Kajabi leans harder into all-in-one marketing with built-in funnels and email, and you can see what creators build with it in our Kajabi website examples. Thinkific is the better fit if you care most about the course and community experience, want to keep an existing website, or plan to sell to businesses with group orders and invoicing on Grow.
FAQs
No. Thinkific replaced its free plan with a 30-day free trial that lets you build courses, host a community and test the AI tools before paying. You can cancel during the trial.
Thinkific Basic is $54/month, Start is $109/month and Grow is $219/month on monthly billing. Billed annually they drop to $40, $82 and $164 per month. Thinkific Plus is quoted by sales.
Thinkific Payments charges 2.9% per sale. If you use Stripe instead, Thinkific adds a third-party gateway fee of 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow on your first $1M in sales per calendar year.
Basic, Start and Grow each allow up to 10,000 current students, meaning learners with unexpired access to at least one course. Plus plans get custom limits.
Yes. Thinkific Basic and Start include email and chat support, Grow adds phone and priority chat, and Plus customers get a dedicated customer success team.
Thinkific pays affiliates 30% lifetime recurring commission on paid plans, or $150 per month for Plus referrals, with a 90-day cookie, a $25 minimum payout and payments via PayPal or Stripe on the 13th of each month.
Thinkific Review Verdict: Should You Use It?
Thinkific is a solid choice in 2026 if you want a branded course school with communities and memberships, and you are happy to bring your own audience. Start ($82/month billed annually) is the plan most creators end up on, because payment plans, memberships, bundles and certificates all begin there. Basic works for a first course, but use Thinkific Payments to avoid the 5% Stripe fee. Use the 30-day trial to build your first course before committing.
