Thinkific pricing, price hikes and cheaper alternatives
Thinkific (thinkific.com) is a course platform. Tiered monthly or annual subscriptions (Basic, Start, Grow) plus a sales-quoted Plus plan; no platform transaction fee when using Thinkific Payments.. No free plan.
What Thinkific costs
- 1 course, $1k/mo sales: $54/mo (Basic $54/mo monthly billing; unlimited published courses, 10,000 current students; Thinkific Payments 2.9% processing excluded, no platform fee)
- 5 courses, $10k/mo sales: $219/mo (Grow $219/mo monthly: cheapest plan removing Thinkific branding (Start $109 has 2 admins and custom domain but keeps branding); 6 admin seats; no platform fee via Thinkific Payments)
Plan compared: Basic. Monthly USD on monthly billing (annual-only plans divided by 12) for a defined course business, including any transaction fee the platform itself takes on sales at that volume; card processing fees and hosting for WordPress plugins are not included. The headline is selling 1 course to 100 students at $1,000 a month; we also compare a 5-course business with 1,000 students, 2 admins, your own domain without platform branding and $10,000 a month in sales.
Thinkific price hikes
- Thinkific raised Basic, Start and Grow prices by about 10% · Jul 20, 2026
Annual-billed prices rose from $36 to $40/mo (Basic), $74 to $82/mo (Start) and $149 to $164/mo (Grow). Current monthly-billing prices are $54, $109 and $219. - Thinkific capped current students at 10,000 on Basic, Start and Grow · Mar 2026
Self-serve plans went from unlimited current students to a 10,000 cap; only Plus stays unlimited. Recorded between Dec 29, 2025 and Mar 23, 2026 captures. - Thinkific ended its free plan · Jul 2024
The free plan was removed from the pricing page and replaced by a free trial on paid plans (recorded between Apr 1 and Jul 1, 2024 captures).
Alternatives to Thinkific
Thinkific is the cheapest course platform we track at 1 course selling $1,000 a month to 100 students. The others:
Thinkific alternatives: 2 course platforms compared, at every size.
Every change we logged
- Jul 20, 2026 · Price increase: Annual-billed prices rose from $36 to $40/mo (Basic), $74 to $82/mo (Start) and $149 to $164/mo (Grow). Current monthly-billing prices are $54, $109 and $219.
- Mar 2026 · Limits cut: Self-serve plans went from unlimited current students to a 10,000 cap; only Plus stays unlimited. Recorded between Dec 29, 2025 and Mar 23, 2026 captures.
- Jul 2024 · Free tier cut: The free plan was removed from the pricing page and replaced by a free trial on paid plans (recorded between Apr 1 and Jul 1, 2024 captures).
Sources
Pricing page: thinkific.com/pricing. Prices last checked Oct 16, 2026. Current prices from the official pricing page; changes from PricingSaaS diffs (annual-billed figures only, so the hike pct is on annual Basic $36 to $40; prior monthly prices unverified). Web search budget was exhausted, so no news check was possible.