What Teachable + AWeber really costs over 24 months
Most "Teachable vs AWeber" pricing pages compare two sticker prices. That comparison is not useful, because you are not choosing between them, you keep paying Teachable to host the courses either way. The only number worth building is the combined one.
Teachable's figures are from a pricing snapshot read5 September 2026. AWeber's figures were read live from its pricing page on 9 September 2026. Software pricing changes without announcement; treat the tables below as a method, and the two pricing pages as the source of truth if you read this later.
The two price tags
| Teachable plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Transaction fee | Products |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $59 | $39/mo | 7.5% | 5 |
| Builder | $119 | $89/mo | 0% | 10 |
| Growth | $239 | $189/mo | 0% | 50 |
| Subscribers | Lite, yearly price per month | Plus, yearly price per month |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12.50/mo | $20.00/mo |
| 2,500 | $29.17/mo | $45.83/mo |
| 5,000 | $50.00/mo | $75.00/mo |
| 10,000 | $83.33/mo | $112.50/mo |
| 25,000 | $175.00/mo | $208.33/mo |
Source, read live 9 September 2026. Each figure is AWeber's yearly price divided by twelve: Lite is $150 a year at 500 subscribers, which is $12.50 a month here, while AWeber's own headline rounds the same plan to $12.49. Paying month to month costs more. Our full AWeber review has the rest. Lite includes three email automations and a 10x subscriber monthly send cap with a 1.0% transaction fee on AWeber's own checkout; Plus removes the automation cap, raises the send cap to 12x, and drops the fee to 0.6%.
The asymmetry that decides everything
Teachable charges by plan tier. AWeber charges by how many subscribers you have. Teachable's price does not move when your list grows from 2,000 to 20,000, you pay $89/mo on Builder either way. AWeber's price moves on the total list, not on how many of them have ever bought anything.
A course creator's list is usually mostly people who have not paid: lead magnets, free mini-courses, waitlists. A 10,000-person list with 400 buyers is completely normal in this business. Teachable does not care about the other 9,600. AWeber bills you for them.
See the current numbers for yourself
Prices move without announcement on both sides. Check the live pages before you commit to a plan.
The Teachable calculation everyone gets wrong
Starter at $39/mo with a 7.5% transaction fee, against Builder at $89/mo with no fee. The crossover is exact arithmetic:
$39 + 0.075R = $89, so R = $667/month
Above roughly $667 a month in course revenue, Builder is cheaper than Starter, and every dollar above that widens the gap. Redo it on monthly pricing if you are not billed annually: $59 + 0.075R = $119 gives the same crossover.
Two scenarios, with the arithmetic shown
Illustrative shapes, not survey data. Substitute your own numbers; the method is the point.
The side project. 1,200 subscribers, 60 sales over two years at $199. Teachable Starter billed yearly: $39 x 24 = $936. Transaction fee: 0.075 x (60 x $199) = $896. AWeber Lite at roughly the 2,500-subscriber row, since you are above 500 and growing: $29.17 x 24 = $700. Twenty-four month total: roughly $2,530, or about $42 per buyer. The transaction fee is nearly as large as the Teachable plan fee itself, and larger than the entire AWeber bill, which is the line item most people forget to count.
The free-lead-heavy list. 9,000 subscribers, 300 sales over two years at $149. On Teachable Starter: $39 x 24 = $936, plus 0.075 x (300 x $149) = $3,353, total $4,289. On Builder: $89 x 24 = $2,136, no fee. Builder saves $2,153 over two years at this revenue, the "cheap" plan is the expensive one. On AWeber, 9,000 subscribers sits at roughly the 10,000-subscriber row on Lite, about $83/mo, or Plus if you need unlimited workflows for the tagging and launch setups in this corridor, about $112/mo. Twenty-four months of Lite: roughly $2,000. Total with Builder: about $4,136, or roughly $14 per buyer across the two years.
Build your own number
| 1. Teachable plan, times 24 months | $______ |
| 2. Starter's 7.5% fee on 24 months of revenue (0 on Builder or Growth) | $______ |
| 3. AWeber, month by month at your list size as it grows | $______ |
| 4. Overlap: months paying both tools during the migration | $______ |
| Total, divided by buyers in those 24 months | $______ per buyer |
Line 3 needs the AWeber pricing ladder above, priced at roughly your midpoint list size if it is growing, as a floor rather than an exact figure. Line 4 is real and usually forgotten: plan for at least one month where both bills land while you import, rebuild workflows, and test.
Questions people ask
- Does AWeber charge less as my list shrinks or gets pruned?
- We could not confirm from AWeber's pricing page whether the billed count includes unsubscribed or bounced contacts, or only active ones. That decides whether pruning a stale list actually lowers the bill, so check it inside your own account before counting on the saving.
- Does Teachable's bill change as my email list grows?
- No. Teachable's current plans, Starter, Builder and Growth, are priced by product count and, on Starter, a transaction fee, not by subscriber or student count. Your Teachable bill only moves if you add products or cross the 7.5% Starter fee's crossover point below.
- Is AWeber's free plan still the way to start this at $0?
- We checked AWeber's pricing page and its dedicated free-signup page live on 9 September 2026 and found only a 14-day trial across Lite and Plus, not a standalone permanent free tier. AWeber has offered a free tier in the past, so confirm what your own account shows before budgeting a $0 starting point.
Read next:whether the move is worth it before you count the dollars, or go back to the full corridor.