Teachable vs Udemy (2026) | Which Online Course Platform Is Right For You

TL;DR: Teachable vs Udemy: Which One Is Right For Your Course Business? (2026)

Teachable and Udemy are built for two different business models, so this is a choice between owning your course business and renting space in someone else’s.

Teachable is a hosted course platform. You get your own branded school, you set your prices, and you keep your students’ contact details. You also have to bring your own traffic.

Udemy is a course marketplace. It’s free to publish and it puts your course in front of millions of learners. In return, Udemy controls pricing, keeps the student relationship, and takes most of the sales it generates.

Pricing & Free trial
Teachable starts at $29/month on annual billing ($39 monthly) with a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder at $69/month removes the fee. You get a 7-day free trial.

Udemy is free to publish on. You keep 97% of sales that come through your own coupon or referral link, and 37% of every other sale.

Choose Teachable if you want to build a long-term business with your own brand, prices, and email list.
Choose Udemy if you have no audience or budget and want to test a course idea in front of existing buyers.

Try Teachable for Free | Teach on Udemy

If you’re choosing between Teachable and Udemy, you’re choosing between two business models.

Both let a course creator publish and sell an online course without any technical skills. Both have helped thousands of people earn from what they know.

But they work in opposite ways.

Teachable gives you a school of your own and leaves the marketing to you. Udemy gives you a ready-made audience and keeps control of almost everything else.

Each model has real strengths and real costs. In this comparison I cover what you keep from your sales on each one, how their features differ, and which one fits the online course business you want to build.

Teachable vs Udemy: The Main Differences

On Teachable, you own the business and do the selling. On Udemy, the marketplace does much of the selling and owns the customer.

	Teachable	Udemy
Business model	Hosted platform. You run your own branded school	Marketplace. Your course is listed beside thousands of others
Cost	From $29/mo on annual billing ($39 monthly)	Free to publish
What the platform takes	7.5% on Starter, 0% on Builder and above	3% of sales from your own links, 63% of all other sales
Traffic	You bring your own	Udemy brings marketplace buyers
Pricing control	You set any price, with subscriptions and payment plans	Udemy’s price tiers and frequent discounts
Student data	You get names and email addresses	Udemy keeps contact details
Branding	Your own site, and a custom domain from Builder	A standard Udemy course page
Competitors	None on your site	Shown beside your course
Products	Courses, coaching, memberships, and downloads	Courses and practice tests
Email marketing	Built-in student email from Builder, plus integrations	Announcements only, within Udemy’s rules

Read: The best online course platforms right now

Teachable vs Udemy Overview

Both platforms let you sell courses online. Here’s what each one is and what it includes.

What Is Teachable?

Teachable is a leading online platform for creating and selling courses, coaching, memberships, and digital downloads.

Unlike Udemy, Teachable is not a marketplace.

It gives you a branded school where only your products appear. You set the prices, you see who bought, and you can email your students whenever you like. Its teachable:pay system handles payments, subscriptions, and sales tax for you.

In other words, you can call Teachable a platform for building a course business you own.

But Teachable sends you no buyers. Your sales depend on your own audience, email list, or ad budget.

Read my full Teachable review for more detail.

Main Teachable Features

• Your own branded school, with a custom domain from the Builder plan
• Course builder with drip scheduling, auto-graded quizzes, and course compliance rules
• Coaching products, memberships, bundles, and digital downloads
• Full access to student names and email addresses
• US sales tax, VAT, and GST handling through teachable:pay
• Upsells, order bumps, coupons, and abandoned cart emails
• Affiliate program with automated payouts from Builder
• iOS and Android apps for students

What Is Udemy?

Udemy is one of the world’s largest online course marketplaces. Instructors publish courses in public categories, and learners find them through search and Udemy’s recommendations.

Udemy’s biggest strength is its audience.

Millions of learners already shop there, and Udemy spends heavily on ads, email, and sales events to bring them back. For a course seller without a website or an email list, it’s the easiest way to reach buyers. I cover the process in my guide on how to create and sell courses on Udemy.

In other words, you can call Udemy a storefront you rent with a share of your sales.

But competition is intense in every category, and top-rated courses take most of the sales. Udemy also doesn’t share student contact details, so you never own the relationship.

Main Udemy Features

• Free course publishing and hosting, with unlimited free and paid courses
• Access to an existing marketplace of learners
• Course builder for video lectures, articles, quizzes, assignments, practice tests, and coding exercises
• Certificates of completion and public student reviews
• Coupons and referral links for your own promotion
• Marketplace Insights tool that shows demand for a topic
• Extra income from Udemy Business and subscription plans for selected courses
• AI tools, including Role Play and the Udemy AI Assistant for learners

Teachable vs Udemy Pricing: How Much Do They Cost

Teachable charges a subscription and lets you keep nearly all your sales. Udemy charges nothing up front and takes a share of every sale.

Teachable Pricing

Teachable has three self-serve plans and a Custom tier for larger schools. Its free plan ended in June 2025, so you now get a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

• Starter: $29/month billed annually ($39 billed monthly), 7.5% transaction fee
• Builder: $69/month billed annually ($89 billed monthly), no transaction fee
• Growth: $139/month billed annually ($189 billed monthly), no transaction fee
• Custom: quote-based pricing for high-volume schools

Starter is a testing plan. It has no community, no custom domain, and no affiliates, and its fee adds up fast.

Builder is the realistic starting point. Certificates and white labeling wait on Growth, and published products are capped at 5, 10, and 50 by plan.

My Teachable pricing guide covers every plan.

Udemy Pricing

Udemy has no plans and no monthly fee. You can publish as many free and paid courses as you like, and Udemy earns only when you do.

Your share depends on where the buyer came from.

• Sales through your own promotion: you keep 97% when a student buys with your coupon or referral link
• All other sales: you keep 37% when a student finds your course through Udemy’s marketplace, ads, or emails
• Subscription plans: selected courses earn from a pool equal to 15% of subscription revenue, shared by minutes watched

Those percentages apply to the net amount. That’s what the student paid, minus taxes and fees such as the 30% that Apple and Google take on sales in their mobile apps.

Three more conditions matter. A referral link credits you only if the student buys within 24 hours. You can create up to three coupons per course each month. And if you join Udemy’s Deals Program, Udemy can discount your course during its sales, which is why so many courses sell for far less than their list price.

So the model is fair only when you bring the buyer. I explain how to work within it in my guide on how to price online courses.

Teachable vs Udemy Pricing Comparison

Here’s how the two models line up.

	Teachable	Udemy
Upfront cost	$29 to $139/mo on annual billing	Free
Platform share of sales	7.5% on Starter, none above	3% on your own promotion, 63% on all other sales
Card processing	2.9% + 30¢ in the US	Included in Udemy’s share
Who sets the price	You	You pick from Udemy’s price tiers, and Udemy can discount
Subscriptions and payment plans	Yes	No. Students pay once per course
Sales tax	Collected and remitted through teachable:pay	Handled by Udemy
Free trial	7 days, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee	Not needed. Free to publish

Teachable vs Udemy: What You Keep at $10,000 and $50,000 a Month

The two models are hard to compare by price, so I’ve compared what you keep. I worked out your take from $10,000 and $50,000 in monthly sales on each one.

For Teachable, I’ve assumed a $200 average sale, annual billing, and US card processing. For Udemy, the sales figure is the net amount after taxes and app store fees.

Scenario	You keep from $10,000	You keep from $50,000
Teachable Starter	$8,916	$44,696
Teachable Builder	$9,626	$48,406
Teachable Growth	$9,556	$48,336
Udemy, every sale through your own links	$9,700	$48,500
Udemy, half your links and half marketplace	$6,700	$33,500
Udemy, every sale from the marketplace	$3,700	$18,500

On Teachable Builder, you keep about 96% of your sales at both levels. On Udemy, you keep 97% only if every buyer comes through your own link.

But if you can send that many buyers yourself, you don’t need Udemy’s marketplace.

The realistic Udemy case is the bottom row. When Udemy finds the buyer, it keeps $6,300 of every $10,000. That’s the price of its audience.

One caution about these numbers. $10,000 in sales takes far more students on Udemy, because most courses there sell at a deep discount. And on Teachable, you only reach $10,000 if you can bring the traffic yourself.

You can check Teachable’s processing math on your own prices with my Stripe fee calculator.

Teachable vs Udemy Features: How They Compare

I’ve compared the two platforms on five areas that matter to a course seller.

Feature	Winner	Why
Course creation	Teachable	More control over structure, delivery, and product types
Teacher features	Udemy	More assessment types, free certificates, and built-in Q&A
Student learning experience	Udemy	A polished player with notes, Q&A, and an AI assistant
AI features	Udemy	AI tools for learners as well as instructors
Marketing and sales features	Teachable	Your own site, prices, email list, and checkout tools

Udemy wins three of the five.

But the one Teachable wins by the widest margin, marketing and sales, is the one that decides whether you’re building a business or supplying content to someone else’s.

Feature #1: Course Creation

This is where you build and organize your course content. Both platforms make it easy, and they differ in how much freedom they give you.

Teachable

Teachable’s course builder is the easiest I’ve used with clients. You add sections and lessons, upload video, audio, text, or PDFs, and publish. Its AI drafts outlines and quiz questions to speed up the build.

You control how the course is delivered. You can drip lessons on a schedule and set compliance rules that require students to finish lessons in order, pass a quiz, or watch a set share of a video. Teachable has no review process, so a course goes live when you say so.

You can also sell more than courses. Teachable supports coaching, memberships, bundles, and digital downloads, which lets you build a full offer around one topic. The limits are the product caps of 5, 10, and 50 by plan. If it’s your first build, my guide to creating an online course walks through the process.

Udemy

Udemy’s course builder guides you through each step. It asks who the course is for, what students will learn, and what they need to know first, and then helps you plan sections and lectures.

It supports more activity types than Teachable. Beyond video lectures and articles, you can add quizzes, assignments, practice tests, and coding exercises. That makes it strong for technical and exam-prep topics.

But Udemy sets the rules. A course needs at least 30 minutes of video and five lectures, and it must pass a quality review before it’s published. You can’t drip content, sell a membership, or offer coaching. Every course follows the same format, which is good for consistency and limiting for anyone with their own teaching method.

Winner: Teachable. It gives you control over delivery and lets you sell coaching and memberships alongside courses. Udemy offers more activity types inside a fixed format.

Feature #2: Teacher Features

These are the tools you use to assess students, answer them, and track how they’re doing.

Teachable

Teachable gives you auto-graded quizzes and short-answer assessments. With compliance rules, you can require a pass before a student moves on.

Its real strength is student management. You see every student’s name, email address, enrollment, and progress, and you can export that list. Reports show lesson completion and quiz scores, and the Growth plan adds custom user roles for a team.

The gaps are in what’s included. Completion certificates wait until Growth, and Teachable has no assignments with file review, no practice tests, and no Q&A area inside lessons. A community is available from Builder for student questions.

Udemy

Udemy includes a wide set of teaching tools at no cost. You can build quizzes, assignments, practice tests, and coding exercises, and every paid course issues a certificate of completion automatically.

Communication is built in. Each course has a Q&A section where students ask questions under a lecture, and you can post announcements to everyone enrolled. The Marketplace Insights tool shows student demand, search volume, and revenue for a topic before you build.

The limit is ownership. You see student names and progress, and Udemy doesn’t share email addresses. Certificates carry Udemy’s branding. So you can teach your students well on Udemy, and you can’t take them with you.

Winner: Udemy. It includes more assessment types, free certificates, and Q&A on every course. Teachable wins on student data, which matters more over time.

Feature #3: Student Learning Experience

What students see and do inside your course affects whether they finish it and whether they recommend it.

Teachable

Teachable gives students a clean course player with the lesson in the center and the curriculum in a sidebar. A progress bar shows how far they’ve come.

The experience is yours. Students log in to your school, see your branding, and find only your products. Nothing on the page points them to a competing course. They can also learn in Teachable’s iOS and Android apps.

It’s simpler than Udemy’s player. Teachable has no timestamped notes and no Q&A tab under each lesson. Students who want discussion use the community feature, which starts on Builder.

Udemy

Udemy’s course player is one of the most refined in online learning. Students see the video, the full curriculum, and their overall progress on one screen.

It gives learners more to work with. A Q&A tab lets them ask questions under a lecture, a notes tool saves notes at an exact point in the video, and announcements keep them informed. The mobile app supports offline viewing, and the Udemy AI Assistant can answer questions about course content.

The trade-off is distraction. Students are inside Udemy’s site, where other courses on the same topic are always one click away. It’s Udemy’s customer experience, with your course as one item in it.

Winner: Udemy. Its player gives students notes, Q&A, offline viewing, and an AI assistant. Teachable gives them a simpler player inside a school that’s entirely yours.

Feature #4: AI Features

AI now helps on both sides of a course. It can speed up your build, and it can support students while they learn.

Teachable

Teachable’s AI is built for the instructor. It generates a course outline from a description, writes quiz questions from your lessons, and produces transcripts for your videos.

The Growth plan adds free subtitles and translations, which helps you reach students in other languages. These tools need no setup, so you’ll use them from your first course.

Teachable’s AI stops at course content. It doesn’t write sales pages or emails, and it offers nothing for students. Teachable also has an MCP server that connects a school to Claude. It’s experimental, in early access, and limited to Growth and above.

Udemy

Udemy has put AI in front of learners. The Udemy AI Assistant answers questions inside a course, and Role Play lets students practice a skill by talking to an AI character in a realistic scenario.

As an instructor, you can add a Role Play to your curriculum and build it from scratch or with AI. Udemy also offers AI-powered coding exercises and AI explanations for practice test answers in some courses and languages.

These tools come with a condition. You need to join Udemy’s GenAI Program to create Role Plays, and several features are limited to certain languages. Read the program terms before you opt in, because they cover how Udemy uses your content with AI.

Winner: Udemy. Its AI supports students directly through an assistant and Role Play. Teachable’s AI saves you time on the build and does nothing for learners.

Feature #5: Marketing and Sales Features

This covers everything that brings in buyers and turns them into customers, including your site, pricing, email, and checkout. It’s where the two business models split.

Teachable

Teachable gives you the tools and expects you to use them. You get a branded school and sales pages, with a custom domain from Builder. You set any price and can offer subscriptions, payment plans, bundles, and coupons.

Checkout includes upsells, order bumps, and abandoned cart emails on every plan. The affiliate program on Builder pays your partners automatically. You also own your student list, so you can email students from Teachable or connect one of the email marketing platforms to nurture leads.

What Teachable doesn’t give you is traffic. It has no marketplace and no funnel builder, and its built-in email reaches students only. Every sale starts with a visitor you brought.

Udemy

Udemy does the marketing for you, on its terms. It runs ads, email campaigns, and sitewide sales, and its search and recommendations put courses in front of buyers.

Your own tools are few. You get a standard course landing page, coupons, and a referral link. Public reviews matter a great deal, because ratings influence where your course appears in search.

Everything else belongs to Udemy. You can’t collect email addresses, build a landing page, set a subscription, or stop Udemy from showing competing courses beside yours. And you keep only 37% of the sales its marketing produces.

Winner: Teachable. You control your site, your prices, and your list. Udemy’s reach is valuable, and it comes at the cost of ownership.

Teachable vs Udemy: Pros and Cons

These are the practical strengths and weaknesses of each business model.

Teachable Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
You own your brand, prices, and student list	No marketplace, so you bring every buyer
You keep about 96% of sales on Builder and above	Monthly cost before you’ve made a sale
Sells courses, coaching, memberships, and downloads	7.5% transaction fee on Starter
Subscriptions, payment plans, upsells, and order bumps	Published product caps of 5, 10, and 50
Sales tax, VAT, and GST collected and remitted for you	Certificates and white labeling need Growth
No competing courses shown to your students	Only a 7-day trial and no free plan

Udemy Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Free to publish, with no monthly fee	You keep only 37% of marketplace sales
A large existing audience of course buyers	Udemy doesn’t share student email addresses
Udemy handles marketing, payments, and tax	Udemy’s price tiers and discounts limit what you can charge
Quizzes, assignments, practice tests, and free certificates	Competing courses appear beside yours
Strong student experience with notes, Q&A, and AI tools	No memberships, coaching, subscriptions, or payment plans
Marketplace Insights shows demand before you build	Top-rated courses take most of the sales

Teachable vs Udemy Verdict: Which One Should You Choose

Teachable and Udemy don’t compete directly. They’re two different business models, and your situation should pick between them.

• You have an audience, an email list, or an ad budget: choose Teachable. You’ll keep about 96% of your sales and own every customer.
• You want to charge premium prices or sell subscriptions: choose Teachable. Udemy’s pricing rules won’t allow it.
• You sell coaching or a membership alongside courses: choose Teachable. Udemy sells courses only.
• You want to build an email list of buyers: choose Teachable. Udemy keeps that data.
• You have no audience and no budget: choose Udemy. It costs nothing, and buyers are already there.
• You want to test whether a topic sells before you invest: choose Udemy, and check Marketplace Insights first.
• You teach a technical or exam-prep topic with high search demand: Udemy’s practice tests, coding exercises, and audience suit that well.

If you’re serious about a long-term business, I’d choose Teachable.

A course business is built on owning the customer relationship. On Teachable, every sale adds a buyer to your list, and you can sell that buyer the next course, a membership, or coaching. On Udemy, each sale ends with Udemy’s customer.

I’d use Udemy as a starting point. It’s a low-risk way to prove a topic and earn reviews while you build an audience elsewhere. Read Udemy’s rules on exclusivity before you join its subscription programs, because they limit where else you can host that content.

If you decide on a hosted platform, my Teachable vs Thinkific, Kajabi vs Teachable, and Podia vs Teachable comparisons cover the closest alternatives.

Start with Teachable if you’re ready to build your own school, or start teaching on Udemy if you want to test your idea first.

Teachable vs Udemy: Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between Teachable and Udemy?

Teachable is a hosted platform where you run your own branded school, set your prices, and keep your students’ contact details. Udemy is a marketplace that lists your course beside others, brings its own buyers, controls pricing, and keeps the customer relationship. You pay Teachable a subscription and pay Udemy a share of sales.

Is Teachable better than Udemy?

Teachable is better for building a long-term business, because you own your brand, prices, and student list and keep about 96% of sales. Udemy is better for reaching buyers when you have no audience, because it’s free to publish and brings marketplace traffic.

How much does Udemy take from instructors?

Udemy keeps 3% of sales made through your own coupon or referral link, so you receive 97%. It keeps 63% of all other sales, so you receive 37%. Both shares apply to the net amount after taxes and any app store fees.

Is it free to sell courses on Udemy?

Yes. Udemy charges no fee to create, host, or publish courses, and you can publish as many free and paid courses as you like. Udemy earns through its revenue share, which is 63% of marketplace sales and 3% of sales from your own promotion.

Does Teachable have a free plan?

No. Teachable ended its free plan in June 2025. It offers a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans. Plans start at $29 a month on annual billing with a 7.5% transaction fee, and the Builder plan at $69 removes the fee.

Can I get my students’ email addresses on Udemy?

No. Udemy doesn’t share student email addresses with instructors. You can message students through announcements and Q&A inside Udemy, within its rules. On Teachable, you get each student’s name and email address and can export your list.

Can I set my own price on Udemy?

Only within limits. You choose a list price from Udemy’s price tiers, and if you join the Deals Program, Udemy can discount your course during its promotions. You can’t sell subscriptions or payment plans. On Teachable, you set any price and any payment model.

Can I sell the same course on Teachable and Udemy?

Yes, for standard marketplace sales. Udemy doesn’t take exclusive rights to a course you sell there. Courses included in Udemy Business and its subscription plans must be hosted exclusively on Udemy, so read those terms before you opt in.

Does Udemy promote my course?

Udemy markets its marketplace through ads, email, and sales events, and its search and recommendations show courses to buyers. It doesn’t guarantee promotion for any single course. Courses with strong ratings and sales tend to rank higher, so new courses often need your own promotion first.

Do Teachable and Udemy offer certificates?

Both do. Udemy issues a Udemy-branded certificate of completion on paid courses at no cost. Teachable offers completion certificates with your own branding from the Growth plan, which costs $139 a month on annual billing.

Should I start on Udemy and move to Teachable later?

That’s a sensible path if you have no audience. Udemy lets you test a topic and earn reviews at no cost. Build an email list elsewhere while you do, because Udemy won’t give you student contacts. Move to Teachable once you can bring your own buyers.

See also:

• Teachable Review: One of the Best Platforms for New Course Creators
• Teachable vs Thinkific: A Comprehensive Comparison

Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution

Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.