5 tools · 15 verified reviews · pricing fact-checked
The first question is who you are teaching: customers or employees. Selling courses to the public is a commerce problem — Teachable and Thinkific do it best, Kajabi bundles the whole business around it, and LearnWorlds wins on the learning experience itself. Training your own staff is a compliance problem, and TalentLMS is built for that instead. Buying across that line is the most common mistake in this category. Transaction fees matter as much as subscription price for anyone selling; all prices re-verified within the last 30 days.
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Our rating |
|---|---|---|---|
 Thinkific | Best economics for creators selling at volume | Free plan | 4.7 |
 LearnWorlds | Best learning experience and white-label branded schools | $24/mo | 4.3 |
 TalentLMS | Best for employee onboarding and compliance training | Free plan | 4.3 |
 Teachable | Best for creators who want selling and tax handled for them | Free plan | 4.2 |
 Kajabi | Best all-in-one platform for established creator businesses | $71/mo | 4.0 |
5 of 5 tools
Best economics for creators selling at volume
Thinkific matches Teachable on course creation and removes transaction fees from its lowest paid tier, which makes the economics clearly better for anyone selling at volume. You handle your own sales tax.
Free plan
paid from $36/mo
Best learning experience and white-label branded schools
LearnWorlds focuses on the learning experience: interactive video, in-lesson assessments and heavily customisable branded schools. The strongest course product here, with a more complex interface to match.
$24/mo
30-day free trial
Best for employee onboarding and compliance training
TalentLMS is a corporate LMS rather than a course-selling platform: assignment, deadlines, SCORM, certification renewals and audit-ready reporting. Priced per user and unsuited to selling courses publicly.
Free plan
paid from $119/mo
Best for creators who want selling and tax handled for them
Teachable is the most straightforward way to sell a course. Its handling of global sales tax as merchant of record removes a genuine headache; transaction fees on lower tiers are the offsetting cost.
Free plan
paid from $29/mo
Best all-in-one platform for established creator businesses
Kajabi bundles course hosting with email marketing, funnels, a website builder and a CRM. Genuinely replaces several subscriptions, at a price that only makes sense once revenue justifies it.
$71/mo
14-day free trial
Head to head
Feature-by-feature matchups between leading LMS & Course Platforms tools, with a clear verdict.
The list, in detail
Composed from the same fact-checked data as each tool's full review — pricing, features, and verified ratings.
Thinkific matches Teachable on course creation and removes transaction fees from its lowest paid tier, which makes the economics clearly better for anyone selling at volume. You handle your own sales tax.
4.73 verified reviews
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $36/mo
LearnWorlds focuses on the learning experience: interactive video, in-lesson assessments and heavily customisable branded schools. The strongest course product here, with a more complex interface to match.
4.33 verified reviews
Pricing: Paid plans from $24/mo with a 30-day free trial
TalentLMS is a corporate LMS rather than a course-selling platform: assignment, deadlines, SCORM, certification renewals and audit-ready reporting. Priced per user and unsuited to selling courses publicly.
4.33 verified reviews
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $119/mo
Teachable is the most straightforward way to sell a course. Its handling of global sales tax as merchant of record removes a genuine headache; transaction fees on lower tiers are the offsetting cost.
4.23 verified reviews
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $29/mo
Kajabi bundles course hosting with email marketing, funnels, a website builder and a CRM. Genuinely replaces several subscriptions, at a price that only makes sense once revenue justifies it.
4.03 verified reviews
Pricing: Paid plans from $71/mo with a 14-day free trial
Methodology
We evaluated 25 course and LMS platforms across 25 criteria, weighted: features 30%, value for money 25%, ease of use 25%, support 20%. Our process:
We pay for our own accounts. No vendor can buy a ranking, a rating or a badge.
LMS & Course Platforms by the numbers
$36/mo
Median starting price
100%
Offer a free trial
60%
Have a free plan
15
Verified reviews
Computed live from the 5 LMS & Course Platforms products we track — August 25, 2026
Buyer's guide
A 5% fee on $8,000 of monthly sales is $400 — more than any plan here. Platforms use fees to make entry tiers look cheap, and the upgrade that removes them frequently pays for itself immediately. Work out your expected monthly revenue, calculate the fee at each tier, and compare total cost rather than plan price. This single calculation changes the answer for most sellers.
Customer-facing platforms optimise for checkout, marketing, affiliates and upsells. Corporate LMS platforms optimise for assignment, deadlines, reporting, SCORM and compliance evidence. Both call themselves learning platforms and neither does the other job well. Decide which side of that line you are on before you look at a single feature table.
Every platform here hosts video, quizzes and certificates competently. Completion rates are driven by lesson length, structure and accountability, not by the software. Be sceptical of features sold as engagement solutions — drip scheduling and gamification help at the margin, and neither rescues a badly structured course.
Migration is genuinely painful in this category. Video, course structure, student progress and active subscriptions all have to move, and progress data usually cannot. Before committing, check that you can export student lists and, critically, that your payment subscriptions can be transferred rather than cancelled and resold.
FAQ
Entry paid plans run $24–71 per month billed annually (LearnWorlds Starter $24, Teachable Starter $29, Thinkific Basic $36, Kajabi Kickstarter $71), with corporate LMS pricing by user band from about $119. The bigger number for anyone selling is often the transaction fee: Teachable takes 7.5% on Starter, LearnWorlds $5 per sale on Starter, while Thinkific and Kajabi take nothing on paid plans. At £5,000 monthly sales a 7.5% fee is £375 — more than any subscription here.
Thinkific charges no transaction fees on any paid plan, including its cheapest at $36. Kajabi also takes 0% on all plans. Teachable removes fees from its $69 Builder tier upward, and LearnWorlds from its $79 Pro Trainer tier. Only payment processing costs (Stripe or PayPal, typically 2.9% plus a fixed fee) remain, and those are unavoidable everywhere.
A course platform (Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, LearnWorlds) optimises for selling to the public: checkout, tax, marketing, affiliates and upsells. A corporate LMS (TalentLMS) optimises for training your own people: mandatory assignment, deadlines, reminders, certification renewal, SCORM import and audit-ready reporting. Buying across that line is the most common mistake here — creator platforms cannot prove compliance, and corporate platforms sell courses badly.
Usually yes, and it catches people out. Digital course sales attract EU VAT and US sales tax in many jurisdictions, based on where the buyer is rather than where you are. Teachable acts as merchant of record on its payment options and handles this for you — genuinely valuable for international sellers. Thinkific, Kajabi and LearnWorlds leave it with you, so budget for an accountant or a tax automation service if you sell across borders.
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