How to Price Your Skool Community (Every Model Explained)
by Dan Lopez 
Pricing your Skool community is one of the highest-leverage decisions you’ll make. Get it right and you have a scalable recurring revenue business. Get it wrong and you’re leaving money on the table or struggling to acquire members profitably.
This post covers all 5 pricing models Skool owners use, real-world examples of what’s working, and a practical framework for where to start and when to raise your price.
The 5 Skool Pricing Models
1. Paid (Direct-to-Membership)
The simplest model: you charge a monthly fee and people either pay or they don’t. No free tier, no trial. The barrier is intentional. It filters for members who are serious.
Best for: Communities with a clear, specific outcome. Coaching communities, accountability groups, niche operators who already have an audience or warm traffic.
Common price points: $27-$197/month. The most common sweet spot for paid communities is $49-$97.
What drives the price: The specificity of the outcome and the access you provide. A $49/month community with recorded courses and async Q&A is very different from a $97/month community with weekly live calls.
Use the Skool Ads Break-Even Calculator to model CAC, churn, and the month your paid community becomes profitably.
2. Paid with Free Trial
Same as the paid model, but you offer 7 or 14 days free before the first charge. Skool natively supports this.
Best for: Communities where the value is hard to explain and needs to be experienced. If your community is genuinely active and engaging, a trial converts skeptics.
How it affects your numbers: Trials improve top-of-funnel conversion but introduce a churn event at day 7 or 14. Expect 20-40% of trial starts to not convert to paid, depending on your onboarding. The first 72 hours determines whether a member sticks.
What to do in the trial window: Have an automated DM fire on join. Get them into one quick win inside the community before the trial ends.
3. Freemium (Free Tier + Paid Upgrade)
You run one Skool community with two tiers: free access for everyone, paid access for members who want more. Skool handles the upgrade natively. Members can convert without leaving the platform.
Best for: Creators running cheap traffic (Meta ads, organic content) who want to build a large pool of free members before monetizing. Works especially well if you have a strong content game and can demonstrate value in the free tier.
The math: Your cost per free member via Meta ads is typically $2-$10. If 5% of those free members convert to a $49/month paid tier, your effective CAC is roughly $100-$200. That math works at most price points above $49.
Common free-to-paid conversion rates: 2-8%. If you’re below 2%, the free tier isn’t delivering enough value or the upgrade offer isn’t clear enough.
Want to model whether this math works for your numbers? Use the Skool Freemium Calculator to see your effective CAC and break-even month.
4. Free Community to High-Ticket Offer
The free community isn’t a product. It’s a funnel. You grow a free Skool group, deliver value consistently, and convert engaged members into a high-ticket coaching program, mastermind, or done-for-you service. The CTA inside the community is “book a call” or “apply.”
Best for: Coaches, consultants, and service providers where the real product is $2,000-$25,000+. The free community replaces cold outreach and warms leads at scale.
The math is different here: You’re not optimizing for MRR from the community itself. You’re optimizing for qualified calls booked. A free community of 500 engaged members booking 5-10 sales calls per month, closing at 20-30%, generates $20,000-$75,000+ from a single high-ticket offer.
What the community does: It demonstrates expertise, builds trust, and creates social proof publicly. Members see how you think, how you teach, and how you treat people before they ever get on a call with you.
5. Annual (or Lifetime) Pricing
You charge members upfront for a full year, or once for lifetime access. Skool supports annual billing natively alongside monthly, so members can choose their billing cadence at checkout without any workaround.
Best for: Communities with low churn and members who are committed long-term. Annual pricing works especially well when your audience plans at least 6 months ahead, like business owners on a fiscal budget cycle.
The math: A typical annual discount is 15-25% off the monthly rate. A $49/month community becomes $499/year (roughly 15% off) or $470/year (20% off). You collect $499 upfront instead of $49. Cash flow improves immediately.
Why it reduces churn: A monthly member can cancel any time. An annual member has already paid. Even if they disengage in month 4, they don’t churn until renewal. This buys you time to re-engage them and deliver enough value to earn the renewal.
Lifetime pricing: Some operators offer a one-time lifetime rate, typically 12-24x the monthly price. It works as a launch offer or during a price increase window. Use it carefully. A large lifetime cohort can become a drag if the community evolves and those members no longer match your target audience.
Common structure: Offer monthly as the default. Surface annual as the “better value” option at checkout. A small percentage of members will self-select into annual, improving your cash position without any change to your core product.
Pricing Model Comparison
| Model | Entry point | Revenue type | Best traffic source | Typical CAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid (direct) | $27-$197/mo | Recurring MRR | Warm audience, ads | $80-$200 |
| Paid with trial | $0 for 7-14 days | Recurring MRR | Ads, cold traffic | $80-$200 |
| Freemium | $0 free / $29-$99 paid | Recurring MRR | Cheap ads, organic | $100-$300 effective |
| Free to High Ticket | $0 | One-time or retainer | Organic content, ads | $500-$2,000+ |
| Annual / Lifetime | $470-$999/yr upfront | Upfront + renewal | Existing members, launch | Same as base model |
Real Pricing Examples
Here’s what’s actually working across different types of Skool communities:
| Community type | Price | Model | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fitness / health coaching | $27-$49/mo | Paid direct | High volume, low price |
| Business / marketing | $49-$97/mo | Paid or freemium | Most common range |
| Niche skills (music, art, writing) | $19-$67/mo | Paid or freemium | Content-heavy |
| Accountability / peer group | $29-$99/mo | Paid with trial | Small, tight-knit |
| High-ticket coaching funnel | Free | Free to high ticket | $3k-$25k back-end |
| Mastermind / operator group | $197-$997/mo | Paid direct | Small, exclusive |
| VIP / inner circle | $500-$2,000/mo | Paid direct | Under 100 members |
How Much MRR Can You Make?
This table shows monthly recurring revenue at different price points and member counts.
| Members | $27/mo | $49/mo | $97/mo | $197/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $1,350 | $2,450 | $4,850 | $9,850 |
| 100 | $2,700 | $4,900 | $9,700 | $19,700 |
| 250 | $6,750 | $12,250 | $24,250 | $49,250 |
| 500 | $13,500 | $24,500 | $48,500 | $98,500 |
| 1,000 | $27,000 | $49,000 | $97,000 | $197,000 |
The numbers look good on paper. What kills them in practice is churn. At 8% monthly churn you’re replacing nearly your entire community every year just to stay flat. At 3% churn, growth compounds quickly.
Use the Skool Ads Break-Even Calculator to model the full picture: CAC, churn, ad budget, and the month your community becomes profitably.
Start Low, Raise Gradually
The most common mistake new Skool owners make is pricing too high before they have proof. A $197/month community with 12 members and no testimonials is a hard sell. The same community at $49 fills faster, generates social proof, and becomes easier to raise later.
The strategy that works:
1. Start at a founder price. Launch at 30-50% below where you want to eventually be. Tell early members explicitly: “This is the founder rate. It will increase as the community grows.” This creates urgency and rewards early commitment.
2. Grandfather existing members. When you raise prices, existing members keep their current rate. New members pay the higher rate. This is fair and a retention lever. Members who joined at $49 won’t leave a community they’d now have to pay $97 to rejoin.
3. Use price increases as a launch event. “Price goes up on [date]” is a legitimate reason to promote. It drives a wave of new signups from people sitting on the fence.
4. Test pricing elasticity. If you raise your price 20% and signups don’t drop meaningfully, your price was too low. Keep raising until demand starts softening. That’s your ceiling for now.
5. Let the waitlist tell you. If you’re getting more applications than you can handle at your current price, raise it. Scarcity of attention is a pricing signal.
What Price Should You Start At?
A simple framework:
- No audience, no proof: Start at $19-$27/month. Make it nearly a no-brainer. Fill the room, generate testimonials, then raise.
- Some audience, some proof: Start at $49-$67/month. This is the most common successful launch range.
- Strong audience, strong proof: Start at $97-$197/month. You’ve earned the right to charge more from day one.
- Established reputation, transformational outcome: $197-$997/month. At this level you’re selling access to you, not just content.
The price you charge shapes the member you attract. A $27 community and a $197 community covering the same topic will have very different rooms. Neither is wrong. They’re different products serving different buyers.
The Pricing Model Nobody Talks About: Stacking
Many successful Skool operators run multiple communities simultaneously:
- A free community for organic growth and top-of-funnel lead capture
- A $49-$97/month community for committed members who want more
- A $500-$2,000/month mastermind for their best operators
- A high-ticket back-end ($5k-$25k) sold via calls booked from any tier
Each community feeds the next. The free tier grows on organic content. The paid tiers fund the ad spend that grows the free tier. The mastermind funds everything.
You don’t have to start here. But it’s useful to know where the ceiling is.
Summary
- Paid direct is the simplest model and works best with warm traffic or a clear outcome
- Paid with trial reduces friction at the top of funnel but requires strong onboarding
- Freemium works when CPL is low and you can convert at 3%+
- Free to high ticket is the highest-leverage model for coaches and consultants
- Annual / lifetime improves cash flow and reduces churn without changing your core product
- Start lower than you think, raise gradually, grandfather existing members
- At every price point, churn is the variable that makes or breaks the math
Use the calculators on this site to run your specific numbers before you commit to a model.