5 Online Courses & LMS statistics & trends (2026)

This is our 2026 read on online courses & lms: how the field is priced, where the tools cluster, and which way buying behaviour is moving.

The headline figures below are derived directly from the 25 tools in our online courses & lms directory, so they're verifiable against the pages they summarise. For wider market sizing we link out to independent research rather than inventing numbers.

Key online courses & lms statistics

What the online courses & lms tools reveal

Aggregated from our online courses & lms tool research, these are specific, sourced facts rather than market estimates:

• Teachable: Starter plan keeps a 7.5% transaction fee; Builder/Growth/Custom are 0% when using teachable:pay or the monthly payment gateway.
• Thinkific: 0% platform transaction fees on all plans in primary markets (US).
• Kajabi: Kajabi Payments processing is 2.9% + $0.30 (Basic), 2.8% + $0.30 (Growth), 2.7% + $0.30 (Pro); 0% platform fee.
• LearnWorlds: Starter plan adds a flat $5 fee on every course enrollment; break-even vs Pro Trainer is roughly 14 enrollments/month.
• Podia: Mover plan keeps a 5% transaction fee; Shaker and Earthquaker have no Podia fees.
• Mighty Networks: Transaction fees are roughly 1-2% by plan (Launch 2%, Scale 1%) and stack on top of Stripe's 2.5-5%, for ~3-7% combined on web sales.
• Circle: Transaction fees are 2% on Professional and 1% on Business, stacking on Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 (effective ~4.9% / ~3.9%).
• Skool: Skool moved from a single ~$99/mo plan to two tiers: $9/mo Hobby and $99/mo Pro.
• Gumroad: Flat 10% + $0.50 fee per direct sale (plus sales tax); no monthly fee and no volume discounts.
• Systeme.io: The free plan is permanent (no credit card), with 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels, 1 blog, 1 course and 1 custom domain.
• LearnDash: 0% transaction fees (unlike Teachable's 7.5% Starter fee or Gumroad's 10%).
• LifterLMS: Core plugin is free in the WordPress repo; payment gateways come with the Earth bundle ($149.50/yr) and up.

Qualitative trends to watch in 2026

Consolidation and feature-bundling are the defining trends in online courses & lms right now. A few directional patterns we're seeing, framed as trends rather than precise figures (we don't publish numbers we can't source):

• With 16 sub-categories in play, buyers increasingly consolidate onto a few broader tools rather than stitching point solutions together.
• Trials are doing more of the selling: 5 of 25 tools here lean on a free trial rather than a permanent free plan to win buyers.
• Free tiers are increasingly used as an acquisition funnel: 12 of 25 tools here lead with one.
• Pricing is drifting from flat monthly fees toward per-seat and usage-based models, which makes total cost harder to compare at a glance.

Sources & further reading

For hard market-size and adoption figures, these independent sources publish regularly updated, citable research:

• HolonIQ education market intelligence
• Statista: e-learning
• OECD education research

The data-derived figures above are computed from the tools we track and are accurate to this directory; the external reports cover broader market numbers we don't estimate ourselves.