Nobody on a stage tells you what they actually charge for group access. So someone went and counted.

On July 19, 2026, an analyst at Revenue Geeks captured every page of Skool's public Discovery list: 1,000 trending communities with their prices, member counts, and creation dates. 77.7% charge for access, the median price is $27 per month, and the average is $42.91.

$27. Not $97. Not $497. Twenty-seven dollars.

If you have been quietly wondering whether your membership is priced too low, that number is either a relief or a problem, depending on which direction you were about to move.

The market clusters low and small

Prices in the July 19 pull ran from $1 to $1,950 a month, and 30.7% of monthly-billed groups sat in the $10-to-$29 band. The average is dragged upward by the top end: the mean landed at $42.91 once a $10,000-a-month outlier rotated off the list.

The size data is the part that should recalibrate expectations. The median community has 205 members, the 1,000 groups together hold 1,192,504 memberships, and the median community is just 8.6 months old — 39% launched within the last six months.

Run the median against the median: a 205-member group at $27 grosses $5,535 a month before Skool's cut.

One caveat worth respecting. The list is a trending snapshot, not a census, and it moves fast. A pull five days earlier, on July 14, found 846 of 1,000 communities charging for access — versus 777 of 1,000 on July 19. The median asking price itself wobbled from $27 to $29 and back to $27 across three pulls in one week.

The second number: $1,268

Here's the part most coaches never calculate.

Skool has two plans, and the sticker price is the small half. Hobby keeps 10% plus $0.30 of every charge; Pro keeps 2.9% plus $0.30. Once your community bills about $1,268 a month, Pro becomes the cheaper plan overall.

Make it concrete. A group billing $2,700 a month from 100 members at $27 each hands Skool roughly $300 on Hobby, once the 30-cent charges are counted, and $108 on Pro. Same community. Same members. A $90 difference in base subscription buying back nearly $200 a month in fees.

Other analysts put the crossover slightly higher — SchoolMaker recommends Pro above $1,200 a month in community revenue, and AI Funnel Insider puts the band at roughly $1,300 to $1,400 depending on your membership price. The exact dollar depends on your ticket. The direction never changes: the cheap plan taxes growth.

Selling high-ticket inside the community? There's one more layer. Pro charges no platform fee up to $899, then adds a 1% platform fee above $899, making the effective rate 3.9% plus $0.30 on those purchases.

The $9 tier exists because Skool cut its entry price from $99 to $9. Sam Ovens founded the company in 2019 with Daniel Kang. It brought in an enormous volume of beginner communities — and a 10% rake on all of them.

Kajabi drove the other way

While Skool was pricing the front door at $9, Kajabi raised the drawbridge.

Kajabi lifted monthly prices roughly 20–25% across every plan, eliminated the $89-a-month Kickstarter tier entirely, and cut the Basic plan's contact limit from 10,000 to 2,500. New customers got a 50% promotional discount; existing customers took the full increase on their first billing date on or after January 13, 2026, with no grandfathered pricing.

By plan: Basic went from $149 to $179 a month, Growth from $199 to $249, Pro from $399 to $499. A creator with 5,000 email subscribers on Basic now needs the Growth plan. Reddit threads and a Change.org petition followed.

Worth flagging: that price breakdown comes from Ruzuku, and the company discloses upfront that it develops a competing course platform. The underlying numbers match Kajabi's own public pricing page.

Two platforms, two strategies, one shared logic. One charges you upfront and lets your revenue run. The other lets you in for $9 and meters you on the way out.

At $27 a month and 205 members, you are already inside the window where that choice costs real money.