Community Platform Comparison: Whop vs Skool vs Circle Fees

AdvLaunch is the AI agency for coaches and consultants. In our paid community program, we run paid Meta acquisition into paid communities on Skool, Whop and Circle, so we read these fee tables next to real ad spend. We also sell a service that sits on top of whichever platform you pick, so weigh our opinions with that stake in mind. This page prices Whop, Skool and Circle together: plan prices, per-payment fees and the monthly cost for 40 and 300 members. Every fee comes from the vendor's own page, checked on 8 October 2026, except one third-party report that we flag.

Whop vs Skool vs Circle: published pricing side by side

Whop is the only one of the three with no monthly fee; Skool and Circle both charge a monthly plan price plus a cut of every member payment. The table shows what each vendor publishes before taxes, refunds, disputes and optional add-ons.

Skool: two plans and one fee decision

Skool has two plans, and the main thing that changes between them is the transaction fee: Hobby takes 10% + $0.30 per payment and Pro takes 2.9% + $0.30. Pro also carries the features Skool's help center marks as Pro-only, including webinars, AutoDM, Zapier and member affiliates. Hobby suits a community still proving it can charge; Pro costs less once its 7.1-point lower fee saves more than the $90 gap between plans.

Three details change the real cost. Skool is the merchant of record, so it collects and remits EU VAT and adds it on top of your price. Growth Boost is on by default: it shows your group in Discovery results and off-site ads and charges a 30% commission only when Skool brings you a paying member, for as long as that subscription stays active. Payouts run weekly, on Wednesdays.

Hobby or Pro? The break-even revenue between the two plans is worked out on our Skool pricing page →

Whop: no monthly fee, but read the whole fee stack

Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 for each successful US card payment, with no setup fee and no monthly fee. Its own table adds 1.5% for international cards and 1% when currency conversion is needed, then lists optional layers that stack on top when enabled: 0.8% orchestration, 0.5% billing and 2% tax and remittance. With everything switched on and tax collected, Whop's table totals 6% + $0.30.

Payment methods and payouts carry their own prices. Financing through Whop's partners is listed at 15% per transaction, ACH debits at 1.5% (capped at $5), a next-day ACH payout at $2.50 and each dispute at $15. Whop's changelog says it removed its 30% fee on sales found through its Discover marketplace in May 2025, so older comparisons that still apply that fee are out of date.

One possible fee is not on the pricing page. Third-party reviews, such as SchoolMaker's (updated 10 September 2026), report an extra 3% on sales that use access automations like Discord or Telegram gating. We could not confirm that on Whop's own pages, so read your checkout and Whop's terms before assuming it is zero. The worked example below shows what it would add.

Weighing Whop against Skool for one offer? Our fee comparison models 100 card payments of $49 and how each handles discovery →

Circle: a plan price, a Circle fee and Stripe's fees

Circle's cost has three layers: a monthly plan, Circle's transaction fee and Stripe's processing. The plans are Professional at $89, Business at $199 and Scale at $419 a month on annual billing, and Circle Plus is custom-priced. Circle's own fee is 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Plus.

On top of that, Circle's help center says paywall payments carry Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30, and subscriptions add 0.7% for Stripe Billing. On a Business plan that is 1% + 2.9% + 0.7% + $0.30 per subscription payment. The plan price also buys different things. Professional includes 3 admins, 10 moderators and 20 spaces, with extra admins at $10 a month each. Business is where workflows, API access, activity scores and removal of Circle branding begin. A 14-day free trial needs no credit card.

Circle against Whop on a $99 membership? Our Whop vs Circle post prices 50, 100 and 200 members →

Worked example: 40 members and 300 members at $49 a month

Worked example, not a benchmark. Assume every member pays $49 a month by US card, so 40 members is $1,960 of monthly revenue and 300 members is $14,700. Assume no refunds, disputes, taxes, international cards or optional add-ons. Skool's 3.9% rate does not apply because no payment exceeds $900, and Skool's plan prices are the monthly-billing ones. Each line adds the plan price, the percentage fee on revenue and $0.30 per payment.

Read the table as percentages of revenue. Whop is 3.3% at both sizes because it has no plan price. Skool Pro falls from 8.6% to 4.2% as the $99 spreads over more payments, and Circle Professional falls from 10.8% to 6.8%. Only Skool Hobby stays near 10%. Whop is cheapest at both sizes. If the extra 3% automation fee applies to you, Whop would still be cheaper at 40 members ($123.72) but dearer than Skool Pro at 300 ($927.90 against $615.30).

Circle Business costs the most at 40 members and less than Circle Professional at 300. The 1-point lower Circle fee saves $147 a month at $14,700, which outweighs the $110 higher plan price. The two plans cost the same at $11,000 of monthly revenue, because $110 divided by 1% is $11,000.

Which platform fits which kind of community

What platform fees leave out: the cost of filling the community

At 40 members, the dearest plan in the table costs $301.16 a month. The platform choice moves your costs by tens or low hundreds of dollars a month; finding the next 40 members, through ad spend, creative and the page strangers see first, is the larger line item.

That is why we treat the platform as a short decision. Skool's help center documents a Meta pixel plugin that tracks About-page views, membership requests and purchases, so ads sent straight to a Skool group are measurable. We still start cold traffic on a challenge or webinar page we control, because it sells a seven-day result instead of a recurring membership. That is a funnel choice, not a pixel limit. Skool also asks admins to use a dedicated pixel ID for the Skool group and not to reuse it across domains, so a funnel on your own domain needs its own measurement plan.

Picked a platform and still need members? See what the Launch Pack and the Scale Program include →

Our take: when the platform matters and when it does not

Choose on cost only while revenue is small. Under about $2,000 a month, Whop's lack of a plan price is a real saving, as the 40-member row shows. At 300 members Whop, Skool Pro and Circle sit within about 3.5 percentage points of each other, and workflows, branding and member experience matter more than the fee line.

AdvLaunch is the right call when your problem is members, not software: you have an offer people pay for, a platform that works and no repeatable way to turn strangers into paying members. It is the wrong call when there is no fit signal yet. Under roughly $20,000 a year in community revenue, the Scale Program is probably premature, and our 45-minute strategy call checks fit first and declines projects with the wrong price point, no product-market fit yet or an unrealistic timeline. We do not move communities between platforms or run them day to day, so if a fee table is all you needed, you have it above.

How AdvLaunch Fills a Skool, Whop or Circle Community: The Community Flywheel™

We build one acquisition layer in front of whichever platform you chose and leave checkout and the community where they are. We call it The Community Flywheel™, and we never promise a conversion rate for it:

1. Hook: a Meta ad points to a paid challenge, webinar or masterclass we control, not to the community signup page.
2. Result delivered: over 7 days or one live event, your method produces a real outcome before anyone pays for a membership.
3. Community upsell: graduates are offered the paid community at a founder rate, on Skool, Whop or Circle exactly as you run it today.
4. Retention compounds: members arrive already bought in, and we measure retention and lifetime value against the campaign cohort instead of a generic benchmark.

If the Launch Pack's numbers work, you scale. If they do not, you walk away, and your ad spend, attribution data and retargeting audiences stay in your own Meta account either way.

Ruling out Circle specifically rather than comparing all three? See Circle.so Alternatives: 5 Picks (and When to Stay) for a deeper look at when switching off Circle mid-campaign costs more in broken ad attribution than the fee saves. Leaning toward Mighty Networks specifically? Our Mighty Networks review covers the fee stacking and course-gating tradeoffs first.

Still selling through a link-in-bio storefront rather than any of these? See our Stan Store alternatives breakdown for the signal that tells you it's time to move to a real community platform.

Coming from a tiered-perks platform instead of a storefront? See Patreon alternative for the fee breakdown against Skool, Whop, Circle, Kajabi, and Ghost.

Weighing a billing-only plugin against any of these hosted platforms? See what Memberful is, and how it works for the plugin-vs-platform tradeoff before you commit to one or the other.