We use cookies

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in, plus optional analytics and marketing cookies. Affiliate referrals use browser storage and need your consent. Cookie policy

All free tools

Free tool

Online course pricing calculator

Most course prices are picked by feel: $49 sounds fair, $199 sounds scary. This calculator replaces feel with arithmetic. Start from the income you want and the audience you have, and it shows the price that gets you there, plus what each common price point would demand of you.

$

Net, after platform fees.

Email list, followers who actually see posts, monthly readers.

1%
0.25%5%

Your assumption, not a promise. If unsure, start at 1% of the people who genuinely see the offer and revise once you have real data.

Price to hit your goal

$59

at ~20 sales/mo

Expected buyers

20

per month, at your assumption

You keep per sale

$50.15

85% of the price, on Lesso

Or pick a price point

$19you keep $16.15/sale
62 sales/moneeds a bigger audience
$29you keep $24.65/sale
41 sales/moneeds a bigger audience
$49you keep $41.65/sale
25 sales/moneeds a bigger audience
$99you keep $84.15/sale
12 sales/mowithin your reach
$199you keep $169.15/sale
6 sales/mowithin your reach

price = goal ÷ (audience × conversion × 0.85) · the 0.85 is Lesso's 85% creator share

The maths, in one line

price = monthly goal ÷ (audience × conversion × 0.85)

The 0.85 is the share of each sale you actually keep on Lesso (85%, with card processing absorbed), so the goal is measured in money that reaches you. Audience times conversion is your expected buyers per month; divide the goal by buyers and by the net share and you have the price. Everything else on the page is a sanity check on that one line.

Price the transformation, not the word count

Two courses of identical length can honestly carry a 10x price difference, because buyers pay for where the course gets them, not for how long it takes to read. A tight, four-module course that takes someone from copy-pasting config to confidently running their own server is worth more than a sprawling one that merely tours the topic. When you are tempted to add material to justify a price, add proof instead: outcomes, examples, and specifics raise willingness to pay faster than page count does.

One structural note: the calculator prices a one-time purchase, which is the default way courses sell on Lesso. A monthly subscription can suit a course that genuinely keeps growing, but it also resets the buying decision every month; most courses are better sold once, at a price that respects the transformation. Lesso's minimum course price is $15, and there is no maximum.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for an online course?

There is no universal number, and anyone quoting one is guessing about your situation. The honest method is to work backwards: decide the monthly income you want, estimate how many people genuinely see your offer each month, pick a conversion assumption you can defend, and the price falls out of the arithmetic. Then sanity-check it against the value of the transformation: a course that saves someone a week of work or unlocks a skill they are paid for can carry a much higher price than its length suggests.

Is it better to start with a low price and raise it?

Raising a price is easy and buyers who paid less feel fine about it. Cutting a price annoys everyone who paid more. If you are unsure between two numbers, launch at the lower one, collect evidence that the course delivers, then raise it and say so publicly. The asymmetry is the whole argument.

What conversion rate should I assume?

Measure your own as soon as you have real traffic; until then, keep the assumption small and explicit. Conversion depends more on how warm the audience is than on anything else: readers who already trust your writing convert far better than strangers from a feed. The slider exists so the assumption is a visible input you can change, not a hidden promise.

Why does the calculator multiply by 85%?

Because a price is not what you receive. The calculator assumes Lesso's split, where you keep 85% of every payment and card processing is absorbed by the platform, so your goal is hit with real take-home money, not gross revenue. On a $49 course you keep $41.65 per sale, and the sales-needed numbers are computed from that.

What if the suggested price seems impossibly high?

That usually means the audience, not the price, is the constraint. Three ways out: grow the number of people who see the offer, raise conversion with a stronger promise and proof, or ship a smaller course now at a modest price and let it fund the audience-building. A pre-sale to a waitlist is the fastest way to find out whether the price holds.

For creators

Sell what you already wrote.

Lesso turns writeups, docs, blog posts, and newsletters into a paid course in minutes. No video, no monthly fee, and you keep 85% of every payment.

Turn your content into a course, free

Keep going