How to price a membership community (2026)

Price a membership community from its churn and its acquisition cost, not from what rival communities charge. LeadsNow sees booked-call costs of $30–$400, depending on industry, offer, price and many other variables. Using the Churn Floor below, a community that spends $100 to win a member and loses 10% of members a month needs at least $36 a month.

• The formula (the Churn Floor): (fixed monthly cost per member + 3 × acquisition cost × monthly churn + per-payment cents) ÷ (1 − percentage fees) = the lowest monthly price that repays each member’s acquisition cost three times over across their expected lifetime.
• Member lifetime: 1 ÷ monthly churn. At 10% churn the average member stays 10 months; at 5%, 20 months.
• Platform fees (read 15 October 2026): Skool lists $9 a month plus a 10% transaction fee (Hobby) or $99 plus 2.9% (Pro); Circle lists $89 a month plus 2% (Professional, annual billing); Patreon takes 10% plus processing.
• The sales-call threshold: at 10% churn and a 30% close rate, a $30 booked call needs a price of about $36 a month; a $400 booked call needs about $420.
• Annual plans: an annual price set at 10 months’ fees out-earns the average monthly member in year one whenever monthly churn is above about 3.4%.
• Currency: platform prices are in US dollars, the card rate is Stripe’s Australian rate; the arithmetic works in any currency.

How to price a membership community: the Churn Floor formula

The Churn Floor is the lowest monthly price at which a membership community repays each member’s acquisition cost three times over their expected lifetime. It counts running costs and payment fees, and the 3× multiple leaves two-thirds of each member’s net lifetime revenue for content, hosting, your time and profit. No credible public benchmark exists for community churn or acquisition cost, so every churn and cost figure below is a labelled assumption: replace them with your own.

Worked example, middle cell. Assumed inputs: 200 members; fixed costs of $889 a month (Circle Professional at $89 plus 20 hours of community management at $40 an hour), which is $4.445 per member; a $100 acquisition cost; 10% monthly churn; and fees of 2% (Circle) plus 1.65% and 30 cents (Stripe’s Australian domestic card rate). Step one: 3 × $100 × 0.10 = $30 a month of acquisition recovery. Step two: $4.445 + $30 + $0.30 = $34.745. Step three: $34.745 ÷ (1 − 0.0365) = $36.06. Any price below that, and the community loses money on the average member before it has paid for your time. The quotable version: churn sets a membership community’s minimum price more than its content does, because halving churn from 10% to 5% cuts the floor from $36.06 to $20.49.

The floor is a minimum, not the price. The ceiling is what members will pay for the outcome the community delivers; set the price anywhere between the two, and if the ceiling sits below the floor, change the cost or the churn before you launch.

What do community platform fees take from a membership price in 2026?

Community platform fees in 2026 range from a flat subscription plus 1–2% to a straight 10% of revenue: up to $320 a month apart at $5,000 of revenue. The figures below were read on each vendor’s own pricing page on 15 October 2026.

Two practical rules come out of the table. On Skool, Pro becomes cheaper than Hobby once a community takes about $1,268 a month ($9 + 10% equals $99 + 2.9% at $1,267.61), which is about 26 members at $49. And Skool’s pricing page does not say whether card processing sits inside its transaction fee, so confirm that before you model it. Price the community on the fee you will pay at your target size, not at launch.

Should my membership community sell through sales calls?

A membership community should sell through booked sales calls only if its price clears the Churn Floor with call costs counted: about $109 a month for a $100 call. That figure assumes 10% churn.

Acquisition cost through calls is cost per booked call divided by the share of booked calls that become members. The 30% close rate below is an assumption, as are the churn bands; the three booked-call costs are inputs picked from LeadsNow’s general $30–$400 range across industries, not a figure LeadsNow has measured for membership communities. Our guide to calculating cost per booked call shows which costs belong in that number.

Below about $50 a month, most communities should sell through a checkout page, a free tier or a trial rather than a conversation, because no realistic call cost repays at that price. Above a few hundred a month, the buyer often expects to speak to someone before joining, and the call becomes part of what justifies the price. That is the line between a membership community and the high-ticket offers on our membership marketing page.

How should I price the annual plan for a membership community?

An annual plan for a membership community priced at 10 months of the monthly fee out-earns the average monthly member in year one whenever monthly churn is above about 3.4%.

The calculation is the expected number of payments a monthly member makes in their first 12 months: (1 − (1 − churn)¹²) ÷ churn. Ten months is used because it is a common annual convention (Skool’s own pricing page advertises “2 months free” on yearly billing); the churn bands are assumptions.

The higher the churn, the more an annual plan is worth to you, and the bigger the discount you can afford to offer for it. The catch is that fewer people take an annual plan, and the ones who do are often the ones who would have stayed anyway, so offer it alongside monthly rather than instead of it.

How to price tiers and a founding-member rate

A tiered membership community should price each upper tier on its extra delivery cost and churn, using the Churn Floor rather than a fixed multiple of the base tier.

• Price the add-on, not the badge. A tier that adds a monthly live call adds host hours; divide those hours by the members in that tier and add the result to the fixed cost line of the formula.
• Expect different churn. Members who pay for access to you often churn differently from members who pay for content. Measure each tier’s churn separately after 90 days and re-run the floor.
• Founding-member rates. A founding rate below the floor is a launch cost, not a price. Cap it by number or date, lock it for the members who take it, and charge new members the full price from the start.
• Raising the price. Raise it for new members first. Existing members keep their rate unless the community’s cost to serve them has changed, which avoids a churn spike that would raise the floor you are trying to clear.

How a membership community differs from a club, mastermind or coaching offer

A membership community is a recurring subscription priced mainly by churn, while masterminds, clubs and coaching offers are priced on seats, dues or outcomes. Those three are often sold through conversation.

If your members pay four figures and meet in person, the seat-cost method in our guide to how much to charge for a mastermind fits better than the Churn Floor. If what you sell is one-to-one or small-group transformation, the acquisition-ceiling method in how to price a high-ticket coaching offer applies. Physical clubs are a third model, with joining fees, dues and spending inside the club; the private members club business model page sets out how those revenue lines split. The membership community sits below all three on price and above them on volume.

What does doing the pricing work yourself cost?

Doing membership community pricing yourself costs about a day to build the model and then a monthly hour to update churn and acquisition cost, and the spreadsheet is free.

The inputs are the hard part. You need at least three months of cohort churn (members who joined in a month, and how many remain each month after), a true acquisition cost that includes ad spend, content production and any sales time, and the actual fee lines from your platform’s payout reports rather than its pricing page. A community under about 100 members will see churn swing by several points month to month, so use a rolling three-month average. A community with plenty of members but too few joining often has an acquisition problem, not a pricing one, and lowering the price moves the floor in the wrong direction.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for my membership community?

Charge at least your Churn Floor: fixed cost per member, plus three times your acquisition cost multiplied by monthly churn, plus per-payment cents, divided by one minus your percentage fees. With a $100 acquisition cost and 10% churn, that is about $36 a month in the worked example on this page; the right price sits between that floor and what members will pay for the outcome.

Is $10 a month too cheap for a paid community?

A $10 community works only if acquisition is close to free and churn is low. In the table on this page, even a $40 acquisition cost at 5% churn needs $11.15 a month, so $10 suits communities that grow from an existing audience rather than from paid acquisition.

What does card processing cost on a membership payment?

Card processing often adds a percentage plus a fixed amount per payment. Stripe’s Australian pricing page lists 1.65% + A$0.30 for domestic cards and 3.5% + A$0.30 for international cards, plus 2% if currency conversion is required (read 15 October 2026). The fixed 30 cents matters most on low prices: it is about 3% of a $10 payment.

Should I offer a free tier in my community?

A free tier makes sense when the community’s price is too low for any paid acquisition to repay, because it turns acquisition cost into content and moderation time instead. It costs you platform capacity and moderation hours, so put those hours into the fixed cost line of the Churn Floor.

How often should I raise my membership price?

Re-run the Churn Floor whenever churn, acquisition cost or platform fees change, and at least every six months. Raise the price for new members first; a rise that pushes existing members out increases churn, which raises the floor you are trying to clear.