How to price an online course and your 1:1 sessions

Pricing a course is the decision people postpone longest and improvise most. You look at what someone else charges, shave a little off out of fear, and end up with a number nobody checked against their own costs. This article proposes a different order: the arithmetic first (your hour, fees, VAT, your investment), then the market. Every numeric example below is hypothetical: it illustrates the method and is not data from any real business. Swap in your own numbers.

Step 1: work out the value of your hour before pricing anything

1:1 sessions are the most direct way to see what your time is worth, and that figure is also the base for valuing the course. The classic mistake is dividing your income target by all the hours you work, when only part of those hours can be charged for: the rest is preparation, email, admin and finding students.

Hypothetical example. You want 36,000 EUR gross per year from sessions. You give the business 20 hours a week, but only 10 are sessions with students; the rest is preparation and admin. You work 46 weeks.

• Sessions per year: 10 x 46 = 460.
• Minimum price per session: 36,000 / 460 = 78.26 EUR.
• Rounded to a clean price: 80 EUR per 60-minute session, which gives 80 x 460 = 36,800 EUR if every slot is filled.

Note the most fragile assumption: that you fill all 460 slots. At 70 % occupancy you earn 25,760 EUR. So run the numbers with a realistic occupancy too, not just the ideal one.

Step 2: subtract what collecting the money costs

What the student pays is not what you receive. You have to subtract the payment processor's fee and, depending on where you sell, the platform's.

Payment processor fee

On Stripe's pricing page for Spain (read on 14 October 2026), standard cards cost 1.5% + 0.25 EUR per transaction, and international cards 3.15% + 0.25 EUR, plus an extra 2% if currency conversion is required. With those rates, on your 80 EUR session:

• Standard card: 80 x 1.5% = 1.20 EUR plus 0.25 EUR = 1.45 EUR. You keep 78.55 EUR.
• Across 460 sessions, fees add up to 667 EUR.

And on a hypothetical 197 EUR course:

• Standard card: 197 x 1.5% = 2.955 EUR plus 0.25 EUR = 3.21 EUR (rounded). You keep 193.79 EUR.
• International card: 197 x 3.15% = 6.21 EUR plus 0.25 EUR = 6.46 EUR.
• International card with currency conversion: add 2% (3.94 EUR), for a total fee of 10.40 EUR, 5.3% of the price.

The same sale can cost you 3.21 EUR or 10.40 EUR depending on where the card comes from. If you sell to several countries, calculate with the weighted average of your audience, not the lowest rate.

Sales platform fee

Course and digital product platforms often charge a percentage of each sale on top, and the gap is large:

• On Gumroad's pricing page (read on 14 October 2026), direct sales cost 10% + 0.50 USD per transaction, and when a new customer finds you through its Discover marketplace, 30%. On a hypothetical 197 USD course, that is 20.20 USD for a direct sale and 59.10 USD via Discover.
• On Teachable's pricing page (read on 14 October 2026, prices in US dollars), the Starter plan carries a 7.5% transaction fee and costs 29 USD a month billed annually, while Builder has 0% fee when using Teachable Payments and costs 69 USD a month billed annually. Payment processing is charged separately.

The sum almost nobody does: at what sales volume does paying a higher fixed fee beat paying a percentage? With those figures, Starter costs 348 USD a year and Builder 828 USD. The 480 USD difference equals 7.5% of 6,400 USD in sales. So below 6,400 USD of annual revenue Starter is cheaper; above it, Builder is. With a 197 USD course, that is about 33 sales a year (6,400 / 197 = 32.5).

Step 3: separate the price from VAT

If you sell to consumers, the figure the student sees usually includes VAT, and that money is not yours. Using a 21% rate as a calculation assumption (check the one that applies to you), a 197 EUR price contains 34.19 EUR of VAT and 162.81 EUR net. After also deducting the 3.21 EUR Stripe fee, you keep 159.60 EUR, not 197. For the next step, always use the figure you really keep.

If you sell to consumers in other EU countries, the place of taxation changes. According to the European Commission's One Stop Shop guidance, below 10,000 EUR a year of cross-border sales of electronically supplied services to consumers, the supply is taxed in your own Member State; once you exceed it, the customer's rules apply (read on 14 October 2026). The details depend on your situation and on whether your course counts as an electronically supplied service, so confirm with your accountant before launching.

Step 4: calculate how many sales recover your investment

The course price has to answer a concrete question: how many sales do I need to recover what I invested, and how many is it reasonable to expect?

Hypothetical example. Producing the course takes 60 hours of work and 800 EUR of tools and editing. If you value your hour at 78 EUR (the Step 1 result, rounded), the investment is 60 x 78 + 800 = 5,480 EUR. With the course at 197 EUR and 193.79 EUR net of fees (VAT aside, which you would already have separated from the price):

• Sales to recover it: 5,480 / 193.79 = 28.3, so 29 sales.
• If you expect to sell 15 in year one, the price does not work: you either raise it, cut the investment, or accept that part of the work is a longer-term investment.

This exercise prevents a very common mistake: lowering the price to "sell more" without checking that the volume needed is credible. At 97 EUR and 15 sales you take about 1,455 EUR gross. At 297 EUR and 15 sales, 4,455 EUR. The second price is not necessarily right, but the gap forces you to justify the volume you assume.

Step 5: build a price ladder

A recorded course and a 1:1 session do not compete: they complement each other, and the relationship between their prices says something.

• The course is your scalable offer: a fixed price, none of your time in each sale. Its ceiling is set by the result you promise and the audience you serve.
• The 1:1 session is your high-contact offer. If the course costs 197 EUR and a session 80 EUR, the session must not feel like a giveaway extra: a student who buys the course and two sessions pays 357 EUR.
• The bundle reduces friction: three sessions for 216 EUR (240 EUR minus 10%) comes to 72 EUR per session. Always check that the discount does not push you below your Step 1 minimum; at 72 EUR you are under the 78.26 EUR threshold, so that discount only makes sense if the bundle brings occupancy you would not otherwise have.

If you sell in several countries, consider regional prices rather than a single one, and review the results periodically: a price is a hypothesis corrected with sales data, not a final decision.

Common mistakes

• Pricing out of fear. If the recovery arithmetic fails, a lower price does not fix it.
• Forgetting VAT and fees. Between VAT and the processor, the example above loses 37.40 EUR of every 197 EUR.
• Computing your hour over every hour worked. Only billable hours count.
• Changing the price without telling those who already bought. Raising prices for new students is normal; honouring what you promised current ones is a matter of trust.
• Not recording your real data. After three months of sales, replace assumptions with your actual conversions, occupancy and fees.

Where LearnSuite fits

If you build your academy on LearnSuite, payments run through Stripe with destination taxes and automatic invoices, as subscriptions or one-off course payments, and 1:1 sessions are set up with your availability, your languages, payment and video call. LearnSuite takes no commission on your sales; the Stripe fees in the examples above still apply, and belong in your numbers.