Free planning tools

Free online course calculators and decision tools

Move from launch cost to price, profit, payment readiness, and platform fit with seven transparent tools. Every calculator works without an account or email address.

Choose the question you need to answer

Online course cost calculator

Build a cash budget, value creator time, and calculate the retained sales required to recover the investment.

Build the launch budget

Online course pricing calculator

Work backward from target profit, enrollment, refunds, fees, and launch costs to find a sustainable price floor.

Calculate a price floor

Online course profit calculator

Forecast buyers, collected revenue, refunds, platform and payment costs, margin, and break-even audience.

Forecast course profit

Course platform fee calculator

Compare ten paid plans across five platforms using editable sales volume, course price, and processor assumptions.

Compare platform costs

Course platform decision scorecard

Eliminate options that fail hard gates, then weight and score the tradeoffs you have tested in a realistic pilot.

Use the decision scorecard

International payment-readiness check

Verify checkout, settlement, payout, currency, tax, and identity requirements before researching features.

Check the money path

Course platform payment gateway checker

Filter Thinkific, Teachable, Podia, and LearnWorlds routes by billing model and payment access you have personally verified.

Shortlist payment routes

Use the calculators in this order

  1. Estimate the complete course investment. Count cash costs, reusable equipment, software, contractors, marketing, and the value of creator time before deciding what the course must recover.
  2. Calculate a sustainable course price. Work backward from a target contribution or profit goal, then test whether the result is credible for the promised outcome and reachable audience.
  3. Stress-test course profit and margin. Lower conversion, raise refunds, and include the less favorable payment route. A plan that survives only the optimistic case is not yet a plan.
  4. Check eligible payment routes. Confirm that customers can pay, the platform can settle funds, and an eligible account can receive the payout in the required country and currency.
  5. Compare platform economics and fit. Run the platform fee calculator, eliminate hard-gate failures with the platform decision scorecard, and score only capabilities demonstrated in a realistic pilot.

What the models include

The tools separate fixed subscriptions, percentage platform fees, per-sale or per-enrollment charges, payment processing, refunds, production and launch costs, advertising, conversion, and audience size where relevant. Platform presets are starting assumptions rather than endorsements, and the underlying fee math remains visible.

CourseProfit Lab checks modeled platform prices against official vendor documentation on a scheduled audit. You can inspect the current assumptions, download the pricing data, and review the dated research logbefore relying on a result.

What no calculator can decide for you

A forecast cannot prove demand, teaching quality, learner outcomes, support capacity, legal compliance, tax treatment, accessibility, or payment eligibility. It also cannot know the operational value of a feature you will actually use. Treat every output as a scenario to test—not as a prediction or as financial, legal, or tax advice.

Private by default and easy to share

Calculator inputs are processed in the browser and are not attached to a personal profile. Scenario links encode bounded assumptions in the URL so a collaborator can reproduce the same model; they contain no name or email address. The profit tool can also export a CSV and be embedded by relevant publishers with visible source credit. Read the privacy policy for the limited anonymous page and outbound-link events used to evaluate the site.

Free teaching preparation

Preparing a lesson rather than a budget?

The calculators model money and platform choices. For the teaching material itself, start with the free presentation checklist and its editable rehearsal record.

  1. Write one practical learner task and check the evidence for the claims needed to explain it.
  2. Reserve question and transition time, then measure a complete speaking-and-activity run.
  3. Practice a point of confusion and a follow-up question; record what still needs verification.

Use your existing presentation software and a blank document. No signup or upload is required for the checklist.

Use the free teaching-presentation checklistCompare optional downloads and their limits

A smooth rehearsal does not validate demand or prove learning. Optional downloads do not replace a test learner's complete course journey.

The focused-practice method adapts MIT BE Communication Lab's practice guidance; the checklist is our teaching-session planning workflow.

Start with the cost you must recover

If you have not built a launch budget yet, begin there. Price and platform comparisons become more useful once the true investment is visible.

Open the course cost calculator