AXL vs Teachable
The cheapest plan is rarely the cheapest bill. Every Teachable figure here was read from teachable.com/pricing.
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The short answer
Teachable is the better buy for a first course on the smallest budget. AXL is the better buy when the course is one part of a business.
The comparison table
| What you are comparing | AXL | Teachable |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Starter $49/month, then published overage | $39 Starter · $89 Builder · $189 Growth ($29 / $69 / $139 annual) |
| What the bill is metered on | Consumption: no named tier to outgrow | Active students, products and admin seats |
| Students included | No student or contact tier | 100 · 1,000 · 5,000. Imported students are a separate allowance: 5 · 50 · 1,000 |
| Cut of your sales | 0%, on all 20+ providers and on cash and bank transfer | 7.5% on Starter; 0% on Builder, Growth and Custom |
| Card processing | Whatever your provider charges, paid to them | 2.9% + 30¢ US · 3.9% + 30¢ international · PayPal 3.49% / 4.99% · $15 chargeback |
| REST API | Included, no plan gate | Growth ($189) and above; 10,000 requests a month, 100 a minute |
| AI agent access (MCP) | Included on every account: roughly 1,100 operations, about 110 verified recipes; publishing and sending stay separate, deliberate calls | We found no first-party MCP server on the pricing page we read; agent access today runs through a Zapier wrapper with two actions |
| Email marketing | Broadcasts and automations on the CRM's own filter grammar: 74 condition types, 61 usable in segments and broadcasts | Included; reviewers call it basic and report adding $50 to $200+/month of outside tools (learningrevolution.net) |
| CRM, webinars, booking, chat | Kanban pipelines, live and evergreen webinars, booking pages, and eight messaging channels with email as the fallback | Not named on the pricing page we read |
| Assessment and certificates | Six auto-graded question types with pass thresholds, a homework queue with voice feedback, certificates with numbering and a registry | Quizzes and certificates |
| Tax and affiliate payouts | No equivalent. You own VAT and payouts | BackOffice add-on, 2% to 2.8% |
| Branded learner mobile app | Not a product AXL ships; the student portal runs on your own domain in a browser | Yes |
“Not named on the pricing page we read” is a statement about teachable.com/pricing, not about the product. If Teachable ships something this table misses, tell us and we will correct the row.
One business, four bills
| Scenario | Monthly | 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter: $39 + 7.5% × $5,000 = $39 + $375 | $414 | $4,968 |
| Teachable Builder, with 300 of those 2,000 enrolled: $89 + 0% | $89 | $1,068 |
| Teachable Growth, with 2,000 enrolled or when you want the API: $189 + 0% | $189 | $2,268 |
| AXL: the $49 Starter plan and 0% of revenue on any provider | $49 | $588 |
Builder at $89 is competitive for a small course business, and we would rather say so. Teachable's bill runs away in two places only: the Starter fee, and the API gate at $189. AXL Starter is $49 for this reference business; usage above an allowance is billed at the published overage rate. Estimate your own bill →
Who should actually choose Teachable
Choose Teachable if you want one course published this weekend for as little as possible: $39 a month is a genuinely low bar, the product is easy to learn, and the student experience is familiar to buyers. It ships a learner mobile app; AXL does not. Its BackOffice add-on at 2% to 2.8% handles author and affiliate payouts and international tax. This is a real service we have no equivalent for, and if you would rather not own VAT compliance that settles the question by itself. Teachable is also reported to lift student caps above $10,000 a year in sales, which softens the cap argument if you already sell at volume.
The rest of that shortlist: AXL vs Thinkific, the other course-first platform, and AXL vs Kajabi, the all-in-one above it.
What moves and what does not
- Students and contacts by CSV, matched on email and phone.
- Products, prices and sales pages: rebuilt from their URL.
- Contacts same day; one course in half a day to two.
- Completion history and quiz results; videos re-upload.
- BackOffice tax and payout records: no equivalent here.
- Saved cards; ask us before you schedule the switch.
Count your imported students first. Teachable meters them separately from active ones, so a list held back under a cap makes the bills look closer than they are. Plan the migration →
What people ask before they switch
It depends on the plan. Builder at $89 with no platform fee is competitive for a small catalogue; Starter is not, because 7.5% of $5,000 a month in sales adds $375. AXL Starter is $49 a month and takes no cut of revenue at any level; estimate your own bill.
It has a REST API from the Growth plan at $189 a month, capped at 10,000 requests a month. We could not find a first-party MCP server on the page we read. Tell us if that has changed and we will correct it. AXL includes one on every account, across roughly 1,100 operations: what an agent can do here.
Students and contacts import directly from CSV or XLSX with field mapping. Course structure and lesson text are rebuilt rather than imported (that is what the agent is for), and videos are re-uploaded. Completion history does not transfer: see how courses work here.
Run the numbers on your own account.
Import your students, rebuild one course and see the bill at your volume.
Plans start at $49/month with included usage and published overage
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