How much Skool communities make can only be estimated from the outside. Skool doesn't publicly show the revenue of individual communities, so data services like SkoolStats* multiply members by list price. By that estimate, the median of the 1,044 paid German-language communities is $866 a month, and 12.4 percent come in above $10,000 (as of October 2026). Three out of four German-language communities charge nothing at all, though. More important than any of these figures: they are upper bounds. They assume every member pays the full price every month and leave out free legacy members, trials, pricing tiers, Skool's fees, the Growth Boost commission and cancellations. You see real numbers in your own dashboard, and the Skool Game leaderboard in Skool's group Skoolers gives you a sense of the market with revenue reported by Skool itself.
I run a paid Skool community myself, the German-language Claude Practitioners, with two tiers at $9 and $45 a month. SkoolStats estimates its monthly revenue at $909: 101 members times $9. That is not my revenue: the $45 tier is missing, and the tool cannot know who actually pays. I'm not sharing my real revenue here. But my own community shows me exactly where the estimate comes from and where it goes wrong.
* Affiliate link: if you subscribe through this link, I earn a commission. Your price stays the same. SkoolStats provides me with the tool free of charge as part of a partnership.
How much do Skool communities make: what the estimate shows
For this article, Sebastian, my AI employee for SEO, analyzed all 4,239 active German-language communities SkoolStats listed in October 2026. 3,195 of them are free (75.4 percent), 1,044 are paid. Of the paid ones, 890 bill monthly, 53 yearly and 101 with a one-time price. This is how the "Est. MRR" estimate is distributed across the paid ones:
Profitable, another data service, puts the global median for paid communities at about $1,200 (as of October 7, 2026) and itself calls its figures "an upper bound". So read the table like this: half of the paid German-language communities would be at $866 a month or less even if every member paid the displayed price in full.
How Skool revenue is estimated: members times list price
SkoolStats describes the column briefly: "derived from member count and price". We recalculated it: it is exactly the public member count times a monthly price for 1,040 of 1,044 paid German-language communities. The remaining four had data from 2025. To get a monthly price, the tool divides yearly prices by twelve, which gives a real monthly value. It also divides one-time prices by twelve, as if every member paid the purchase price again each month.
The member count is the number Skool shows publicly. It includes inactive members, members on a trial and people who joined while the community was still free.
Where the estimate goes wrong: four examples
Four cases from the German-language data show how far estimate and reality can drift apart. I describe them only roughly on purpose, so no single community can be identified:
- Placeholder price. A community with a few hundred members has entered a six-figure monthly price, and according to its description it can no longer be booked. The estimate: an MRR in the tens of millions. That one estimate alone makes up 81 percent of the combined estimates of all 1,044 paid German-language communities.
- One-time price divided by twelve. A community with fewer than 20 members charges a six-figure one-time price. That turns into about $140,000 "MRR", as if every member paid a twelfth again each month.
- Paused. A community with a few hundred members has also entered a six-figure one-time price and announces in its description that you'll soon be able to join for free. Estimate: well over $1 million MRR.
- Moved. A community with several thousand members says it has moved to another platform. The estimate is still a six-figure MRR, as if every member kept paying.
That's why totals and averages are not useful. The ten highest estimates make up 91 percent of the total. If you work with this kind of data, look at the median and at individual communities whose pricing model you know. Profitable caps prices at $1,000 for the same reason, "to exclude placeholder entries".
My example: from $0 to $648 overnight
My own community shows a fifth error that needs no placeholder. It was free until mid-August. SkoolStats keeps a history for it with one value per day:
On the day the price was introduced, the estimate jumped from $0 to $648 because the tool multiplies all 72 members by the new price. In reality, everyone who joined for free before still pays nothing: according to Skool's help center, existing members keep their current price when you change it, even if that price is free, and that's exactly how it works in my community. In the estimate, they still count at $9. The $45 premium tier is missing because SkoolStats records only one price per community. So in my case the estimate is off in two places, in opposite directions. Why I switched from free to paid at all is explained in Skool Community: Free or Paid?.
The big communities are free
If you look for the largest communities, you mostly find free ones. Of the 145 German-language communities with at least 1,000 members, 132 are free. The median free community has 42 members, the median paid one 23.
Within paid communities, size barely depends on price:
That is a correlation, not a cause. One possible explanation: large communities are often a free entry point, with the selling done elsewhere. In this data, a low price does not go along with more members. How to find a price for your topic is covered in How to Price Your Skool Community.
What sits between list price and payout
Even if you know a community's member count and price, several items sit between list price and payout:
A constructed example for a single member paying $9 a month on the Pro plan: the fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents comes to about $0.56, and Skool's own example gives a rounded payout of $8.40. If the member came in through Growth Boost at 30 percent, another $2.70 goes, leaving about $5.74. At 70 percent, it's about $2.14. The estimate counts $9 in all three cases. The fees in detail are in Skool Pricing: Hobby vs Pro and the Fees, the levels in Skool Growth Boost: Bidding Up to 70%.
Real numbers: your dashboard and the Skool Games leaderboard
Your actual monthly recurring revenue is shown in Skool's own dashboard. According to Skool, MRR there excludes members on a trial, and cancellations and retention are listed separately. How to read it is covered in Skool Analytics: Reading Posts and Members.
For the market, there is a second source with numbers from Skool itself. Skool's leaderboard, formerly the Skool Games and since July 14, 2026 the new Skool Game, lives in Skool's own group Skoolers. According to Skool, it offers "realtime leaderboards showing earnings by category". Only members of Skoolers can see the rankings; according to its About page, Skoolers is free to join. The earlier Skool Games had clear rules according to the help center: ranking was based on MRR growth, one-time sales didn't count, and a subscription counted for at most $100 a month or $1,200 a year. Whether the same applies to the new leaderboards, Skool doesn't say. I'm deliberately not quoting any figures from the leaderboard here. How the Skool Game works otherwise is in Skool Levels and Gamification That Work.
What the estimate is still good for
The estimate is not revenue, but it gives you a sense of the market. What I want from this kind of data comes down to three questions: What do communities in my topic charge? Who is growing right now? And how big are the communities that might work as partners? For that you need members, prices and histories, not Est. MRR. Full disclosure: SkoolStats provides me with the tool free of charge as part of a partnership. What it can do and what it costs is in SkoolStats Review: Skool Benchmarks. A data comparison of German-language AI communities is in AI Communities on Skool Compared. If you want to filter yourself: SkoolStats*, cancel anytime, no trial.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the average Skool community make?
From the outside, it can only be estimated, because Skool doesn't show revenue publicly. Estimates based on members times price give a median of $866 a month for paid German-language communities, as of October 2026, and Profitable reports about $1,200 globally. Both are upper bounds. Avoid the average, because a few placeholder prices distort it many times over.
Can you make money with Skool?
Yes, but estimates only show you the ceiling. Three out of four German-language communities charge nothing, and half of the paid ones would be at $866 a month or less even if every member paid the displayed price. How money flows on Skool and which fees come off is covered in Skool Community: Free or Paid?.
What is MRR on Skool?
MRR stands for monthly recurring revenue. In Skool's dashboard, according to the help center, it is your current monthly revenue excluding members on a trial. Tools like SkoolStats instead show an estimated MRR based on public member count times list price. Both are called MRR, but they don't mean the same thing.
Where can I see the real Skool community revenue of others?
On the Skool Game leaderboard in Skool's group Skoolers. According to Skool, it shows real-time leaderboards with earnings by category, visible only to members of that group. All other sources, including SkoolStats and Profitable, estimate from the outside. Some owners share their own numbers; those are self-reported figures you can't verify.
Why is Est. MRR in SkoolStats so high?
Because the formula counts every member at the full list price, including free legacy members and members on a trial. It divides one-time prices by twelve and treats them like monthly fees, and it takes placeholder prices at face value. Fees, Growth Boost commission and cancellations are not deducted. For individual communities, the figure is an upper bound.
Where to go from here
Run the honest numbers for your own community once: paying members per tier times price, minus your plan's fees, minus the Growth Boost share for members Skool brought in. Compare the result with the MRR in your dashboard and with what an estimation tool would show for you. The gap tells you how to read other people's estimates. How I run my community with AI employees is what I show in Claude Practitioners.
* Affiliate link: if you subscribe through this link, I earn a commission. Your price stays the same. SkoolStats provides me with the tool free of charge as part of a partnership.
