Calculate how much profit your online course or membership will generate over 12 months, including costs and churn
Last Update: 06 Oct 2026
This calculator works in two modes.
One-Time Course mode is for standalone courses sold at a fixed price. Enter your course price, how many sales you expect per month, and your costs. The table and chart will show your revenue and profit trajectory over 12 months.
Membership mode is for recurring subscriptions. You can set up to three pricing tiers with weighted percentages (for example, 60% of members on a $29/month plan and 40% on a $49/month plan). The calculator then factors in monthly churn: the percentage of members who cancel each month, to show how your active member base and revenue evolve over time.
The Reverse Goal Solver at the bottom works in both modes. Enter a cumulative profit target (say, $50,000), and it tells you exactly how many sales per month you'd need to get there by Month 12. This is useful when you're working backward from an income goal to determine pricing or marketing budgets.
All inputs update the projections instantly. Toggle between chart and table view on the right to see the data the way you prefer.
Course profitability is about revenue minus expenses. Many calculators only show revenue, which paints an incomplete picture. This tool asks for two types of costs:
Upfront costs are one-time expenses you incur before or during launch. These typically include course production (video equipment, editing software, or hiring a freelancer), course platform setup fees, and any initial design or branding work. For a lean launch, this might be $500–$2,000. For a polished, professionally produced course, it could be $5,000–$15,000.
Recurring costs are what you pay every month regardless of how many sales you make. Common examples include your course hosting platform ($29–$299/month depending on the platform), email marketing tools ($20–$80/month), paid advertising spend, virtual assistant support, and any software subscriptions. These add up, and they're the biggest factor in determining when you actually break even.
A realistic estimate of both cost types is what separates a viable business plan from wishful thinking. Be honest with these numbers — the calculator is only as useful as the inputs you give it.
It depends on your business model and your tolerance for ongoing work.
One-time courses have simpler economics. You sell once, deliver once, and the customer is done. Margins are high (typically 70–90% after platform fees) because there's no ongoing delivery cost. The downside is that revenue is lumpy, you need a constant stream of new buyers to sustain income. If your ad spend dries up or your launch doesn't perform, revenue drops to zero.
Memberships generate recurring revenue, which is more predictable and compounds over time. If you acquire 100 new members per month at $29/month with 5% monthly churn, you'll build a growing base that generates increasing revenue each month without needing proportionally more marketing. The tradeoff is that you need to continuously deliver fresh content to justify the subscription and minimize churn.
Use this calculator to model both scenarios with your actual numbers. You might find that a $99 course needs 50 sales/month to match the Year 1 profit of a $29/month membership with moderate churn. Or you might find the opposite. The point is to let the math guide the decision, not assumptions.
Churn is the percentage of your paying members who cancel their subscription each month. It only applies to the Membership mode of this calculator.
Even small churn rates have a significant impact over time. At 5% monthly churn, you lose roughly half your members within a year if you stop acquiring new ones. At 2%, retention is dramatically better — you'll retain about 80% of members after 12 months.
Your break-even point is the month where your cumulative profit crosses from negative to positive — meaning you've recouped all your upfront and recurring costs and are now in the green.
The calculator highlights this automatically in both the table (with a green "Break Even" badge) and the chart (with a dashed vertical line). If you see "N/A" for the break-even point, it means you won't break even within the 12-month projection at your current inputs. That's a signal to either raise your price, increase volume, or cut costs.
For most course creators with moderate upfront costs ($1,000–$3,000) and a course priced at $99+, break-even typically happens within the first 1–3 months if sales volume is consistent. Memberships take longer to break even because revenue builds gradually, but the long-term profit potential is often higher.
The Reverse Goal Solver can also help here: set your target to $0 and it'll tell you the minimum monthly sales needed just to break even.