5% + €0.50 per sale. The software is free.
One rail, one price. 5% + €0.50 per transaction — the European merchant-of-record rate, with payment processing, EU VAT, US sales tax, refunds and chargebacks all included. It is the same price Paddle and Lemon Squeezy charge, and deliberately so.
It is also, give or take, what you already pay once you add up Stripe (~2.9% + €0.30), a VAT engine, the cross-border filings and the hours you lose to them. We charge that — and the entire creator suite (courses, community, newsletter, live, coaching, AI) comes free on top. The full platform is free to sign up to and use; if you never sell, you never pay us.
So the comparison was never really the price. It is who owns your rails, and how intelligent they are. Everything below is the math.
What the 5% + €0.50 includes
Almost every other course platform splits the bill three or four ways: a platform subscription you pay every month, a card-processing fee on every transaction (~2.9% + a fixed cost), a VAT-handling tool or accountant on the side, and a stack of AI / scheduling / email / search tools you assemble yourself. lernaura's 5% + €0.50 is the merchant-of-record rate — the payments-and-tax back-office — and the software that would be the subscription line everywhere else is simply free.
Included in the 5% + €0.50:
- Payment processing — the Stripe-equivalent leg of the bill (card acquiring, network fees, multi-currency, Apple/Google/SEPA/iDEAL/Bancontact/Klarna/PayPal).
- Merchant of record — we are the legal seller, so tax in the buyer's country, invoices, refunds, chargebacks and failed-payment recovery are our responsibility, not yours. Everything we handle, item by item →
- EU-sovereign hosting — Scaleway (French-owned hardware) for the database and infrastructure, Scalingo for application hosting, api.video EU, Whereby EU. No US-owned link in the chain.
- The AI content pipeline — every upload is automatically transcribed (Gladia), translated, subtitled in your target languages, and priced into local currency.
- AI semantic search — Mistral-hosted in France, indexing every lesson, transcript, PDF, slide and community post.
- Native live video — 1:1, group, webinar via Whereby EU, no participant cap.
- Email delivery — newsletters, transactional, marketing, all through Brevo (Paris).
- All product surfaces — courses, communities, newsletters, coaching, podcasts, live, B2B per-seat licensing.
- Managed migration — current content + contact lists moved in 48 hours when you switch.
There is no Pro tier. No Business tier. No Enterprise unless you specifically need a contract for procurement. Every creator on lernaura runs on the same stack, at the same rate. The same rail is also available headlessly to SaaS vendors and developers through our public API — same 5% + €0.50, same infrastructure.
A worked example: a creator doing €5,000/month
Here is the math at a realistic mid-career creator revenue level — €5,000/month across roughly 50 sales. We compare lernaura against the typical assembly of tools a competitor user runs. Watch the payments-and-tax rows: on their own they already reach what lernaura charges in total.
| lernaura | Typical assembled stack | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform subscription (software) | Free | ~€199/mo (e.g. Teachable Pro, Kajabi Growth, Thinkific Grow) |
| Merchant-of-record fee on sales | ≈€275 (5% + €0.50 × ~50 sales) | — |
| Card processing (Stripe-equivalent leg) | Included | ~€145 (2.9% + fixed) |
| VAT software / accountant (EU MOSS, OSS) | Included | ~€200/mo |
| US sales tax tooling (TaxJar/Anrok) | Included | ~€100/mo |
| Transcription (Otter, Descript, Rev) | Included | ~€30/mo |
| Translation / subtitling (Rask, HeyGen) | Included | ~€50/mo |
| Live video (Zoom Pro + scheduler) | Included | ~€25/mo |
| Email delivery (ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign) | Included | ~€80/mo |
| Search / knowledge base | Included | ~€40/mo |
| Payments + tax back-office alone (what lernaura charges for everything) | ≈€275 | ~€445/mo |
| Plus your time running VAT MOSS, US sales tax filings, accounting reconciliation, tool integrations | Zero hours | ~10–20 hours/month |
| Total monthly outlay | ≈€275 | ~€869 + 10–20 hours of your time |
Read the subtotal row again: the payments-and-tax back-office on a competitor — Stripe plus VAT and US sales-tax tooling alone — already costs more than lernaura's entire bill. Everything else on their side, including the ~€199 software subscription, is on top. On lernaura the software is the free part. The ≈€275 scales with what you sell: do €1,000 next month and you pay roughly €60; do €15,000 and you pay roughly €800. No minimum, no floor, no monthly fee that arrives whether you sell anything or not.
Two reasonable objections to this comparison:
- "I don't use all of those tools." Fair. Drop the ones you don't use and the comparison still works — most creators on competitor platforms run at least three of the items in that list, and the Stripe-plus-VAT rows alone already match our total. The structural point is that lernaura is a single line on your books; the alternative is six or seven lines.
- "At high volume, a flat €199 subscription beats a percentage." Only if you can credibly handle EU VAT, US sales tax across 45 states, chargebacks, dunning and your own AI stack with no additional cost or time. Almost nobody can. The 5% + €0.50 is the merchant-of-record rate the global incumbents charge for exactly that work — we just don't add a software bill on top of it.
The price you already pay
Stack it up yourself and the headline rate stops looking like a premium. Stripe takes ~2.9% + €0.30 per European card sale. A VAT/OSS engine and US sales-tax filings add a fixed monthly cost and real hours. Put those together and you are already at roughly 5% + €0.50 — which is exactly what lernaura charges as merchant of record, with the card processing and the tax handling folded in.
It is also, to the cent, the rate Paddle and Lemon Squeezy charge for the same back-office. We match it on purpose. The difference is not the number on the invoice — it is that the creator software comes free on top, the rails are European-owned rather than routed through US infrastructure, and the whole system was built AI-native rather than bolted together in 2018.
B2B per-seat licensing
When you license your content to a company (10 seats at €200/seat = €2,000 on a single invoice), lernaura is the merchant of record on that transaction the same way we are for direct-to-consumer sales. Same 5% + €0.50 — €100.50 on a €2,000 invoice. No separate B2B tier, no enterprise tax, no per-license fee. The licensee gets their own delegated admin to manage users, branding and content controls, and we handle their VAT, tax ID validation, reverse-charge invoice, and bank reconciliation.
Migration
Migrations are free. We move your current content (videos, courses, posts, archives) and your contact lists (students, members, subscribers) in 48 hours.
What we deliberately do not move:
Payment methods. Stored cards never leave the platform that holds them — this is a hard PCI safety boundary, not a limitation. Your students re-attach a card on first purchase. The platform is built so this happens once and stays attached.
Historical analytics. Cross-platform analytics transfers never work cleanly enough to be honest. We don't pretend otherwise. Your historical platform keeps its archive; your lernaura account starts fresh.
We've shipped migrations from Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia, Skool, Substack, ConvertKit and Mighty Networks. Send us a list of what you're carrying over and we'll scope timing.
Pricing FAQ
- What does the 5% + €0.50 actually exclude?
- Costs that aren't really platform costs: a domain registration if you bring your own (about €10/year, paid to your registrar), any paid ads you choose to run on Meta/Google/etc., and any third-party SaaS you choose to integrate optionally. The platform itself, the AI stack, the merchant-of-record obligations, and migration are included.
- Is the platform really free to use without paying?
- Yes. You can sign up, build your entire catalog, set up your community, configure your store and your B2B licensing, and never spend a cent until a first sale comes through. There is no trial timer and no countdown. The software is free indefinitely — the rails are the business, and the software is the proof. We only earn the 5% + €0.50 when money actually arrives for you.
- Why price at parity with Paddle and Lemon Squeezy instead of undercutting them?
- Because buyers won on price are lost on price. The 5% + €0.50 is the honest merchant-of-record rate for payments and cross-border tax, and racing it to the bottom would mean cutting the sovereignty and intelligence that are the actual reasons to switch. We'd rather charge a fair, familiar rate, give the software away, and compete on who owns your rails.
- Is the 5% taken on gross, and is card processing really included?
- Yes. We take 5% + €0.50 of the gross transaction value, and the card processing comes out of that, not on top of yours. One line on your invoice; we deal with the card networks.
- Doesn't the flat €0.50 hurt very small sales?
- On a €5 item, 5% + €0.50 is €0.75 — an effective 15%. That's the same trade-off Paddle and Lemon Squeezy make, and it's why micro-priced items are best sold bundled or as part of a membership rather than one-by-one. On a €50 sale the effective rate is 6%; on €500 it's 5.1%.
- How do payouts work?
- Weekly. Six payout currencies (EUR, SEK, NOK, GBP, USD, CHF). Local bank rails where available — SEPA for EUR, BACS for GBP, ACH for USD, local rails for the Nordics and CHF.
- Do you ever charge anything else?
- No. There is no setup fee, no migration fee, no charge for extra users, no charge for extra storage, no overage on video bandwidth, no charge per student, no charge per course, no charge per active member, no charge to remove our branding (there isn't any), no charge to enable B2B licensing.
- Is the rate negotiable for very high revenue sellers?
- No. The whole point of the pricing model is that it's the same line for everyone — the indie seller doing €500/month and the established seller doing €100,000/month pay the same 5% + €0.50. We don't run an enterprise sales motion that quietly charges different rates depending on how informed the buyer is. The math is published; the math is the same for everyone.
- I run a SaaS / I'm a developer — can I use the rail without the creator software?
- Yes. The same merchant-of-record rail is available headlessly through our public API at the same 5% + €0.50 — EU-compliant VAT, DAC7, DSA seller verification and settlement, on European-owned infrastructure with no US jurisdiction. See the developers page for design-partner access.
- What if I make zero revenue this month?
- You pay zero. That's the whole point of the model.
- Is there a tier for non-profits, educational institutions, public-sector organisations?
- Not yet, but if you're a non-profit, educational institution or public-sector body running a content programme, write to us with your context — we have flexibility for purpose-driven work and can usually find a fair structure.