Ruzuku vs Teachable (2026): Which Fits a Coaching Business?

Ruzuku vs Teachable comes down to how you sell and how you teach. Ruzuku is a smaller course platform with flat pricing, 0% transaction fees on every plan, a free plan for up to 5 students and built-in live video meetings. Teachable is a larger course and digital-product platform with cheaper entry plans, iOS and Android student apps and more growth tools, but a 7.5% fee on its Starter plan. Neither includes a booking calendar for 1:1 coaching, and neither tracks client habits or daily check-ins.

This guide compares both on price, course building, live sessions, community, payments, the student experience and public reviews, using what each vendor lists on its own pages as listed in October 2026. We make Coachful, a coaching platform, so we also cover it as a third option and say plainly when Ruzuku or Teachable is the better pick.

What is the short answer on Ruzuku vs Teachable?

Pick Ruzuku if you run live, discussion-heavy group courses and want flat pricing with no platform fee. Pick Teachable if you sell several self-paced courses and digital products at scale and want native student apps.

• Testing an idea with a handful of students: Ruzuku's Free plan allows up to 5 students enrolled at a time with no credit card, and charges no platform fee on sales. Teachable has no free plan, only a trial.
• Cheapest paid plan: Teachable Starter at $39 a month ($29 billed annually) beats Ruzuku Core at $99 a month, but Starter takes 7.5% of each sale.
• Live cohorts and group calls: Ruzuku includes live video meetings (up to 60 people in conference mode, 250 in presentation mode) plus a Zoom integration on every plan.
• Students on phones: Teachable lists iOS and Android student apps on every plan; Ruzuku uses a mobile website that students can add to their home screen.
• Many products and admins: Teachable's Growth plan allows 50 products and 5 admins; Ruzuku's multiple instructor accounts are on Pro.
• 1:1 coaching with scheduling, contracts and between-session work: neither one is built for it. That is where a coaching platform such as Coachful fits, which we cover near the end.

If you want the long version of either tool on its own, read our Ruzuku review and our Teachable review.

How do Ruzuku, Teachable and Coachful compare side by side?

Ruzuku and Teachable are both course platforms; Coachful is a coaching platform that also delivers courses. The table below adds Coachful because many coaches comparing these two are really trying to run a coaching practice, not a course school.

Criteria for this comparison: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost and setup effort.

Two things stand out. Ruzuku puts more of its teaching tools (live meetings, discussions, student support) on every plan, while Teachable reserves more of its growth tools (affiliates, certificates, branding removal) for higher plans. And neither handles the parts of coaching that happen between calls.

How much do Ruzuku and Teachable cost in 2026?

Teachable starts lower ($39 a month, or $29 billed annually) but charges a 7.5% fee on Starter; Ruzuku starts higher ($99 a month on Core) with 0% platform fees, and adds a free plan capped at 5 students. All prices below are as listed in October 2026.

Ruzuku's plans are simple. Free covers unlimited courses, video hosting, live meetings, community, sales pages and payments, but only 5 students at a time, videos up to 2 GB each, and no email course invitations. Core removes the student cap and adds unlimited invitations. Pro raises video files to 4 GB with 4K streaming and adds white-label branding, a custom domain, multiple instructors, co-teacher courses, certificates, a public storefront, digital product sales, AI transcription and captions, Zoom recording, custom registration fields, and Meta Pixel and Google Analytics. Nonprofits, NGOs, government and education buyers get 30% off annual plans, and grant-funded organizations can buy a one-time $4,950 Lifetime Pro option.

Teachable's ladder is product-based. Starter allows 5 products and 1 admin, with AI creation tools, student apps, global payments and taxes, upsells and cart recovery. Builder raises that to 10 products, drops the transaction fee to 0% and adds an affiliate program and real-time support. Growth allows 50 products and 5 admins and adds certificates, removal of Teachable branding, imported students, custom admin permissions and free subtitles and translations. Students are listed as "Unlimited" on all self-serve plans. Custom is a contact-sales plan with a success manager and migration assistance. For the full breakdown, see our Teachable pricing guide.

When does Teachable's 7.5% fee cost more than Ruzuku's flat price?

Teachable Starter's 7.5% fee overtakes the $50 gap to Builder at about $667 in monthly sales ($50 divided by 0.075). The table uses example monthly sales to show the platform cost before payment processing, which applies on both tools.

These are illustrative monthly-billing figures, not quotes. Processing comes on top: Ruzuku lists Stripe and PayPal fees as "typically 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction", and Teachable Payments lists 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ for international cards, 3.49% + 49¢ for US PayPal, a $15 chargeback fee and an optional BackOffice fee of 2% to 2.8%.

The practical reading: if you sell little, Teachable Starter is cheaper; once sales pass a few hundred dollars a month, Builder or Ruzuku Core is cheaper than Starter. Between Builder and Core, Teachable is $10 a month cheaper on monthly billing and about $169 a year cheaper on annual billing ($828 against $997), while Ruzuku includes live video meetings and gives you a free tier to start on.

What do trials and guarantees look like?

Ruzuku has no time-limited trial because the Free plan fills that role, and no credit card is needed for it. It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you cancel within 30 days of activating a paid plan. Teachable shows a 7-day free trial on its plan cards plus a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a pop-up offered a 30-day trial on Builder monthly when it was checked in October 2026; the page does not say whether a card is required.

Which is better for building and delivering courses?

Both handle standard video courses; Ruzuku leans toward interactive, cohort-style courses, while Teachable leans toward a catalog of self-paced products. The right one depends on whether your students move through a course together or alone.

Ruzuku's course builder takes video, audio, downloads, quizzes and discussions, and lets you drip lessons either by each student's enrollment date or on fixed calendar dates. Fixed dates suit a cohort that starts on the same Monday; enrollment-date drip suits an evergreen course. Unlimited courses and video hosting are included even on Free, with a per-video size limit of 2 GB on Free and Core and 4 GB on Pro.

Teachable's pricing page lists up to 1 TB of video on Starter, AI creation tools to help draft course material, and a product cap per plan (5, 10 or 50). That cap matters more than it sounds: a course, a coaching package and a downloadable workbook can each count as separate products, so a coach with a small catalog can hit Starter's ceiling fast. Growth adds certificates, which Ruzuku keeps for Pro.

Neither tool gives you per-client plans. Every student in a course sees the same lessons in the same order. If your clients each need a different weekly focus, you will run that part somewhere else. We cover that gap in delivering online courses without Teachable.

Which handles live sessions, coaching calls and scheduling better?

Ruzuku is stronger for live group sessions because video meetings are built in on every plan; Teachable does not list live video on its pricing page. Neither has a native booking calendar for 1:1 calls.

Ruzuku's built-in meetings handle up to 60 participants in conference mode and up to 250 in presentation mode, and it integrates with Zoom (Zoom recording is a Pro feature). For a group program with weekly calls, that removes one tool from the stack. Its own coaching page is candid about the limit: clients schedule 1:1 time through your own calendar tool.

When we profiled Teachable in September 2026, it had no native scheduling or calendar sync, and coaching calls relied on tools such as Calendly and Zoom. The October 2026 pricing page did not list a booking calendar either.

So with either platform, a coach who sells 1:1 sessions adds a scheduling tool, a video tool (on Teachable) and usually a contract tool on top. Each one is a separate subscription, login and place where client data lives. If booking is central to your business, a dedicated coaching scheduling tool or an all-in-one coaching platform will save more effort than either course platform.

How do community, messaging and engagement compare?

Ruzuku includes community discussions and direct messaging on every plan, including Free. Teachable's October 2026 pricing page does not list a community or discussion feature, so check its current product pages if a student community is central to your course.

Ruzuku's discussions sit inside the course, next to the lessons, which suits courses where students post their work and respond to each other. Teachable's engagement tools on the pricing page are commercial ones: upsells, cart recovery and an affiliate program on Builder and up.

What neither offers is engagement between lessons on a personal level: habits a client ticks off each day, a morning check-in, a streak, a goal with a progress bar. Course platforms track lesson completion; coaching platforms track whether the client is actually changing behavior. If you run groups, our group coaching software page shows how cohort groups, group calls and a community feed fit together in one place.

How do payments, fees and checkout compare?

Ruzuku charges 0% platform fees on every plan and sells one-time, subscription and installment access through Stripe or PayPal. Teachable charges 7.5% on Starter and 0% above it, and runs payments through Teachable Payments, PayPal and a monthly payment gateway.

Ruzuku's model is easy to forecast: the plan price plus your processor's fees, nothing else. Memberships and payment plans are available even on Free. Teachable's model adds more checkout tools on the entry plan, including upsells, cart recovery and global payments and taxes, but Starter's 7.5% fee applies to every sale, and the optional BackOffice service takes another 2% to 2.8% if you use it. Teachable lists a $15 chargeback fee; Ruzuku does not list one on its pricing page.

For a coach, the missing pieces are the same on both: no coaching agreement with e-signature sent before the first call, no session credits, and no invoice tied to a booked session. Those sit in other tools.

What about branding, apps and the student experience?

Teachable gives students native iOS and Android apps on every plan; Ruzuku gives them a mobile website that can be added to the home screen, plus tech support for your students on every plan. Which matters more depends on whether your students learn on phones or need hand-holding.

Ruzuku's student support is unusual and worth weighing if your audience is less technical: when a student cannot log in or play a video, Ruzuku's team handles it rather than you. On branding, both put your own look behind a higher plan: Ruzuku's custom domain and white-label sit on Pro ($199 a month), and Teachable removes its own branding on Growth ($189 a month, or $139 billed annually).

For a coaching client, the experience gap is bigger than apps. In a course platform, the client sees lessons. In a coaching relationship, they also need their next session, their agreement, their goals and what to do today. That is the experience shown below.

What do public reviews say about Ruzuku and Teachable?

Teachable has a large public review base and Ruzuku has very little, so there is not much independent sentiment to compare. Here is what is on record as of October 2026.

• Teachable: 3.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 1,110 reviews, seen on October 25, 2026.
• Ruzuku: its Trustpilot profile has 0 reviews. Ruzuku's own site shows a G2 badge with a 4.4 score, but the G2 page could not be loaded to confirm how many reviews sit behind it.

With so few public reviews for Ruzuku, the honest move is to use its Free plan with a real course and a few real students before paying, and to read the reviews on whichever site you trust before deciding. For Teachable, a larger review count gives a clearer picture, and our Teachable review summarizes what reviewers report.

Can you export your data and leave either platform?

Both let you export student data as CSV; neither lists a full course export. Plan for some manual work if you move later.

Ruzuku's features page lists student data export to CSV, and its pricing page says courses, students and sales history are kept if you downgrade or cancel. When we profiled Teachable in September 2026, students and course and sales reports exported to CSV, but video content had to be downloaded manually with no bulk course export. If you are already on Teachable, our guide on how to migrate from Teachable walks through the order of operations.

Which should you pick for which kind of coach?

Choose by the shape of your offer: a library of courses points to Teachable, live cohorts point to Ruzuku, and ongoing 1:1 or group coaching points to a coaching platform.

• New coach validating a first course: Ruzuku Free lets you run a pilot with up to 5 students at no cost. Teachable Starter is cheap too, but plan around the 7.5% fee.
• Business or career coach selling a self-paced course plus templates: Teachable Builder gives you 10 products, 0% fees and affiliates. Compare it with the alternatives in Podia vs Teachable and Thinkific vs Teachable.
• Coach running a six-week live cohort: Ruzuku Core, with fixed-date drip, built-in meetings and discussions, is the closer fit of the two.
• Health, fitness or wellness coach: clients need daily follow-through, not only lessons, which neither course platform tracks. Coaching is not medical treatment, so refer clients to a doctor or licensed clinician for symptoms, medication questions or anything clinical, and keep clinical records in a clinical system.
• Coach whose income is mostly 1:1 sessions: neither is the right base. You would be paying for a course platform and still buying scheduling, contracts and client management elsewhere.

If you are leaning away from Teachable entirely, our list of Teachable alternatives for coaches and our Ruzuku alternatives cover the wider field, and Kajabi vs Teachable covers the bigger all-in-one option.

Is there a third option? When Coachful beats both, and when it does not

Coachful is the better pick when your course is one part of a coaching business rather than the whole business. It is a coaching platform that covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant, with one login for you and one branded app for your clients.

Who it is for. Coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions; solo coaches growing into a small team; and coaches replacing 4 to 6 tools. If you are reading a Ruzuku vs Teachable comparison and also paying for a scheduler, a contract tool and an email tool, you are in that last group.

What Coachful does that neither course platform does

• Booking built in: booking pages with availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection; two-way Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook calendar sync; built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet and Teams links; email reminders, plus SMS and WhatsApp reminders once messaging is enabled; paid sessions, session credits and intake questions on booking.
• Agreements before the first call: coaching agreements with e-signature, stored on the client record. See coaching contracts.
• Programs that run between sessions: multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks.
• A real client record: goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments and sessions, an AI briefing per client, and a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk.
• Courses too: modules, lessons, drip and completion tracking, plus downloads, videos, books, events and bundles, delivered into the client's branded home. See our course platform for coaches.
• Community and groups: a community feed, group chat, direct messages, video events, group calls and webinars, with cohort groups created automatically when someone enrolls in a program.
• Marketing: a section-based website builder with blog and custom domain, 30 designed homepage templates, booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels, and email broadcasts and sequences.
• Michelle, the built-in AI assistant: builds programs, drafts emails and content, summarizes recorded sessions and briefs you before sessions. Questions and planning are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits.
• ICF credential tracking: counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds and exports an ICF client coaching log. See ICF hour tracking.

Here is a walkthrough of how programs are built and delivered in Coachful:

Payments and fees. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account, with one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, order bumps, coupons, refunds, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Stripe Tax, and an invoice for each transaction. Since August 2026 there is a 0% Coachful platform fee, so you pay only Stripe or Razorpay processing. That matches Ruzuku's 0% and beats Teachable Starter's 7.5%.

Pricing shape. Plans are flat and monthly; lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited, and team plans add coach seats. Monthly plans cancel in one click, and there is a free trial (current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients). Because booking, contracts, email and the website are included in your Coachful membership, compare it against your whole stack, not against one course platform. Our Teachable alternative page and comparison hub lay that out tool by tool.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can go to Create and choose "We'll build it for you", describe what you want, and attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, photos, brand guides and copy. The Coachful team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours: a website, a funnel, a sales page, a program, a course outline and written material, an email sequence, a form, a lead quiz and more. Nothing gets invented; there are no fake credentials, testimonials or prices, and gaps are left for you to fill. Recent builds include a five-page site in sage and cream for a menopause and midlife health coach starting from nothing, with every button leading to a free 20-minute consultation, and a homepage and About page rebuild with a connected contact form for a somatic coach leaving Kajabi. It does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Read more about the free white-glove service.

When Ruzuku or Teachable is the better choice

• You only sell courses. If there is no 1:1 or group coaching in your business, a course platform is the simpler tool. Coachful is not a course marketplace.
• You need a free plan to start. Ruzuku Free costs nothing for up to 5 students. Coachful has a free trial but no permanent free plan.
• You need PayPal. Both Ruzuku and Teachable accept PayPal; Coachful does not.
• You want students in your own app store listing. Coachful's client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account.
• You need a HIPAA-covered setup. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not sign a BAA, so it is not for clinical records or insurance billing.
• You run a very large product catalog. Teachable's Growth plan, with 50 products and 5 admins, or its Custom plan is built for that scale.

How to start with Coachful

1. Start a free trial and pick the plan that covers your client count.
2. Use "We'll build it for you" to request your website, a funnel or your first program at no cost.
3. Connect your Stripe or Razorpay account and your calendar.
4. Have your clients, programs and content imported for you during onboarding.

Coaches who want a broader overview can start at our coaching software page.

Frequently asked questions about Ruzuku vs Teachable

Is Ruzuku cheaper than Teachable?

At list price, no: Teachable Starter is $39 a month against Ruzuku Core at $99, as listed in October 2026. But Starter takes 7.5% of every sale, so above about $667 in monthly sales Teachable Builder at $89 is cheaper, and above about $800 Ruzuku Core is too. Ruzuku also has a free plan for up to 5 students, which Teachable does not.

Does Ruzuku charge transaction fees?

No. Ruzuku lists 0% transaction fees on every plan, including Free. You still pay your payment processor, which Ruzuku describes as typically 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for Stripe or PayPal.

Does Teachable have a free plan?

No. Teachable shows a 7-day free trial on its plan cards and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a pop-up offered a 30-day trial on Builder monthly in October 2026. There is no permanent free tier.

Can I run live coaching calls on Ruzuku or Teachable?

Ruzuku includes built-in live video meetings on every plan, for up to 60 people in conference mode or 250 in presentation mode, plus a Zoom integration. Teachable's pricing page does not list live video, and when we profiled it in September 2026 coaching calls relied on outside tools. Neither has a booking calendar for 1:1 sessions.

Does Ruzuku have a mobile app?

Not a native one. Students use Ruzuku's mobile website and can add it to their home screen. Teachable lists iOS and Android student apps on all of its plans.

Which has better reviews, Ruzuku or Teachable?

Teachable has 3.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 1,110 reviews. Ruzuku has no Trustpilot reviews, and the G2 score of 4.4 shown on its site could not be checked for review count. With so little public feedback on Ruzuku, testing it on the Free plan is the most reliable check.

Can I use my own domain on Ruzuku or Teachable?

On Ruzuku, a custom domain and white-label branding require the Pro plan at $199 a month. On Teachable, removing Teachable branding requires the Growth plan. Check each vendor's current pricing page before you commit.

Is Coachful a replacement for Ruzuku or Teachable?

For coaches, often yes: it includes courses with modules, lessons, drip and completion tracking, and adds booking, contracts, programs with habits and check-ins, community and a website. If you only sell courses, need PayPal or need a free plan, Ruzuku or Teachable may suit you better.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

It is a done-for-you build included on every plan. You describe what you need, such as a website, funnel, program or email sequence, attach references and files, and the Coachful team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include recording videos, logo design or ad management.

Which should a new coach choose?

If your first offer is a course, try Ruzuku Free with a small pilot group or Teachable's trial with your first product. If your first offer is coaching sessions or a program, start with a coaching platform so booking, payments and client follow-up are in one place from day one.