systeme.io vs Teachable (2026): Who Files the Sales Tax?

systeme.io's Startup plan costs $17 a month. Teachable's Builder plan costs $89. Both sell a course, both take 0% of the sale on those plans, and both can put your card payments through Stripe. Read as two stickers, Teachable is more than five times the price, and none of the five comparison pages I saved for this one gets past the stickers to tax.

It leaves out a job one of them does and the other doesn't. On Teachable Payments, Teachable calculates, collects and sends the sales tax and VAT on your sales to the tax authorities, in the places where the law makes the platform responsible. On systeme.io, the checkout can add VAT to the price, but the money goes into the Stripe or PayPal account you connected, and the tax in it is yours to file.

So the first question isn't which plan is cheaper. It's where last year's buyers lived.

What the $72 a month buys

On annual billing, Builder costs $828 a year and systeme.io's Startup costs $170, a gap of $658. Part of what that buys is tax filing for sales to buyers in 30 US states plus DC, the EU, the UK and a list of other countries, for an extra 0.5% of each taxed sale. If most of your buyers live where filing would otherwise land on you, the gap is the price of not doing it yourself. If they don't, you'd be paying Teachable for a service you won't use, and systeme.io is the cheaper tool by the full $658.

I'm not a tax adviser. This page reads what each company says it does; whether you owe tax in a given state or country is a question for an accountant.

Two price lists, October 9

Below Unlimited, systeme.io's plans also cap contacts: 2,000 on Free, 5,000 on Startup, 10,000 on Webinar. Teachable has no free plan; its FAQ calls it "a paid service that includes a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee," and a banner on the same page offered a 30-day trial on October 9.

On the sticker alone, systeme.io wins at every size: its free plan holds one course, and Startup holds five for less than Teachable Starter's annual rate. On systeme.io the course count is rarely the line a course business crosses first, because every student is also a contact; my headcount guide for course creators sizes the plan that way. Whether the sticker is the whole bill is what the next sections test.

Who collects and who files, by buyer

Teachable's help article "How Teachable handles tax" sets out what happens on Teachable Payments, its built-in checkout, and on the Custom Payment Gateway (CPG), where you connect your own Stripe account instead. systeme.io's help covers VAT only.

Two sentences in Teachable's article define the left-hand column. "Teachable only collects and remits taxes in jurisdictions where local laws legally require the platform to do so." And where it does: "You never need to remit collected tax yourself — Teachable handles this entirely on your behalf when taxes are collected from the buyer." On CPG, "creators are solely responsible for collecting and remitting tax to the relevant authorities."

So the tax filer only exists on Teachable Payments, and only for buyers in the places on its lists. A creator whose buyers all live in states that aren't on the list gets nothing from it. A creator selling to consumers in the EU and UK gets the most.

Teachable's price for the filing

Every Teachable plan card lists "Global payments & taxes," which reads as tax handling included in the plan. The help article on fees adds a price. Teachable Payments comes in two bundles. The default, Standard, adds no percentage of its own, but it charges "Tax handling: +0.5% applied to transactions where tax is assessed" and "Subscription fee: +0.7% applied to recurring transactions." The other bundle, Go Global, adds 2.8% to every transaction and waives both.

That's $5 per $1,000 of taxed sales on Standard, or $1 on a $200 course sold to a buyer who's charged tax.

A hypothetical seller to put numbers on it: one $200 course, 120 sales a year ($24,000), all one-time payments, and, as an assumption, 40% of sales to buyers in places where Teachable collects tax.

The tax filer itself costs this seller $48 a year. The plan it comes with costs $658 more than systeme.io's. That $706 difference is what the seller weighs against doing the filing themselves. Go Global only makes sense if you want its other features (Teachable lists 35+ local payment methods and Adaptive Pricing); for tax alone it costs $624 more than Standard here.

Card processing doesn't change the picture on US cards: Teachable lists 2.9% + $0.30 for domestic cards, which is Stripe's standard US rate too. I set Stripe's surcharges against an all-in checkout in the comparison with Kit's 3.5% fee, and that price list applies to a systeme.io checkout here as well.

What systeme.io's checkout does with VAT

systeme.io's help article "How VAT is managed in systeme.io" says that for information products and services, "the VAT rate of the buyer's country of residence is applied," added on top of the price you set. It depends on one form field: "If you don't select the Country field on your order form, the VAT rate applied will be 0%, since we can't determine the rate to be applied." Physical products take the seller's country rate, which you set per product. A separate article covers UK VAT for digital products by seller location and buyer type, and notes that "Systeme.io does not automatically calculate UK VAT for physical products."

Payments go through accounts you own. To connect Stripe, systeme.io's help has you authorize your own Stripe account (or open one), and PayPal has its own integration article. So the VAT a buyer pays by card sits in your Stripe balance with the rest of the sale. Neither systeme.io help article says systeme.io files or pays it. And its help center has VAT articles but none on US sales tax that I could find.

A commenter in a Canadian small-business thread on course sales put the whole job in one line: "Use a proper platform that captures the province and country, charge the appropriate tax rate, remit to CRA." On systeme.io, the Country field covers the first part and the VAT setting the second. The third is yours.

That's a reasonable design for a seller who's already registered for VAT and files returns: systeme.io puts the right rate on the order and leaves the filing where it already happens. For a seller who isn't, the checkout collecting VAT is the start of an obligation, not the end of one.

Four returns a year

For a seller outside the EU, the EU's own channel for this is the One Stop Shop. The European Commission's OSS pages give a worked example of "a trader established in the US" who registers in Ireland under the non-Union scheme and declares electronic services sold to consumers in Finland, Sweden and Ireland on one return. The return covers a calendar quarter and is due "by the end of the month following the end of the tax period." It's required "whether or not services or goods were supplied during this period," which means a nil return in a quarter with no EU sales.

That's four filings a year from the first quarter you register, on top of whatever you file at home. A seller planning $7 PDF downloads for US, UK and EU buyers asked the question this section answers in r/SaaS: "Does Stripe Managed Payments actually solve the 'filing' problem, or am I still the one logging into the HMRC/EU portals every quarter?" The same post named the cost being weighed: "My goal is to scale and I don't want to spend my weekends being an accountant." On Teachable Payments, for EU consumer sales, Teachable says it remits the VAT. On systeme.io, those four returns are yours, or an accountant's.

I'd put the threshold here: if your buyers include EU or UK consumers and you aren't already registered there, Teachable Builder's extra $658 a year is the price of not taking on that filing. If you'd pay an accountant less than that to do it, or you're already doing it, systeme.io.

Where Teachable's own pages disagree

Three numbers don't match across Teachable's pages.

• International card rate. The pricing page lists international credit and debit card sales at 3.9% + 30¢. The fee help lists a US school's international card at 4.4% + $0.30. On a $200 sale that's $8.10 against $9.10. I'd plan on the help article's figure until the two agree.
• How many markets. The tax article says digital content tax is handled across "20+ additional markets worldwide" beyond the US, EU and UK. The payments setup article says "Automatic tax calculation, collection, and remittance in 45+ markets."
• How many states. Teachable's X account told creators in April to "Let Teachable handle the sales tax in all 50 states, the EU, and the UK." The help article lists 30 states plus DC where Teachable collects sales tax. In the rest, the help's own rule applies: it collects only where the law requires the platform to.

None of these changes the main point. They're reasons to read the help center rather than the marketing.

Products, courses and the Starter fee

Teachable counts "any course, coaching offering, or digital download" as one product; memberships and bundles don't count. systeme.io meters courses separately from its other limits. I went through how a product-count meter compares with systeme.io's in the Kajabi comparison, and the same reading applies to Teachable's 5, 10 and 50.

Starter's 7.5% decides one thing quickly. Builder costs $480 a year more on annual billing, which 7.5% recovers at $6,400 a year in sales ($8,000 on monthly billing). Above that, Starter is the expensive Teachable plan, tax or no tax.

A four-star Trustpilot reviewer reached the same point from the seller's side in September 2026. She found that on Teachable "checkout, payment plans, subscriptions, and the student experience all feel well thought out", named Starter's transaction fee as her main hesitation, and concluded: "Once you're making regular sales, moving to a higher tier probably makes more sense."

When the filer isn't worth it

I wouldn't send these sellers to Teachable for the tax handling:

• Buyers mostly in US states not on Teachable's list. No tax is collected there, so the 0.5% and the plan gap buy nothing on those sales.
• Sellers outside the US, EU and UK who sell mostly at home. Teachable's table puts domestic sales on the creator in every listed country except Mexico and Taiwan.
• Anyone who'd use CPG. The tax handling disappears with Teachable Payments.
• Sellers already registered for VAT with a filing routine. systeme.io adds the rate; your existing returns absorb it.

And I'd hesitate the other way for a creator selling a course to consumers across the EU and UK from the US with no VAT registration. That's the case the filer was built for.

People who sell digital products name the same reason. In March, @GabeJohansson, whose profile is about starting an email-based business, listed "3 platforms to take digital product payments without worrying about sales or VAT tax," with Teachable second. An earlier post by @orryano described the same search ending at a "Merchant of Record" such as Gumroad, Paddle or Teachable. That's their term; Teachable's help describes collecting and remitting, not the label.

The seller's side of it is in a November 2024 r/SmallBusinessCanada thread. The poster sold templates and courses worldwide: "For templates I use lemon squeezy which acts as merchant of record and it auto charges tax. But for courses my platform doesn't do the tax thing so I don't know how to proceed." They didn't name the course platform. The result, in their words: "I have to pay the tax out of pocket myself this year." A reply from a user posting as CanadianCFO listed "Teachable: Handles payment, tax, and affiliate payouts" among the platforms to look at, and suggested working out what was owed by the same sort this page closes with: "Sort by credit card or address data, add the tax rate for these locations, then multiply your revenue with the tax rate to figure out how much you owe."

What I couldn't pin down

• Whether systeme.io remits anything. Its VAT articles describe calculation at checkout. I found no statement that it files or pays VAT, and no article on US sales tax. If that changes, the comparison narrows a lot.
• The share of your sales Teachable would tax. It depends on where your buyers live; the 40% above is an assumption.
• Which of Teachable's international card rates applies. The two pages differ, as above.
• I haven't run a school on Teachable or a checkout on systeme.io for this comparison. The figures come from what both companies published on October 9, 2026.

Pick by where your buyers live

1. Sort last year's sales by buyer location: US states on Teachable's list, other US states, EU and UK consumers, everywhere else.
2. If fewer than one sale in ten falls in places where Teachable collects tax, the filer is doing little work. Take systeme.io: Free for one course and up to 2,000 contacts, Startup at $17 a month for five.
3. If you sell to EU or UK consumers and aren't registered for VAT, price the four OSS returns a year against $658. If an accountant would charge more, or you won't do it, take Teachable Builder on the Standard bundle.
4. If you're on Teachable Starter and selling more than $6,400 a year, move to Builder regardless of tax.

If the numbers point to systeme.io and you sell more than one course, take Startup from systeme.io's plan page; Free holds one course. Either way, turn on VAT in the payment settings before your first sale if you're registered. If they point to Teachable, Teachable's pricing page has the trial.

FAQ

Does Teachable collect sales tax for me? On Teachable Payments, yes, in the 30 US states plus DC on its list, for EU and UK consumers, and in a list of other countries when you're not based there. It doesn't on the Custom Payment Gateway.

Does Teachable charge for tax handling? On the default Standard bundle, 0.5% of each transaction where tax is assessed. The Go Global bundle waives it but adds 2.8% to every transaction.

Does systeme.io collect VAT? Its checkout adds the buyer's country VAT rate to digital products if your order form has a Country field; without it the rate is 0%. The payment, VAT included, lands in the Stripe or PayPal account you connected, and systeme.io's help doesn't say it files the VAT for you.

Does systeme.io handle US sales tax? I found no help article on it. Its tax articles cover VAT.

Is systeme.io cheaper than Teachable? On plan price, yes at every size: $170 a year for Startup against $828 for Teachable Builder on annual billing. Whether the $658 difference is a saving depends on whether you'd otherwise have to file tax on cross-border sales.

Does Teachable have a free plan? No. It has a free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.