Before signing up to a teaching platform, most people ask one question: what cut do you take? It is the right question and an incomplete one. The commission is the most visible part of the deal, not the most expensive.
Work out your number, not somebody else's
Rates differ between platforms, change over time, and sometimes differ between a new teacher and an established one on the same platform. So do not rely on a percentage you read in an article — open the terms page of the platform you are considering and take its number, today.
Then put it through this:
Annual cost = (session price × sessions per month × 12) × commission
Example: a session at 60 SAR, eighty sessions a month, a 20% commission.
60 × 80 × 12 = 57,600 SAR of annual revenue
57,600 × 0.20 = 11,520 SAR to the platform
Eleven and a half thousand in the first year. The same in the second. More in the tenth — because your income rises and the commission rises with it, in exact proportion.
The second cost: the list is not yours
This one never appears on a statement and is not paid monthly. It is paid once, on the day you leave.
On a marketplace your students are not yours in the way you think. You do not have their email, you have no direct channel to them, and the page your reputation is built on does not belong to you. If the rate goes up, the terms change, the platform closes, or your account is suspended for a reason you cannot get explained, you start again from nothing with only your experience.
One question settles it: if the platform closed tomorrow, how would you reach your students? With no answer, you are renting that relationship rather than owning it.
When does owning become cheaper?
The fair comparison is not "a commission" against "zero". It is a recurring cost against a cost paid once.
Your own platform has an upfront cost — the code, or the installation — then a small annual running cost for hosting and a domain. Take the example above: if the commission costs you 11,520 SAR a year, any one-off amount below that pays for itself before the first year is out.
And the bigger your income, the shorter that period. That is the paradox: the marketplace gets more expensive the better you do, while the platform you own gets relatively cheaper.
When the marketplace is still the right answer
To be fair about it: if you are starting today with no audience, the intermediary gives you something your own site will not — students. Finding the first twenty is harder than building a website.
The practical rule: start where the students are, leave once you have an audience. Anyone who already has followers on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram and sends them to a platform that takes a cut of every session is paying for an audience they brought themselves.
What owning one actually requires
Less than you would think: somewhere to publish your courses as chapters and lessons, a way to open the free part and close the paid part, a short quiz after each chapter, and a student list you can see. That is what Minbar does — installed under your name and your domain, paid once, with no percentage of what you earn.
The arithmetic is yours in the end. Take the real rate from the platform's own page, multiply by your expected income, and compare. The number says what to do.