Skool's Discovery page ranks communities, but it never tells you what the market looks like as a whole. So I pulled the global top 1,000 (34 pages × 30) on 13 September 2026 — rank, members, price, billing interval, creation date — and ran the numbers. Snapshot, one day, public data only.
Pricing: free is the exception
| tier | communities |
|---|---|
| free | 154 (15 %) |
| $1–9 / month | 141 |
| $10–29 / month | 227 |
| $30–49 / month | 161 |
| $50–99 / month | 184 |
| $100+ / month | 66 |
| one-time price | 67 |
846 of 1,000 are paid. Median monthly price: $34. In the top 100 the paid share is 95 %; at ranks 901–1000 it's still 85 %. Free communities are bigger on average (median 374 members vs 226 for paid) but they don't dominate the ranking — Skool's algorithm clearly weighs engagement over headcount.
Size: the median community is small
Median members: 241. Median age: 314 days. Median lifetime growth: under 1 member per day. The long tail is very long; a community with 1,000 members is already in the top quarter.
Money: brutal concentration
Multiply members by monthly price and you get an upper bound on gross MRR (not every member pays list price — think of it as "money on the table"). Across the 779 monthly-billed communities that's ≈ $22.4 M / month. Of that:
- the top 10 communities hold 30 %,
- the top 10 % hold 69 %,
- the median community's potential is $7.3 k / month.
The biggest three by this measure: a 71 k-member community at $29, a 44 k one at $27, and a 164 k one at $7 — proof that low price × huge audience beats premium pricing at the top.
Growth: who is actually winning
Lifetime growth (members ÷ age) crowns the giants, but it hides momentum: a 45-day-old trading community is adding 115 members/day, faster than almost anything with a 500-day history. Age-normalised growth is the fairest way to spot rising communities, and it needs two observations, not one — which is why the scraper now has a trackTrends mode: run it daily and each row gets membersPerDay, rankChange, priceChangeUsd and a growthSignal (surging / growing / flat / shrinking / new).
Method
Public Skool Discovery JSON, HTTP only, no login. 1,000 rows, ~5 seconds. monthlyRevenuePotentialUsd = members × monthly price (upper bound). The scraper is on the Apify Store — https://apify.com/tactful_anvil/skool-communities-scraper — with keyword search, category/price filters, owner enrichment (public MRR badge) and the growth tracker above. If it's useful, a bookmark or review there genuinely helps a small developer.
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