Skillshare vs Udemy: Which Platform Should You Teach On?

Skillshare and Udemy are frequently compared as competing course marketplaces. They are more usefully understood as two entirely different revenue models that happen to both host video courses, and choosing between them is really choosing which model suits what you teach.

The fundamental difference

Udemy is a transactional marketplace. Students buy individual courses. You earn a share of each sale, and the share depends heavily on how the sale originated.

Skillshare is a subscription platform. Students pay a monthly fee for access to everything. You earn from a royalty pool distributed according to minutes watched.

That single difference determines almost everything else: what kind of content performs, how income behaves, and who each platform suits.

How you actually get paid

Udemy

Revenue share differs sharply by attribution:

• You brought the student through your own coupon or referral link: you keep the large majority of the sale.


• Udemy brought the student through their marketplace, search or promotions: the share drops substantially.

This is the single most important thing to understand about Udemy. Instructors who bring their own students earn several times more per sale than instructors relying on the marketplace.

The second factor is discounting. Udemy runs frequent, deep sitewide promotions, and a large share of sales happen at heavily discounted prices. Your listed price is not what most students pay, and you cannot fully opt out of the promotional machinery if you want marketplace distribution.

Skillshare

Earnings come from a royalty pool divided by minutes watched by premium members, plus a referral bonus when you bring in a new member.

Practical consequences:

• Watch time is the currency, not enrolments. A course people start and abandon earns little.


• Earnings per minute fluctuate, because they depend on the size of the pool and total watch time across the platform, neither of which you control.


• Referrals matter disproportionately, which is why Skillshare teachers promote heavily.

What performs on each

Udemy

• Technical and professional skills with a clear career outcome.


• Comprehensive, long courses. Students comparing options treat length as value.


• Subjects people actively search for and would pay for individually.


• Certification-adjacent material.

Skillshare

• Creative subjects: design, illustration, photography, crafts, writing.


• Short, project-based classes. Watch time comes from engagement, not duration, and a padded class gets abandoned.


• Subjects people browse rather than search for.


• Content that suits a person exploring rather than solving an urgent problem.

Putting a comprehensive technical course on Skillshare, or a short creative class on Udemy, is the most common mismatch and it underperforms on both.

Direct comparison

The constraint both share

Neither gives you a real relationship with your students. You do not get the email list, you cannot market to them freely, and the platform sits between you and the people you taught permanently.

That is the actual cost of marketplace distribution, and it is larger than the revenue share. An instructor with ten thousand students on a marketplace and no list has no asset; an instructor with a thousand students and a list has a business.

When a marketplace is the right choice

• You have no audience and need distribution to exist at all.


• You want to test whether a subject sells before investing in an independent launch.


• You want supplementary income without building a business around it.


• Your subject is one people search for on a marketplace, which is a real advantage in specific technical categories.

When to go independent instead

• You already have an audience, however small. Selling to it directly earns several times more per student.


• Your course is worth a premium price. Marketplace pricing dynamics make premium positioning impossible.


• You want the customer relationship, in order to sell anything else ever.


• You want to build an affiliate program, which requires owning the checkout and the commission structure. The selling courses with affiliates piece covers why that channel outperforms marketplace distribution for most creators.

The LMS comparison covers the platforms for doing this.

Using both

A defensible hybrid: put an introductory course on a marketplace as a discovery mechanism, and sell the substantial version independently.

The mechanics that make it work:

• Include your own free resource inside the marketplace course, which is how you convert a marketplace student into an email subscriber.


• Respect each platform's rules on external promotion, which vary and are enforced.


• Keep the marketplace version genuinely good. A deliberately weak course damages your reputation with exactly the audience you were trying to reach.

The summary

Choose Udemy if you teach a technical or professional skill people search for, and particularly if you can bring your own students, since that is where the earnings actually are.

Choose Skillshare if you teach a creative subject in short project-based classes and want steadier smaller income from watch time.

Choose neither as your main channel if you already have any audience at all, because selling directly earns several times more and gives you a customer relationship that a marketplace never will.