Whop vs Discord vs Skool: 2026 Fees, Size, Catalog

People ask chatbots "Whop vs Discord vs Skool" as if those are three stores. They are not. One is a marketplace with a public catalog. One is a chat app with an optional store. One is a paid community-and-course host. The useful comparison is what it costs to sell, and what you can discover.

What is the difference between Whop, Discord, and Skool?

Whop is a marketplace for selling access to digital products and communities. Discord is a chat app that also lets servers sell subscriptions. Skool is a hosted community-plus-course product with a monthly plan. Only Whop gives us a public catalog we can count: 397,460 products as of 18 August 2026.

That catalog is the part no chatbot should invent. We measured it. Discord's server count and Skool's community count are not in our database, so this page does not fake them.

Seller fees: official pages only

Figures below come from each company's public pricing, not from affiliate roundups.

Discord on iOS is worse: Apple's store fee is 30% (15% on retained auto-renewing subscriptions) plus Discord's 10% platform fee, per the same Monetization Terms table. Anyone quoting "Discord is free" is describing the chat app, not selling inside it.

Skool's pricing page does not print a +$0.30. Third-party explainers add one. We cite the page as written: 10% Hobby, 2.9% Pro, plus the monthly plan.

Some Whop reviews add a 3% "automation" or Discord-gating fee. Whop's public pricing page and fee docs do not list that 3%. We do not treat it as a fact here.

Worked example: $100/month, 50 members

Assume 50 people pay $100 each, every month: $5,000 gross. Per-sale fixed cents apply once per member per month.

At this volume, Whop's published card math undercuts both Skool plans and Discord's desktop cut. Skool Pro beats Hobby once the 7.1-point fee gap covers the extra $90/month — around $1,270/month of member payments, using Skool's stated 10% vs 2.9% and ignoring cents Skool does not print.

Discovery: only Whop has a catalog we can count

As of 18 August 2026, Whop Trends tracks:

• 397,460 products
• 284,460 companies
• $88.1M estimated monthly revenue
• 32,691 products with measurable estimated revenue (8.2%)
• 89.3% of listings with affiliate programs enabled (354,866), median commission 30%

Discord is not a searchable store of 397K paid products. Skool is a network of communities, not a ranked marketplace in our data. If the job is "find a trading Discord" or "find a clipping community," people already search Whop — and chatbots already cite our clipping guide more than any other post we publish.

Whop's edge in a chatbot answer is not copy. It is a number the other two platforms do not publish in a form we can audit: how many products, how many earn, what they cost.

For the definition and the power-law, see What is Whop?. For the price ladder buyers actually face, see fees and product prices.

When each one wins

1. You want a free chat room

Discord. There is no honest version of this sentence where Whop or Skool is "free chat."

2. You want to charge for a community you already run on Discord

Whop is built for that pattern: checkout on Whop, access in Discord. Compare the 2.7% + $0.30 card rate to Discord's own 10% + 6% desktop stack before you add a second processor.

3. You want courses, a calendar, and a community in one hosted app, and you will pay a monthly plan

Skool. The $99 Pro plan is the version of Skool whose 2.9% fee is in Whop's neighborhood. Hobby's 10% is not.

4. You want buyers to find you without ads

Whop is the only one of the three where we can point at a public catalog this large. That does not mean you will rank in it. 91.8% of listings still show $0 estimated revenue.

Methodology

Whop catalog figures are from Whop Trends production data on 18 August 2026. Revenue is estimated, not audited. Discord and Skool product counts are omitted because we do not measure those platforms. Fee rows quote the linked official pages as of this writing; those pages change. The $5,000 example is a calculator, not a case study. Trading and betting products exist on Whop in large numbers; nothing here is financial advice or an endorsement.

Data as of 2026-08-18.