Udemy
Udemy is the world’s largest online learning marketplace with 80 million+ learners and 290,000+ courses — and for first-time course creators who want to validate whether their course topic generates genuine demand before investing in a dedicated platform, there is no more efficient validation environment available. Publishing a course on Udemy is free. No monthly subscription, no technical setup, no upfront cost. If your course sells on Udemy’s marketplace, you know the topic has real demand. If it doesn’t, you’ve spent nothing beyond the time creating the content. The Marketplace Insights tool is the practical starting point for every Udemy course idea. Before creating a single lesson, search your topic and Udemy surfaces data on search demand, competition level, revenue potential per course and what existing courses charge — giving you market intelligence that platforms like Thinkific and Kajabi simply don’t have because they don’t have comparable audience scale. For self-promoted sales — where you drive traffic to your own Udemy course through your own marketing — the revenue share is 97%. For organic marketplace sales where Udemy’s algorithm surfaces your course to browsing learners, the share is 37%. For Udemy Business subscription sales (where companies buy bulk employee access), the share is 15%. The critical strategic limitation: Udemy owns the student relationship. You do not receive student email addresses. You cannot email your student base, run a follow-up sequence or migrate your students to another platform’s community. For solopreneurs who want to build a long-term audience and recurring revenue business around their knowledge, Udemy should be treated as a validation and discovery channel rather than a primary business platform. Use Udemy to validate demand and build social proof, then direct proven students to your own platform for higher-margin products.
Pros
- 80M+ learners — largest built-in audience of any course platform by a significant margin
- Free to publish — no subscription, no setup cost, no upfront investment
- Marketplace Insights validates demand before creating a single lesson
- 97% revenue share on self-promoted sales
- Ideal for topic validation and social proof before migrating to a dedicated platform
Cons
- Revenue share: only 37% on organic marketplace sales, 97% on self-promoted sales
- No control over pricing — Udemy frequently discounts courses to $9.99-$14.99
- Marketplace discovery algorithm determines visibility — not within creator control
- No email list ownership — student contact data belongs to Udemy, not you
- Commoditises your course — you compete directly with thousands of similar courses
Udemy Review 2026 — The Best Marketplace Platform for Validating Your Course Idea
Udemy is the world’s largest online learning marketplace and the most efficient validation environment for first-time course creators. With 80 million+ learners, 290,000+ courses and zero upfront cost to publish, it provides instant access to a massive built-in audience without the monthly subscription fees, technical setup or marketing investment that dedicated course platforms require before your first sale.
Marketplace Insights — Validate Before Creating
The Marketplace Insights tool is the most practically valuable feature Udemy offers to new creators. Before writing a single lesson, you can search your intended course topic and see real demand data: how many learners search this topic monthly, how competitive the existing course supply is, what revenue successful courses in this category generate and what price points they charge. This market intelligence removes the most dangerous assumption in course creation — that your topic has paying demand — and replaces it with evidence before you invest 40 hours creating content.For solopreneurs considering a course business, this validation step is the argument for starting with Udemy rather than directly investing in Kajabi or Thinkific. If Udemy Marketplace Insights shows weak demand and existing courses earning minimal revenue, that’s information worth having before paying $143/month for Kajabi to host a course nobody wants to buy.
The Revenue Model — The Critical Understanding
The Udemy revenue model requires honest understanding before committing. On self-promoted sales where you drive your own traffic, you receive 97% of the sale price. On organic marketplace sales where Udemy’s algorithm surfaces your course to browsing learners, you receive 37%. Udemy frequently discounts courses to $9.99-$14.99 during promotional periods — which drives volume but means a $197 course might sell for $9.99 at 37% revenue share, yielding $3.70 per sale.
The Email List Limitation — The Strategic Constraint
The most important strategic constraint on Udemy is that you do not own the student relationship. Udemy does not share student email addresses with instructors. You cannot email your student base independently, run a follow-up sequence or migrate your audience to your own platform. Your students on Udemy are Udemy’s customers. For solopreneurs building a long-term knowledge business, this is the reason Udemy should be a validation and discovery channel rather than a primary business platform.
Our Verdict
Publish on Udemy to validate your course topic, generate social proof through reviews and ratings and earn initial revenue. Use the Marketplace Insights data to confirm demand. Then direct proven interested students to your own platform — Thinkific, Teachable or Kajabi — where you control the student relationship, the pricing and the recurring revenue potential.
