Is Uscreen worth it? The real 2026 cost, worked out
Uscreen pricing has three layers: a plan fee, a per-subscriber fee and a sale fee. We work out the real monthly bill from 50 to 1,000 subscribers.
Uscreen advertises a $49/mo entry price. Almost nobody running a real video membership pays that for long. The plan fee is only the first of three layers, and the other two grow with your audience.
Whether Uscreen is worth it comes down to one question: are you paying for a streaming business, or for a course host? Uscreen is priced as the first. If you need the second, it is several times more expensive than the alternatives.
All pricing below comes from Uscreen’s and each competitor’s listed plans; verify current pricing on the vendor’s site before you commit.
The three layers of Uscreen pricing
| Plan | Annual / mo | Monthly | Per subscriber | Sale fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49 | $49 | None | 10% |
| Growth | $149 | $199 | $1.99 | 5% |
| App Essentials | $449 | $499 | $0.99 | 5% |
- The plan fee. $49, $149 or $449 a month on annual billing.
- A per-subscriber fee on Growth and up: $1.99 per subscriber on Growth, $0.99 on App Essentials.
- A sale fee on one-time sales: 10% on Starter, 5% on the higher plans.
Starter also carries two hard limits: a 100-subscriber cap and 20 hours of video storage. For a video business, both are tight.
Two things our data does not settle, so I’m flagging them rather than guessing:
- The per-subscriber fee is listed as “per subscriber”, with no billing period. The tables below assume it is charged monthly, per active subscriber. If Uscreen bills it differently, the totals change. Confirm this on the pricing page before you budget.
- The 10% / 5% fee is listed for one-time sales. Our data does not say it applies to recurring subscription revenue, so the subscription scenarios below leave it out. If you also sell one-off rentals or purchases, add 10% or 5% of those sales on top.
What Uscreen actually costs at 50 to 1,000 subscribers
These are monthly totals: plan fee plus per-subscriber fees, on annual billing. They exclude payment processing and any one-time sale fees.
| Subscribers | Starter | Growth ($149 + $1.99 each) | App Essentials ($449 + $0.99 each) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $49 | $248.50 | $498.50 |
| 100 | $49 | $348 | $548 |
| 250 | Over cap | $646.50 | $696.50 |
| 500 | Over cap | $1,144 | $944 |
| 1,000 | Over cap | $2,139 | $1,439 |
On monthly billing, add $50/mo to every Growth and App Essentials figure ($199 vs $149, and $499 vs $449). That’s $600 a year for not committing.
The forced upgrade at subscriber 101
Starter is a genuinely cheap way to run a small membership: $49 a month, $588 a year, up to 100 subscribers. The problem is what happens when you succeed.
Subscriber 101 does not fit on Starter. The cheapest plan that takes them is Growth, at $349.99/mo (the $149 plan fee plus 101 × $1.99). Your bill rises by $300.99 a month for one extra member, about 7 times what you were paying.
That’s not a reason to avoid Uscreen. It is a reason to see Starter as a trial run, not a plan you stay on. If you expect to pass 100 subscribers, budget from the Growth row from day one.
The counter-intuitive one: App Essentials gets cheaper than Growth
Growth has the lower plan fee but the higher per-subscriber fee. The two lines cross at exactly 300 subscribers, where both cost $746/mo on annual billing (the crossover is also 300 on monthly billing).
Above 300, App Essentials, the plan that adds iOS and Android apps, is the cheaper plan:
- At 500 subscribers: $944 vs $1,144, which is $200/mo less.
- At 1,000 subscribers: $1,439 vs $2,139, which is $700/mo less.
If you’re on Growth with more than 300 subscribers, you are paying more to have no mobile apps. Check this before your next renewal.
What the per-subscriber fee means as a cut of revenue
A flat $1.99 hurts more the cheaper your membership is. On a $10/mo membership, Growth’s $1.99 is 19.9% of each member’s payment before processing. On a $20/mo membership it is 9.95%. App Essentials’ $0.99 halves that, which is another reason larger memberships end up on the higher plan.
How that compares with course platforms
None of the main course platforms in our data list a per-member fee. Here is each one’s cheapest plan with a 0% platform fee:
| Platform | Plan | Annual / mo | Platform fee | Per-member fee | Limit worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific | Basic | $36 | 0% via Thinkific Payments | None listed | 5% surcharge on your own Stripe/PayPal gateway |
| Teachable | Builder | $69 | 0% | None listed | Up to 10 products |
| Podia | Shaker | $84 | 0% | None listed | Up to 500 email subscribers |
| Kajabi | Basic | $143 | 0% revenue share | None listed | 2,500 contacts, 5 products |
| Uscreen | App Essentials, 1,000 subs | $1,439 | 5% on one-time sales | $0.99 | None listed |
At 1,000 members, Uscreen’s cheapest option costs $1,296/mo more than Kajabi Basic, assuming your whole contact list fits in Kajabi’s 2,500-contact cap. (Kajabi counts all contacts, not just paying members.) Against Thinkific Basic the gap is $1,403/mo. Over a year, Uscreen App Essentials at 1,000 subscribers comes to $17,268, against $1,716 for Kajabi Basic.
Even at 250 subscribers, Uscreen Growth’s $646.50/mo is more than four times Kajabi Basic.
If all you need is to put lessons behind a paywall and charge a monthly fee, that gap is the whole answer. The membership site vs online course guide covers whether a recurring membership fits your content at all, and course platform transaction fees explained goes through the percentage fees in more depth.
What the extra money actually buys
Comparing on price alone isn’t fair to Uscreen, though. It doesn’t sell the same product as the platforms above.
Uscreen is built for paid video memberships and OTT: a Netflix-style on-demand catalogue, built-in live streaming, and native iOS, Android and TV apps under your brand. Its pros list is short and specific: purpose-built for video memberships, native apps, and live plus on-demand plus community in one place. It rates 4.7 on G2 and has been doing this since 2015.
Course platforms are built around lessons, progress and completion. Uscreen is built around a catalogue people browse and binge on their phone or TV. If your subscribers watch on a living-room TV, a course player isn’t a substitute, and a branded TV app is something none of the course platforms above list in our data. Kajabi does list a branded member mobile app, so phone apps alone are not unique to Uscreen. The TV side is.
Two things to check on the sales call:
- Which plan includes TV apps. Our data lists TV apps as a Uscreen feature, and says App Essentials adds iOS and Android apps. It doesn’t say which tier includes TV apps.
- Community and API sit on the Custom plan. Built-in community features, API access and white-labelling are listed as Custom-plan features, and we have no listed price for Custom.
The verdict
Uscreen is worth it if video is the product, not the delivery method. That means a paid video catalogue, a live-plus-replay membership, or a brand that wants its own streaming apps, where members expect to open an app on their phone or TV and press play. For that business, the per-subscriber fee is the cost of running your own streaming service, and the apps are the point.
It’s also worth it at small scale, as long as you know what comes next. Starter at $49 is a fair way to test a video membership with up to 100 subscribers. Just budget for the jump to $349.99/mo at subscriber 101.
Skip it if you’re selling courses. Thinkific, Teachable, Podia and Kajabi all reach 0% platform fees at a flat $36-$143 a month with no per-member charge. At any meaningful subscriber count, Uscreen costs several times more for features a course business won’t use.
And if you’re already on Uscreen Growth with more than 300 subscribers, run the App Essentials maths. Above that line it’s the cheaper plan, and it comes with mobile apps.
Uscreen runs a 20% lifetime recurring affiliate program. That had no bearing on this verdict.
Our advisor narrows the field by content type, audience size and budget. The Uscreen alternatives page ranks the direct competitors, and the best course platforms hub compares the whole category.