Announcement! Udemy Expands Personal Plan Library

Hey Instructors,

We wanted to share some information about our Personal Plan (PP) catalog expansion. Here’s everything you need to know about this change and what it means for you and the broader Udemy community.

What Changed?

Larger Catalog for More Learners: The PP catalog has doubled in size for new subscribers, now featuring 26k–31k courses depending on the region.
Global Availability: The updated PP catalog is now live in all 229 geographies where Personal Plan has launched.
Enhanced Language Support: Every region includes the English collection by default, while geos with a non-English primary language now also have additional collections (e.g., Japanese learners get English and Japanese collections).
Selection Criteria for Courses: No courses were removed from the current catalog. Expanded catalog includes courses that meet these criteria: Avg rating of 4.0 or higher and at least 10 ratings
As of this week, all 90 countries on native mobile apps with Personal plan will now have the updated catalog

Why Does This Matter?

As you’ve heard from Hugo in last week's earnings call, in order to return our consumer business to growth, one of the levers we will use is to increase our emphasis on subscription products.

Increased Visibility of Personal Plan: The expanded catalog has resulted in a 40% boost in PP offer impressions across key pages like course landing pages, the Plans and Pricing page, and the PP landing page on the web.
More Opportunities for Engagement: With an enhanced selection, learners can access more of your amazing content, catering to varied preferences and boosting overall engagement

To learn more about the Personal Plan library expansion and what these changes mean for you, please check out our News Post, and reference our FAQs as a resource.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to teaching and inspiring learners worldwide—this is another step toward reaching even more learners who value your expertise!

Teach On,

The Udemy Instructor Team

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Comments

Joy D Moyo

How do i know if my course has been included in the program?

HofmeyrdeVo128

I've seen a 65% increase in course engagement for July, is this related?
If so, thank you Udemy ! If not…thank you anyway! :)

MarkTimberl006

Yes, how do we know if a course has been included?

PuneetGupta453

My courses with rating more than 4.4 and more than 10 ratings are not included.

How can we get them included in the PP?

RyanJaress

Hey there everyone!

You will know you have been included in PP by receiving an email that lets you know if you are included or removed from the program.

SekhmetReiki

that's great, thank you Udemy

SteveBallinger

If your course is in the Udemy Business program is it also in the Personal Plan by default? I just had a new course added to Udemy Business and received an email related to that. However, I don't believe I have ever received a personal plan email, even though I do get some personal plan revenue so some of the courses are in there.

Sergio-Apasoft

I haven't received any emails, except when a course is included in UB.
Another way to find out is to access your course registration page from an incognito window and see if the student sees the message "Get this course and over 30,100 of our top-rated courses with the Personal Plan" and a button to register.
All my UB courses are included, but I also have a couple that aren't in UB, and the text appears.
My courses are in Spanish, so I imagine the number of courses listed would be different in other countries.
It would be interesting to have a list, like the one in UB, and a detailed report of minutes, which doesn't exist now, at least not that I know of.
Regards
Sergio

FettahBen

I have a question about PP. If a student pays the $10 monthly fee but doesn't use Udemy that month, who receives the $10?

FrankKane

The $10 goes into the revenue pool, of which $1.75 will be distributed among all the instructors in PP based on their share of the total minutes consumed by all PP learners.

In 2026 it will be $1.50 instead.

More instructors in PP means the revenue will be spread more thinly. It's the right thing for Udemy's customers though, so hopefully it drives longer term growth.

See https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013221767-How-do-I-Earn-Revenue-From-Udemy-Business? (despite the URL, this also talks about PP revenue.)

SivakamiS2017

Yes, this will reduce our marketplace revenues further. But hopefully, longer term, it will be better ?!

EdenMarco445

Nice!!

MarkTimberl006

Is that by course, or just as an instructor? I think there needs to be some indicator on the dashboard for transparency's sake.

MarkTimberl006

Please clarify some of the details here, as it is very unclear.

Will all of my courses be included in the programme if they hit the ratings level?

Or is it just a few courses ?

Why is there no visual indicator that a course is in the programme on the instructor dashboard?

MarinaT

Hi Steve,

Yes, when your course is added to Udemy Business, it’s automatically included in the Personal Plan as well, but not the other way around. There are courses that are part of the Personal Plan but not Udemy Business, particularly since the Personal Plan library has recently expanded. This likely explains why you haven’t received a Personal Plan email, even though you’ve been earning revenue from it and Udemy Business.

If you’d like to confirm specific details about your courses, I’d recommend having this checked by our internal team.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

FrankKane

It just dawned on me… so any course that is over 4.0 stars and has 10 or more ratings, and did not explicitly opt out of "Udemy Business" is now subject to the exclusivity terms for Udemy Business, right?

It's a little confusing for instructors, as these terms are under the "Udemy Business" section of the promotion policy, but the wording is explicit that it applies to any subscription product, not just Udemy Business.

I'm not sure all of the affected instructors are aware of this new limitation.

JonAvis865

Hi @MarinaT how often will new courses be added to the personal plan?

I have a new course which didn't meet the required number of reviews to get included at the time of this announcement but will do very soon.

Is the adding of new courses an ongoing thing?

ThomasMitchell

They lowered the standards significantly to get into the subscription program. It makes me wonder if Udemy is seeing a dropoff of new, higher quality courses coming onto the platform.

I don’t see any other reason for lowering the standards and bringing in lower quality courses.

PuneetGupta453

So $8.25 goes to Udemy?

That’s a significant share of the profit.

Udemy should explore ways to increase instructors’ earnings from PP. Earning only $5–$6 per month is quite low. Please don’t get me wrong, but instructors should receive a higher share in at least some plans.

MarinaT

Hi Jon,

Thank you for tagging me and for your interest in Personal Plan! The curation process for Personal Plan happens over time, and is not tied to specific timelines, similar to Udemy Business. This means that even if your course hasn’t been included yet, there’s still a chance it may be added in the future based on its relevance and quality.

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

MarinaT

Hi Mark,

My apologies for being late here, it looks like the comment slipped through the cracks. Not all courses that meet the quality thresholds will automatically be included in Personal Plan. Inclusion also depends on topic relevance and overall curation strategy. This means while some of your courses may be included, others may not, even if they meet the ratings and quality criteria.

Once your course is selected, you’ll receive an email notification, and you’ll also see an “Individual subscription” label in your revenue report.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out.

Wishing you a great start to the new week!

MarinaT

Hi Frank,

Thank you for bringing this up. Yes, any course added to our Personal Plan collection must meet our exclusivity requirements as stated here. I understand your point, though, and I’ll be forwarding it to our internal team for consideration.

FrankKane

Thanks. Even the UI for opting in or out in the instructor dashboard is still labeled "Udemy Business Program." I realize it's just another casualty of Personal Plan having never been integrated into instructor tools when it was first launched as an experiment, but it's very misleading.

When the UB and PP catalogs were identical, it didn't matter… but now it does. I'm not sure if courses that are in PP (we really need a better acronym!) but not UB are even properly represented here.

FrankKane

A platform experiencing declining quality as a result of redirecting too much money from suppliers to shareholders would be Cory Doctorow's definition of… um, a term he coined that I probably can't use here.

But an alternative explanation is that it's hard to convince marketplace customers to sign up for a subscription, if there is any possibility of a course they want being unavailable to them under the subscription. In UB they have only ever had access to the curated collection. But in Personal Plan, there may be a perception of having many courses "taken away" from them, and nobody likes that. It doesn't make sense that their subscription would only give them access to the best of the best instead of everything they might want.

JonAvis865

Thanks for clarifying Marina!

MarinaT

You’re very welcome! 😊

MarinaT

Thank you, Frank!
We’ll look into that 👀.

JulianJenki396

Can i ask what catergories the payment plans come under. I have to say the number of questions in here tell me this hasnt been communicated that well. When you consider this is the first income for a lot of people these fundamental changes are massive and yet we are having to ask questions in the forum there should have been clear changes sent out to everyone. I for sure havent received anythign I dont know if im in or our all I know is that year on year my revenue is eroded one way or another

PuneetGupta453

If Udemy’s future focus is on the Personal Plan, then the Dashboard and other parts of the Instructor Journey should clearly explain this model. Right now, PP details on Instructor's screens are not very clear - both Desktop and Mobile.

SivakamiS2017

Also, today the BestSeller and Hot and New tags are based on Marketplace Sales, right ?
If those are really dying, then should we still be basing those tags only on Marketplace Sales ? How do we include Subscription and UB into such tags ?!

Jeremy_Farrell

With the vast number of independent course platforms I think instructors will start building for them and put on Udemy secondarily, not build for Udemy then put on the other platforms.

If you are paying $20 a month for another platform but get 100% of sales, you'll design for that and put your marketing effort into that. If Udemy want to put less effort into the Marketplace, I suggest they improve the revenue share to instructors so we remain incentivised.

MarinaT

Hi @SivakamiS2017,

Thanks for raising this question and for the thoughtful suggestion.

You’re right that our Best Seller and Hot & New tags are based on Marketplace sales today. We still see these badges as valuable signals for learners who browse the Marketplace, helping them quickly spot popular and well-received courses.

We also agree with your point about Udemy Business and the subscription experience. Having indicators that highlight strong course performance in UB could be valuable for both learners and instructors, and we’ll be sharing this idea with our internal teams to explore further.

We appreciate your input, suggestions like this help us evolve both sides of the platform in ways that support instructors and learners alike.

ScottDuffy

Welcome to the Internet.

Revenue share only goes down for content creators, not up.

Col (Dr) Shabbar Shahid (Veteran)

@UdemyInstructorTeam It is encouraging to hear that the Personal Plan (PP) catalog has doubled in size. However, could you please clarify whether Udemy’s total subscription revenue has increased proportionately? In other words, has the overall revenue pool grown, or will instructors now be sharing the same-sized revenue pie among a larger number of courses?

Without this context, the information feels incomplete. Understanding the revenue impact is essential for instructors to fully assess the significance of the expansion. Regards

Col (Dr) Shabbar Shahid (Veteran)

Hi Udemy Team,

Just circling back on my earlier question about the revenue impact of the Personal Plan catalog expansion. I know you’ve been sharing a lot of updates lately, but it would really help if we could get a bit of clarity on this point.

A better understanding of whether the overall subscription revenue pool has grown would give instructors like us more perspective and motivation as we plan ahead.

Thanks so much for your time and for all the updates you continue to share with the community.

Warm regards,

Mik365

Can you opt-out of having your courses being offered for personal plan? I've noticed a revenue decline since my courses have been offered in it.

MV_Edu

Thanks for the update.