Quick answer
To sell on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT), you create a free Buyer account, upgrade it to a Basic Seller account for $29 once or an Exclusive Seller account for $59.95 a year, then upload your resources and set your prices. Basic Sellers earn 55% of each sale minus $0.30 per resource, and Exclusive Sellers earn 77.5% but must sell eligible digital products exclusively on TPT.
Nation, an AI store builder, publishes this page. It is pre-launch, with a waitlist on withnation.ai, so it is not in the fee comparison. See where Nation fits.
How to start selling on Teachers Pay Teachers
TPT is an online marketplace where teachers and other creators sell classroom resources to teachers. Becoming a TPT seller takes five steps.
Create a Buyer account
To become a seller you must first create a free Buyer account. Every seller account starts as a Buyer account.
Choose a seller plan
Upgrade to Basic for a one-time $29, or to Exclusive for $59.95 a year. The older Premium plan was retired on October 1, 2026, so these are the two choices now.
Set up your store
Your store gets its own URL when you sign up. Add a profile image or logo, a short bio and a banner, and choose a few resources to feature at the top of the store page.
Upload and list resources
Upload the file, add a title, description, grade levels, standards and a preview, then set the price. You can edit listings, change prices and swap in revised files at any time.
Set up payouts
TPT pays sellers through Hyperwallet. Register there and add a transfer method; the options are direct deposit, PayPal, Venmo, and wire transfer, depending on your country.
Basic vs Exclusive: the two TPT seller plans
TPT charges two kinds of seller fees: a membership fee for the plan, and a transaction fee per resource sold. On top of that, TPT keeps the share of each sale price that is not your payout rate. The table shows both plans as TPT lists them.
The payout rate is applied to the sale price of each Resource at the time sold, before any Transaction Fees. If you start on Basic and upgrade later, the Basic fee cannot be applied towards an Exclusive Seller subscription.
How much you make on Teachers Pay Teachers per sale
What you keep from a sale is the payout rate times the price, minus the transaction fee. Because the Basic transaction fee is a flat $0.30 per resource, it takes a much larger share of cheap resources than of bundles.
Example: a $5 resource sold on its own. A Basic Seller earns 55% of $5, then pays $0.30 per resource. An Exclusive Seller earns 77.5% of $5. The Exclusive transaction fee of $0.15 per resource, only on orders totaling less than $3 does not apply, because this order is $5.
How much you can make in total on Teachers Pay Teachers depends on how many resources you list, their prices and how often teachers find them. TPT does not publish typical seller earnings, and this page does not estimate them.
Is the Exclusive plan worth it?
Exclusive pays a higher rate on every sale and charges a transaction fee only on small orders, so it pays for itself once the extra earnings over a year are larger than $59.95. The more you sell on TPT, the sooner you reach that point.
The cost that matters more is the condition: Exclusive Sellers agree to sell eligible digital products exclusively on TPT. If you already sell the same printables from your own website, or plan to, Basic keeps that option open. Read the exclusivity terms in your account before you upgrade, because they decide which files count as eligible.
Files, previews and thumbnails on a TPT listing
A TPT resource can be a single file, such as a PDF. If a product has several files, TPT asks you to put all of them into one folder and then compress the folder into a ZIP file. Google Apps files go in a Google Drive folder instead, and you can put a maximum of 30 files in a Google Drive folder, but the folder cannot contain any sub-folders, and must not exceed 500MB.
A paid listing has two kinds of images. Thumbnails are the small pictures that showcase the product; you can add up to four thumbnail images per product. The preview is a demo-length version of the resource that buyers can download before they decide to buy. Preview files can be .bmp, .jpeg, .jpg, .pdf, .png, .tif, .tiff. Free resources do not offer an option to upload a Preview file, because the whole file is already free.
Write the description for a teacher deciding in a minute: the grade, the skill or standard, what is in the file, how many pages, and what they need to use it, such as a printer or a Google account.
Clip art, fonts and images inside your files
TPT expects each resource to be your own work. If it contains content someone else made, you need a valid license or other authorization to use that content. TPT's help center puts it directly: make sure that you have the right to use anything you include in your resources. That covers photos, clip art, borders, fonts and other design elements. Images from a web search are not free to reuse just because they are free to view.
Clip art and fonts usually come with a licence from their maker. Before you buy, check that the licence allows commercial use in products for sale, whether it asks for credit in your terms of use page, and whether images must be flattened so buyers cannot pull them out of your file.
US copyright law protects original works of authorship. It does not protect typeface itself, but a font file still comes with the licence you agreed to. The general layout of a page or form is uncopyrightable because it is a template for expression. Blank forms that are designed for recording information and do not themselves convey information are uncopyrightable. So a plain graph-paper page has no copyright protection, while the writing, illustrations and activities you add are what copyright protects. This is general information, not legal advice.
Licences: what a buyer gets, and selling to schools
A TPT buyer does not own your resource. TPT Sellers own and maintain the intellectual property rights in their Resources, and each purchase is a licence to use the file. The standard licence is an Individual License, which may be assigned to a single specific individual user, for example one teacher, for their lifetime.
TPT's rule for sharing is that each person using a resource should have their own license. A teacher who buys for a grade team buys additional licences. The first licence is full price and each additional licence gets a discount, by default 10% off. You can change the additional licence price for each resource in Product Listings.
Schools and districts can also buy through TPT for Schools. A Classroom License is only available to TPT for Schools purchasers and can be moved from one teacher to another no more than once per calendar year.
Payouts, sales tax and tax forms
TPT issues payouts monthly, by the twenty-first day of the month following the month in which a sale was made; they usually arrive around the 10th. The payment service may charge for the transfer, and TPT deducts an amount equal to or less than the transaction fee assessed to us by the Payment Services.
For tax forms, TPT's W-9 is generated automatically from profile information U.S. Sellers provide during registration with our payout processor, Hyperwallet, so keep that profile current. TPT sends you a Form 1099-K if you are a US seller who reached more than $20,000 in sales during the 2025 reporting period, or if you met certain thresholds for your state. The IRS federal rule for platforms is over $20,000 in more than 200 transactions. With or without a form, you must report all income on your tax return.
For sales tax, TPT will calculate, collect, and remit Sales Tax on applicable orders in the jurisdictions it lists under marketplace collection laws. Ask a tax professional or your state's revenue department whether you owe sales tax anywhere else. Tax rules vary by country and by state, and this page is general information, not tax advice.
Selling the same files from your own store
You may also want to sell your files from a website of your own, where you set the terms and keep a direct line to your buyers. The Exclusive plan asks you to sell eligible digital products exclusively on TPT, and Basic has no such condition, so choose the plan with your own store in mind.
If you sell your own files elsewhere, keep the same licence wording in both places, use only clip art and fonts whose licences cover every place you sell, and keep your own copy of every file and its source.
Where Nation fits
Nation
Category: an AI store builder
Nation says one description of what you make builds the store, then agents handle orders, customers and delivery and run ads, content and social posts, with you approving the work. Because pricing is not announced yet, it is not compared with Teachers Pay Teachers on this page.
Limits today
- Status: pre-launch, with a waitlist on withnation.ai.
- Pricing and fees: not announced yet.
- Shopper marketplace: no shopper marketplace has been announced.
- Track record: no independent reviews or public stores yet.
Nation publishes this page. Nation is not compared with Teachers Pay Teachers until signup is public and pricing is published.
Describe what you makeQuestions about selling on Teachers Pay Teachers
How do I become a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers?
To become a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers, you first create a free Buyer account, then upgrade it. Basic costs $29 once and Exclusive costs $59.95 a year. After that you set up your store page, upload resources with previews, set prices and register with Hyperwallet to get paid.
What are the Teachers Pay Teachers fees?
Teachers Pay Teachers fees depend on the seller plan. Basic Sellers pay $29 once, earn 55% of each sale and pay $0.30 per resource. Exclusive Sellers pay $59.95 a year, earn 77.5% and pay $0.15 per resource, only on orders totaling less than $3. TPT keeps the rest of the sale price.
How much can you make on Teachers Pay Teachers?
How much you can make on Teachers Pay Teachers depends on your prices, how many resources you list and how often buyers find them. Per sale, you keep 55% on Basic or 77.5% on Exclusive, minus transaction fees. TPT does not publish typical seller earnings.
Do Teachers Pay Teachers sellers get a 1099-K?
Teachers Pay Teachers sends a Form 1099-K to US sellers who reached more than $20,000 in sales during the 2025 reporting period, or who met certain thresholds for your state. The form uses the W-9 built from your Hyperwallet profile. Whether or not you get one, you must report all income on your tax return. This is general information, not tax advice.
Is Teachers Pay Teachers worth it for sellers?
Whether Teachers Pay Teachers is worth it for sellers depends on how much the marketplace's buyers are worth to you against the share TPT keeps. You earn 55% of each sale on Basic, or 77.5% on Exclusive in return for selling eligible digital products only on TPT.
Can I sell my TPT resources on my own website too?
You can sell your TPT resources on your own website on the Basic plan. Exclusive Sellers agree to sell eligible digital products exclusively on TPT, so selling the same eligible digital files elsewhere breaks that condition. Check that your clip art and font licences also cover every place you sell.