Pricing guide

What a student information system actually costs a small school in 2026

Every published price we can source, at three school sizes — and the five costs that never appear on a pricing page.

Written by the Pearspark team · pricing verified July 2026 · updated July 28, 2026 · about 9 minutes

In short

A student information system for a school under 100 students has a published list price between free and about $400 a month, but the list price is rarely the bill. Five costs sit outside it: one-time setup fees reaching $772, school minimums that make a small school pay a larger school's rate, features held one tier above the headline plan, modules like admissions and billing sold separately, and payment-processing fees on tuition.

The four pricing models, and who each one favours

Almost every system in this market prices one of four ways, and which one suits you is a fact about your school's shape rather than about the vendor's generosity. Per student, flat per student with no volume relief, scales in a straight line and punishes growth. Banded per student steps the marginal rate down as you grow, so the bill flattens. Per teacher ignores enrollment entirely and favours schools with large classes. And tiered-by-band charges every school in a band the same, which means a 12-student school and a 50-student school pay identically.

The practical consequence is that comparisons flip as a school grows. A tier that is generous at the top of its band is punitive at the bottom of it. A per-teacher price that looks cheap for a school of 100 with eight teachers looks expensive for a school of 40 with six. Price your shortlist at the size you expect in two years as well as today, because the winner often changes.

Published prices at 25, 50 and 100 students

Vendor list pricing, with the date it was last verified. Where a vendor doesn't publish, the cell says so rather than guessing.

System	25 students	50 students	100 students
PearsparkFull school system · published, banded	$62.50/mo	$125/mo	$250/mo
NavEdFull school systems	$50/mo Standard · $160 Enterprise	$112.50/mo Standard · $360 Enterprise	$237.50/mo Standard · $760 Enterprise
SchoolCuesFull school systems	From $75/mo (no per-student rate published)	From $75/mo (no per-student rate published)	From $75/mo (no per-student rate published)
QuickSchoolsFull school systems	$29.70/mo Gaia · $44.70 Apollo (30-student minimum)	$49.50/mo Gaia · $74.50 Apollo	$99/mo Gaia · $149 Apollo
SkoolyFull school systems	$49/mo	$49/mo	$49/mo
GradelinkFull school systems	$121/mo + $275 setup (≤50 tier)	$121/mo + $275 setup (≤50 tier)	$164/mo + $275 setup (51–100 tier)
FACTS SIS (formerly RenWeb)Full school systems	Quote required	Quote required	Quote required
Sycamore SchoolFull school systems	$100/mo	$200/mo	$400/mo
TeacherEaseFull school systems	≈$44–73/mo (3–5 teachers)	≈$73–117/mo (5–8 teachers)	≈$117–176/mo (8–12 teachers)
Alma SISFull school systems	Quote required	Quote required	Quote required
Google ClassroomSpecialty & single-purpose tools	Free	Free	Free
ThinkWaveFull school systems	Tiered — from ~$17/mo	Tiered by enrollment	Tiered by enrollment
Jupiter EdSpecialty & single-purpose tools	≈$42/mo ($500/yr minimum)	≈$42/mo ($500/yr minimum)	≈$58–83/mo ($7–10/student/yr)
Transparent ClassroomSpecialty & single-purpose tools	$50/mo	$100/mo	$200/mo
Spreadsheets & the DIY stackThe do-it-yourself stack	Free (+ admin hours)	Free (+ many admin hours)	Free (+ a part-time job of admin hours)

Competitor pricing read from each vendor's own published pages · last verified July 2026 · sources listed at the foot of this page.

The spread at any given size is roughly ten-fold once free options are included, which tells you these products are not substitutes for each other. Read the row alongside what the system actually does before reading it as a bargain.

The five costs that aren't in the headline price

Every one of these is published somewhere. None of them is in the number you remember from the pricing page.

One-time setup and onboarding fees. Gradelink charges $275 to set up, and its Capterra listing — where most buyers do their comparing — omits it; adding the EnrollMe online-enrollment module costs a further $497, so a school wanting online applications pays $772 before its first monthly bill.
School minimums. QuickSchools states that "a minimum charge for 30 students applies per school", so a 12-student school pays for 30. Jupiter Ed's roughly $7–10 per student per year sits behind about a $500/year school minimum. In both cases the per-student rate you were quoted is fiction below a certain size, and small schools are exactly the ones it misleads.
Features held one tier up. This is the modern version of a paid module. NavEd puts standards-based grading, SSO and API in its $8/student Enterprise tier, more than triple its entry rate; QuickSchools puts report cards, transcripts and the parent portal on its $1.49 Apollo plan rather than the $0.99 Gaia plan it is usually quoted at. Price the tier that carries what you need, not the tier in the headline.
Modules sold separately. Admissions and tuition billing are the two most commonly unbundled. Whether they are included changes the real price of a full system by more than any headline rate does, so price the modules you will actually turn on rather than the plan name.
Payment processing on tuition. If the system collects tuition, someone takes a percentage. Ask what it is, whether it is on top of the card network's own fee, and whether the money lands in the school's bank account or the vendor's first — that last one determines how long you wait for your own tuition.

Three-year total, not monthly price

Monthly price is the wrong unit for this decision, because the costs that hurt are front-loaded and the switching costs are back-loaded. A system at $121/month with a $275 setup fee costs $4,631 over three years; one at $164/month with no setup fee costs $5,904 — but if the first one's tier means you pay a 50-student rate on 20 students for the first year, that gap closes quickly.

Add the two numbers nobody quotes. The first is migration in: hours spent typing rosters, historical grades and transcripts into a new system, which is the reason schools stay on tools they dislike. The second is migration out, which is only cheap if you can export everything yourself. A vendor that will not let you export your own transcripts is charging you a switching cost it has simply not itemised.

What you are actually buying at each price

A price only means something next to what the system does. These are the same one-line summaries as on each full comparison page.

NavEd: Microschools and co-ops that only need the basics — the first five students are free on every tier, and the entry tier is genuinely cheap.
SchoolCues: Small schools that want one vendor for records, billing and heavy parent communication, and are comfortable asking for a quote rather than reading a rate off a page.
QuickSchools: Schools of 40 students and up that want a conventional SIS at the lowest published per-student rate and don't mind that report cards and the parent portal sit one tier up.
Skooly: Programs whose core need is scheduling, bookings, attendance and billing — especially enrichment, tutoring and activity-based schools that never issue a report card.
Gradelink: Private schools of 75–400 students that want a mature, widely used SIS.
FACTS SIS (formerly RenWeb): Established private schools of 200+ students with dedicated admin staff, need-assessed financial aid, and enterprise tuition finance.
Sycamore School: Independent schools of 100–400 students that want per-student pricing and integrated payments.
TeacherEase: Schools focused on standards-based grading with a handful of teachers, especially where per-teacher pricing beats per-student.
Alma SIS: Independent and charter schools of 150+ students that want a modern SIS and don't mind quote-based buying.
Google Classroom: Distributing and collecting classwork, especially if your school already lives in Google Workspace.
ThinkWave: Schools on the tightest budgets that mainly need academics: gradebook, report cards, transcripts.
Jupiter Ed: Schools that want a powerful teacher gradebook with LMS features and don't need operations modules.
Transparent Classroom: Montessori programs whose core need is tracking lessons presented and mastered, Montessori-style.
Spreadsheets & the DIY stack: Brand-new schools of a handful of students, in the semester before the admin work compounds.

What to ask on the demo call

Six questions, all of which have a number as the answer. Ask for the number.

What is the one-time cost to get started, including setup, onboarding, training and data import?
Is there a school minimum or a floor price, and what does my school actually pay at my actual enrollment?
Which of admissions, tuition billing, standards-based grading and messaging cost extra, and how much?
What happens to the price when enrollment grows by 30 students — does the rate step down, stay flat, or jump a tier?
Can I export rosters, grades, attendance and transcripts myself, without a support ticket, in a format another system can read?
If the school closes, who holds the permanent student records, and how does a family retrieve a transcript in five years?

What's inside Pearspark's price

Pearspark charges $50/month including 20 students, then a per-student rate that steps down with volume, with no setup fee and no paid modules. These are the parts that most often cost extra elsewhere.

Admissions & enrollment Tuition & billing Standards-based grading & mastery Records, roles & compliance

The billing side, in sixty seconds each

Create a tuition plan and add studentsAdmins

Bill tuition weekly, fortnightly, quarterly, or half-yearlyAdmins

Export invoices and payments for your bookkeeperAdmins

Common questions

What is a typical price for a small-school SIS?

For a school under 100 students, published prices in this guide run from free to about $400/month, with most full systems between $50 and $250 and the cheapest paid options — Skooly at $49 flat and QuickSchools at $0.99–1.49 per student — well below that. Several established vendors, including FACTS and Alma, do not publish pricing and quote per school, so no honest typical figure covers the whole market. Add one-time setup fees, which reach $772 at Gradelink with online enrollment, and minimums such as QuickSchools' 30-student floor.

Why do some vendors not publish pricing?

Usually because the price varies by which modules a school licenses and by contract length, and sometimes because it varies by what the school will pay. It is not automatically a bad sign — enterprise-shaped products are genuinely hard to list-price — but it does mean you cannot compare without a sales call, and it makes the total unpredictable when enrollment changes. If predictability matters more to you than fit, that alone narrows the field.

Is per-student or per-teacher pricing better for a small school?

It depends on your ratio. Per-teacher pricing favours schools with a small number of teachers and large classes; per-student pricing favours schools with many teachers and few students, which describes a lot of microschools. A 100-student school with eight teachers pays roughly $117–176/month on TeacherEase against $250 on Pearspark. Reverse the shape — 40 students and six teachers — and the comparison reverses with it.

Do setup fees actually matter if we plan to stay for years?

Less than they feel like they do, but they matter more than a monthly difference of $10–20 in year one, which is exactly when a new school's cash is tightest. A $772 one-time cost is more than six months of a $121/month plan. The stronger argument against setup fees is what they signal: a product that needs paid implementation is usually one you cannot set up in an afternoon.

What does Pearspark cost?

$50 per month including the first 20 students, then a marginal per-student rate that steps down with volume: $2.50 each to 100 students, $2.00 to 300, $1.50 to 600, and $1.00 beyond. That works out to $62.50/month at 25 students, $125 at 50, and $250 at 100. There is no setup fee, no per-module charge, and no minimum term. As this guide's own table shows, that is not the cheapest option at any of those sizes.

Sources

Vendor pricing is read from each vendor's own published pages and re-verified quarterly; last checked July 2026. Where a vendor doesn't publish a price, this guide says so rather than estimating one.

The full comparison behind each row

Each one is sourced feature by feature, last reviewed July 2026, and says plainly where the other system is the better choice.

Pearspark vs Gradelink Pearspark vs QuickSchools Pearspark vs NavEd Pearspark vs TeacherEase Pearspark vs Jupiter Pearspark vs SchoolCues All 14 comparisons

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What Pearspark does, in detail

Tuition & billing Admissions & enrollment Records, roles & compliance Gradebook, report cards & transcripts