The Skool Games cost $0 to enter.
So why is everyone asking if they're worth it?
Because the entry fee was never the cost. The cost is 90 days of your focus, pointed at someone else's scoreboard.
I've paid for the expensive version of this question before. I spent $13,000 on a mastermind while making $15K to $20K a month. Six months later I was at $75K a month. So I'm not against competition or paying to be around people ahead of you. I'm against playing games that don't move your actual business.
So here's the breakdown I wish existed: the mechanics, the prizes, and who should actually play.
What the Skool Games actually are
The Skool Games are a growth competition built into Skool, the community platform founded by Sam Ovens with Alex Hormozi as partner and co-owner.
The pitch is simple:
→ You run a paid community on Skool.
→ You grow it during the competition window.
→ The fastest growers rank on a public leaderboard and win prizes, including time with Hormozi himself.
There's no separate entry fee and no application. If you run a paid Skool community, you're already in the game.
What you do need is a Skool subscription. Skool costs $9/month on the Hobby plan (with a 10% transaction fee on your sales) or $99/month on Pro (2.9% fee). I broke the full pricing math down in my Skool review, but short version: the Games themselves are free, the platform isn't.
The format has changed over time. The Games started as monthly 30-day sprints. They've since shifted toward longer 90-day cycles, and review sites tracking the program report a revamped leaderboard in mid-2026 built entirely around monthly recurring revenue growth.
That change matters more than it sounds.
How the leaderboard actually works
This is the part most people skip, and it's the part that decides whether the Games are worth your time.
You don't rank on members. You don't rank on engagement. You rank on net new MRR added to your community during the window.
Three mechanics shape everything:
- New-member revenue counts, capped at $100/month per member. Someone paying you $500/month only counts as $100 on the board. Annual plans get divided by 12. This kills the old trick of selling one whale and jumping 50 spots.
- Cancellations subtract. If you sign 40 members and 25 churn out, the board sees the net. This is why the shift to 90-day cycles happened: 30 days rewarded launch spikes, 90 days punishes churn.
- The leaderboard is public inside Skool. Everyone in the Games can see where you rank, in real time.
Read those three rules again and you'll notice something. Skool built a scoreboard that rewards exactly one thing: adding lots of members at modest price points who actually stick around.
That's not an accident. That's Skool's own growth model, gamified. Every person competing is recruiting paying members onto Skool's platform, where Skool takes its subscription fee and transaction cut. It might be the smartest customer acquisition engine I've seen a SaaS company build.
I say that with respect. But you should know whose flywheel you're spinning.
What you can win
The prizes are real, and the top of the mountain is attractive:
- Cash for top finishers. Review sites tracking past rounds report first place paying out $30,000+, with combined prize money in a single round exceeding $66,000.
- A trip to meet Hormozi and Ovens in person. Top performers get flown out for a day of strategy and a mastermind session with Alex Hormozi.
- The Wins library. Every round, winners break down exactly how they grew, on video, inside Skool. This might be the most underrated prize, because everyone gets it, not just the top 10.
One caveat: prize structures have shifted between rounds (cash amounts, how many winners get the trip, categories). Skool doesn't publish a permanent prize page, so treat specific numbers as what past rounds paid, not a guarantee.
Now the uncomfortable math.
Thousands of paid communities compete in each round. The winners are usually people with existing audiences: YouTubers, coaches with email lists, creators who can point demand at a $49/month community and add hundreds of members in a quarter.
If you're starting from zero audience, you are not winning a trip to see Hormozi. You're competing against people with 500K subscribers for a scoreboard position. Be honest with yourself about that before you commit a quarter to it.
The real cost of playing
Three costs nobody puts in the promo videos.
1. The opportunity cost of 90 days.
A quarter is a long time. It's a full product launch. It's 12 weeks of content that could rank on Google for years. If community revenue isn't your main business, pointing a quarter of focus at the Games means your actual product sits still.
2. The incentive to sell hard and retain badly.
Critics of the earlier format called it a pump-and-dump dynamic: push hard for 30 days, sell aggressively, and worry about retention never. The 90-day format with churn subtraction fixed a lot of this. But the core incentive stands: the board rewards selling memberships, not necessarily building something people need for years.
3. The quality of what's around you.
The leaderboards mix strong operators with hustle-culture communities selling, as one reviewer put it, watered-down life advice. Some corners get close to MLM energy. The Games filter for growth, not quality. Those are not the same thing.
None of this makes the Games a scam. They're not. The mechanics are transparent and entry is free. But "not a scam" and "worth your quarter" are different bars.
Who should actually play
The Skool Games are worth it if community revenue IS your business model.
You're a good fit if:
- You sell coaching, courses, or a paid community as your core offer
- You already have some audience (even 2,000 engaged followers changes everything)
- You need a forcing function. A public leaderboard and a 90-day deadline will absolutely make you ship
- You want the Wins library. Watching someone break down exactly how they added $8K MRR in a quarter is a free education in community growth
For this founder profile, I'd call the Games clearly worth it. Free entry, real accountability, proven playbooks, and a shot (however small) at a Hormozi mastermind. The downside is basically zero.
Who should skip them
Skip the Games if you're a SaaS founder whose product isn't community. Your MRR lives in your product. A Skool leaderboard measuring community MRR is the wrong scoreboard for your business, and winning it can still mean losing your quarter.
Skip them if you're a true beginner with no offer and no audience. The Games measure growth, they don't create it. You'll rank near the bottom, feel behind, and learn less than you would from just talking to customers.
And skip them if public competition wrecks your head. Watching yourself sit at #847 for 90 days is motivating for some people and corrosive for others. Know which one you are.
That first group is most of the people reading this blog. So let me say it directly: if you're building a SaaS toward $100K MRR, the Skool Games are a spectator sport. Steal the growth tactics from the Wins library. Don't enter your quarter into someone else's tournament.
What I'd do instead (if you want the pressure without the circus)
What makes the Games work isn't Hormozi. It's the mechanism:
→ Public numbers.
→ A deadline.
→ Peers who see your scoreboard.
You can get that mechanism without pointing your business at Skool's flywheel.
That's exactly why I built Profitable Founder Club. It's a mastermind at scale for bootstrapped SaaS founders: batches of 7 to 10 founders at your stage, one call a week for 12 weeks, a monthly live Q&A with Florian, and a Discord. $97 a year, price locked, and you need paying customers to join. Same accountability, but the scoreboard is your MRR, not a leaderboard that helps a platform recruit.
Full disclosure: this one's mine. But I built it because I'd already paid $13K to learn that proximity to slightly-ahead founders is the highest-return money I ever spent. If you want the deeper math on what peer groups cost and return, I ran the numbers in how much a mastermind costs.
The bottom line
Are the Skool Games worth it?
→ If community is your product: yes. Free entry, real prizes, real accountability, and a library of proven growth breakdowns. Play.
→ If you have no audience and no offer: not yet. Build one thing people pay for first.
→ If you're a SaaS founder: no. Watch, take notes, steal tactics. Your MRR is the only leaderboard that pays you.
The Games are a clever machine. Just make sure that when you spin a flywheel for 90 days, it's yours.
FAQ
How much do the Skool Games cost to enter?
Nothing. There's no entry fee and no application. You need a paid Skool subscription to run a community ($9/month Hobby or $99/month Pro), and any paid community on the platform is automatically in the competition. The real cost is the focus you'll spend competing.
How are Skool Games winners decided?
By net new monthly recurring revenue added to your community during the competition window. New-member MRR is capped at $100/month per member, annual plans count divided by 12, and cancellations subtract from your total. The highest net MRR growth ranks first on a public leaderboard inside Skool.
Can you win the Skool Games with a free community?
No. Free communities don't generate MRR, so they don't move the leaderboard. You need a paid membership tier for your growth to count. Plenty of people run free Skool communities as a funnel, but only the paid layer competes.
Are the Skool Games legit or a scam?
They're legit. The rules are transparent, entry is free, and past rounds have paid out real cash (review sites report $30,000+ for first place) plus in-person mastermind days with Alex Hormozi. The fair criticism isn't fraud, it's incentives: the format can reward aggressive short-term selling, and the leaderboard mixes strong operators with low-quality hustle communities.
