Coursera Q1 2026: Platform Fee Raises Consumer Margins to a Multi-Year High, Enterprise Customers Slip

TL;DR

• Q1 2026 revenue grew 9% YoY; Consumer segment is up double digits, but Enterprise segment is lagging.
• The platform fee pushed Consumer margins to a multi-year high, but Enterprise customer count slipped for the first time since IPO.
• Enterprise grew 7% YoY, ahead of management’s low single-digit guidance, with new GM Anthony Salcito leading execution improvements.

In the last earnings report, we flagged Coursera’s struggling segments. Not much has changed, except for one thing: the platform fee is in effect.

Last year, Dhawal, our founder, wrote about how Coursera’s new platform fee was a margin expansion strategy. But its effect is seen only in the Consumer segment for now.

Did the Platform Fee Grow Margin?

Coursera started charging a 15% platform fee to partners (universities and content providers) in 2026. It doesn’t affect learner pricing, but it reduces what its partners earn. Dhawal’s calculations showed that the fee could push Coursera into profitability. We can see the early effects.

The Consumer segment saw double-digit YoY growth for the fourth consecutive quarter, but revenue was lower than in Q4 2025. Despite that, it had a 63.2% margin, the highest in recent years.

The overall revenue was $195.7M with a 57% margin, which increased slightly. In the earnings call, CEO Greg Hart mentioned the platform fee was just one of the reasons behind it. The other was more learners choosing Coursera-produced courses, which offer better margins.

The Consumer segment has more expenses, so it contributes less to the gross profit. For a higher margin, Coursera needs a growing Enterprise segment too, which is still struggling.

The Enterprise Segment and its (Potential) Fix: Udemy

Enterprise revenue was $66.2M, and for the first time since the IPO, the number of customers fell compared to the previous quarter (by just one client). Still, the segment had a ~71% margin. And that is with minimal effect of the partner fee.

To increase the margin further, Enterprise customers need to grow. Coursera hinted that Udemy could help. It has ten times the Enterprise customers that Coursera has, and it launched Altus, an agentic AI solution that can help organizations identify blind spots in skills, train teams, and measure training outcomes.

But Udemy’s Enterprise segment is struggling too. It had signed many enterprise contracts during the pandemic, and those renewals are all coming up at the same time. The company said it’s at the “tail end” of those COVID-era deals, and renewing them at the same rates has proven difficult.

The Udemy merger is expected to close in the second half of 2026, with both platforms continuing to exist independently at least until the end of the year. Until then, Coursera’s Enterprise plan rests on execution improvements led by Anthony Salcito, who joined as GM of Enterprise in October 2025.

Also, on the Q4 2025 call, management guided low single-digit Enterprise growth for 2026, so it looks like most of the platform fee results will be through the Consumer segment.

The State of the Merger

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared the Coursera-Udemy merger in February 2026. This month, there was a shareholders’ vote where 99.9% of Udemy shareholders and 99.4% of Coursera shareholders voted yes for the merger.

Coursera’s stock price at the time of the merger was ~$7.8, and it’s $6.1 now, bringing its value from $1.3B to ~$1B.

Coursera’s Q1 2026 earnings per share came in slightly lower than analysts expected, meaning the company earned a little less in profit per share than expected.

The stock is currently ~22% lower than when the merger was announced and reached its lowest this year: ~$5.2 the day after the Q1 2026 earnings result.

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