Is Steve Martin’s Masterclass Worth It? A Comprehensive Review

Last updated: October 2026. Written by Josh Hutcheson. See our review methodology.

Steve Martin’s MasterClass is a comedy class taught by one of the most successful comedians of the last half century. Is it worth the price of a MasterClass membership? We reviewed it from the full lesson plan and MasterClass’s description of each lesson, read on 13 October 2026. This review covers:

• Who Steve Martin is
• What you can expect from the class
• What it costs
• Every lesson, with running times
• Pros and cons
• Who it suits, and our verdict

Who is Steve Martin? A Brief Overview

Steve Martin is a comedian, actor, writer and musician. According to his Wikipedia profile, he first came to public notice as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which won him a Primetime Emmy in 1969, and later became one of Saturday Night Live‘s most frequent hosts. He has won five Grammy Awards, two of them for the comedy albums Let’s Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy and three for music, along with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (2005) and an Honorary Academy Award (2013).

His film work includes The Jerk, Roxanne, Father of the Bride and Bowfinger, and since 2021 he has co-created and starred in Only Murders in the Building. Several of those projects are case studies in the class, which is why it covers writing and acting as well as stand-up.

What to Expect from The Masterclass?

MasterClass describes the class like this: “In this comedy class, Steve shares insights from performing for cars and humans over a 50-year career spanning sold-out arenas and blockbuster films. Learn how to find your voice, gather material, develop an act, and take your comedy writing to the next level.” (The cars are a reference to one of his first gigs, at a drive-in, where the audience honked when they liked a joke.)

In practice the class has three parts:

• Stand-up (lessons 2 to 15): getting started, gathering material, voice and persona, jokes and bits, delivery, building an act, two student workshops, openings and closings, profanity, nerves, hecklers and bombing.
• Writing and acting (lessons 16 to 21): creating characters, story techniques, a Roxanne screenwriting case study, two editing lessons and a Meteor Shower playwriting case study.
• His career (lessons 22 to 25): his influences, his journey, final thoughts and a bonus lesson on speeches.

The tone, judging by the lesson descriptions, is practical and self-deprecating: lesson 2 opens with “No talent? No problem,” and lesson 14 admits that even Steve Martin has bad shows.

Course Pricing: Is It Affordable?

Steve Martin’s class is only available with a MasterClass membership. There are three plans:

Every plan includes every class, Martin’s included. MasterClass does not sell single classes: the class page offers the membership (“Get this class and 200+ more”), so the real question is whether you will use more than one class in a year. We read these prices from MasterClass’s checkout on 13 October 2026, when no sale was running. The 30-day money-back guarantee covers first-time purchases made on the MasterClass website; renewals and memberships bought through Apple or Google follow those stores’ rules (our cancellation and refund guide has the steps).

If you are not in a hurry, wait for a sale. MasterClass took 50% off annual memberships for Black Friday in both 2024 and 2025, and our Black Friday tracker follows this year’s offer. A gift membership works too, but it renews automatically after its first year unless the recipient turns renewal off. The full plan comparison is in our MasterClass pricing guide.

Against the cost of in-person comedy classes or a writing workshop, $120 a year is modest, especially since the same membership includes other comedy and writing classes (see the last sections of this review).

Course Details

• Lessons: 25 video lessons, 4 hours 40 minutes in total.
• Lesson length: from 3 minutes (the introduction) to 17 minutes (the first student session); most run 9 to 16 minutes.
• Workbook: MasterClass says a downloadable workbook comes with the class, with lesson recaps and supplemental materials.
• Format: Martin teaching to camera, plus two sessions with young comedians and a critique of a student’s sketch.
• Viewing: you can pause, rewatch and change playback speed, so you can work through it at your own pace.

Watch Steve Martin Teaches Comedy →

Course Structure and Content Breakdown

Here is every lesson, with its running time and what MasterClass says it covers.

Lesson titles, running times and descriptions come from the class page on masterclass.com, read on 13 October 2026. MasterClass re-edits and renames classes from time to time, so check the class page before you plan around a specific lesson.

Personal Takeaways: Key Learnings

These are the ideas the lesson plan keeps returning to, and the ones we think are most useful to an aspiring comedian.

Comedy is a craft you keep refining

Two full lessons on editing (19 and 20, almost 28 minutes together) make the point that the work happens after the first draft. Lesson 13, on growing as a performer, says the same thing about stage material: learn from mistakes, refine, and repeat.

You do not need a punchline

Lesson 6 takes apart the idea that every joke needs a punchline and goes through other joke structures. For new writers this is one of the most freeing lessons in the class.

Persona matters as much as material

Lessons 4 and 5 separate what you say (your voice) from how you say it (your persona). Martin explains how his own stage persona emerged and how to develop one, which is the part of the class most closely tied to his own act.

Bombing is part of the job

Lesson 14 covers stage fright, hecklers and bombing, and lesson 15 the wider pressures of an arts career: failure, rivalry and bad reviews. It is practical reassurance from someone who has had all three.

The workbook extends the class

The downloadable workbook recaps each lesson and adds supplemental material, which helps if you want to work through the class as a course rather than watch it once.

Pros and Cons of the Steve Martin MasterClass

Pros

• Breadth. Stand-up, characters, screenwriting, playwriting, editing and speeches in one class.
• Real workshops. Two student sessions and a sketch critique show the advice being applied.
• Depth for the price. At 4 hours 40 minutes, it is one of the longer classes in MasterClass’s catalog.
• Concrete case studies. Roxanne, Meteor Shower and his speeches are worked examples, not anecdotes.

Cons

• Built around live performance. Much of the stand-up half assumes a stage and a live audience. Creators who make short-form video will find less here about their format.
• Long stretches of career story. Lessons 22 and 23 are about his influences and his journey. They are enjoyable, but they are not instruction.
• No feedback on your own material. You watch other students being workshopped; nobody works on yours.
• Membership only. You cannot buy the class by itself.

Evaluating the Promises: Did the Class Deliver?

MasterClass promises four things: find your voice, gather material, develop an act, and take your comedy writing further. On the lesson plan, the class covers all four. Voice and persona get two lessons, material one, building an act three (crafting, openings and closings, and the two workshops), and writing six (characters, story, Roxanne, two editing lessons and Meteor Shower).

Where it delivers less is for comedians who perform mainly online. The stage-craft lessons (delivery, hecklers, openings and closings) assume a room, and the lesson plan says little about filming, editing video or building an online audience. If that is your path, take the writing lessons and treat the rest as background.

Value for Money: Is the Investment Justified?

Is a $120 membership worth it for this one class? For a committed beginner comedian or comedy writer, we think so: it is a structured, 4-hour-40-minute course from one of the best in the field, and a few in-person classes would cost more. For a casual fan who wants to watch Steve Martin talk about his career, it is harder to justify on its own.

What makes the membership easier to justify is the rest of the comedy and writing catalog. Judd Apatow Teaches Comedy (32 lessons, 6 hours 33 minutes) has two stand-up lessons and then goes deep on writing, directing and editing comedy for film and TV. Amy Poehler’s Prepare to Be Unprepared (11 lessons, 1 hour 9 minutes) is a short class on applying improv principles to everyday life, and Aaron Sorkin Teaches Screenwriting (35 lessons, 8 hours 1 minute) is the platform’s longest writing class.

Lesson titles, running times and descriptions come from the class page on masterclass.com, read on 13 October 2026. MasterClass re-edits and renames classes from time to time, so check the class page before you plan around a specific lesson.

Conclusion: Final Verdict on Steve Martin’s MasterClass

Steve Martin Teaches Comedy is a broad, well-structured class that covers the whole path from first material to a finished act, then moves into characters, screenwriting and editing. The student workshops and the case studies from his own films and play make the advice concrete. We rate it 4.0/5. It loses a point for its focus on live performance and the long career-story stretch near the end.

If you are an aspiring comedian or comedy writer and you are on the fence, it is a good reason to try MasterClass: watch the stand-up half and the editing lessons within the 30-day guarantee window, and add Judd Apatow’s class if you want more. If you only make short-form online video, start with the writing lessons and decide from there.

Watch Steve Martin Teaches Comedy →

Other MasterClass classes worth your time

Steve Martin also appears in our MasterClass acting classes guide, because his lessons on creating characters overlap with the acting classes. For writing, see our best MasterClass writing classes and our Aaron Sorkin MasterClass review; for screenwriting beyond MasterClass, our best screenwriting courses guide. For the platform as a whole, read our full MasterClass review or our worth-it analysis; for other categories, our cooking guide.

What MasterClass members say, and how to avoid the renewal surprise

The Reddit discussions of this class are old (2017, from when MasterClass still sold single classes for $90) but they agree on its shape. A member in r/Standup said it is worth it if you respect Martin’s work and want honest, no-nonsense lectures on what he learned, but that it will not make you good at open mics on its own, and that the class community added nothing. A screenwriter in r/Screenwriting found the later lessons on writing for film and editing the most valuable part, singling out the Roxanne case study (lesson 18) and Martin’s point that the idea took years and many drafts to get right. That matches our read: the stand-up half is encouragement and craft, and the writing and editing lessons are the part that carries over to other work.

MasterClass’s Trustpilot page had a TrustScore of 1.6 from 1,178 reviews when we read it on 13 October 2026. Trustpilot itself notes that MasterClass has not invited customers to review recently, so the page leans toward people with a problem. We read the 60 most recent reviews (March to September 2026). 49 gave one star, and most of those were about billing, not classes: an annual membership that renewed automatically, trouble finding where to cancel, support handled by an AI chatbot, and 50% refund offers after a renewal had gone through. Several people who received a gift membership said activating it asked for a card that would renew. The content complaints that did come up said classes felt basic or like a long TED talk. The few happy reviewers praised the instructors and the production, and the most useful advice came from one of them: pause, take notes and treat it like a class, not a show.

None of that is specific to this class, but it should change how you buy:

• It is an annual charge. The class page says “Starting at $10/month, billed annually”: the monthly figure is the yearly price divided by twelve, and the membership renews each year until you cancel the renewal.
• The refund window is 30 days. MasterClass’s FAQ says it offers a full refund within 30 days of the date you bought the subscription, and that there are no refunds for partially unused membership periods.
• Cancel the renewal early if you only want one year. MasterClass says you cancel renewal on the Settings page of your account, and the membership will then not renew. Doing it the day you join, or putting the renewal date in your calendar, avoids the most common complaint above.
• Certificates are extra. MasterClass Certificates are a separate product with their own price, not part of the membership.

Our MasterClass cancellation guide walks through the steps, including memberships bought through Apple or Google, which those stores handle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Steve Martin’s MasterClass worth it?

For aspiring comedians and comedy writers, yes. It runs 25 lessons and 4 hours 40 minutes, covering stand-up, persona, joke structure, characters, screenwriting and editing, with two student workshops. It is less useful if you only make short-form online video.

How long is Steve Martin’s MasterClass?

25 lessons and 4 hours 40 minutes, according to the class page on 13 October 2026. Lessons range from 3 to 17 minutes.

Does Steve Martin’s MasterClass cover stand-up comedy?

Yes. Lessons 2 to 15 are mainly about stand-up: material, voice, persona, jokes, delivery, building an act, openings and closings, nerves, hecklers and bombing, plus two student sessions.

Does the class cover comedy writing?

Yes. Six lessons cover characters, story techniques, a Roxanne screenwriting case study, two lessons on editing and a case study of his play Meteor Shower.

Is there a workbook?

Yes. MasterClass includes a downloadable workbook with lesson recaps and supplemental materials.

Steve Martin or Judd Apatow: which comedy MasterClass is better?

Martin’s class is broader and more focused on finding a voice and building an act, with film and playwriting case studies. Apatow’s is longer (32 lessons, 6 hours 33 minutes) and goes deeper on writing, directing and editing comedy for film and TV. Both are in the same membership.

How much does Steve Martin’s MasterClass cost?

It comes with any MasterClass membership: $120, $180 or $240 a year (checkout, 13 October 2026). MasterClass does not sell single classes, and first-time website purchases have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Does Steve Martin teach banjo in his MasterClass?

No. Steve Martin Teaches Comedy is about stand-up, comic persona, writing and editing. None of its 25 lessons covers the banjo or music.

Does MasterClass have a monthly subscription?

Not for the membership. The class page reads ‘Starting at $10/month, billed annually’: the monthly figure is the annual price divided by twelve, and you pay for the year up front.

Can I watch Steve Martin’s MasterClass for free?

Only for a short time. The class page has a free trailer, and MasterClass’s FAQ says memberships include 14-day Guest Passes that members can share with friends, so a friend who is a member can give you two weeks of access. Memberships themselves have no free trial; the 30-day money-back guarantee on first-time purchases is the closest thing. We don’t link to the unofficial uploads and downloads that show up in search results.

Does MasterClass renew automatically, and how do I cancel?

Yes. Memberships are billed annually and renew each year until you cancel the renewal, which you do on the Settings page of your MasterClass account. MasterClass offers a full refund within 30 days of purchase, but its FAQ says there are no refunds for partially unused membership periods, so cancel the renewal before the renewal date if you don’t want a second year.