While macroeconomic models highlight rapid coal phase-out as an urgent climate mitigation measure, its socio-political feasibility is unclear. The negative impacts of coal phase-out for companies, workers and coal-dependent regions, and the unequal global distribution of the coal phase-out burden has triggered resistance and calls for just transitions. Here, we construct a database of domestic and international just transition policies and partnerships that compensate affected actors of coal phase-outs. By comparing coal phase-out in countries which have compensation plans with those that don’t, we show that compensation policies are essential to realizing premature retirement of coal. The cost we estimate associated with these policies clarifies the financial cost of making coal phase-out politically feasible. We find that compensation costs are proportional to avoided emissions resulting from coal phase-out and are generally consistent with recent carbon prices. We find that the cost of implementing similar compensation policies in case of 1.5°C -consistent coal phase-out for China and India is 17 times higher than all existing compensation, and roughly comparable to global Official Development Assistance in 2021. We show that in the case of coal phase-out, political will and social acceptance have a tangible economic component which should be factored in to assessing the feasibility of achieving climate targets.