Kajabi Stripe integration: the extra fee for connecting your own Stripe account
Last updated: September 23, 2026
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Kajabi. If you sign up through one of them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what you pay, and it does not change the arithmetic on this page. Every review states how close we got to the product. Learn more.
How well we know this tool: Free trial — 14-day trial, August 2026. We signed in and opened the payment setup, which is where we saw the country restriction below. We did not complete payment setup, connect a provider or take a payment, so every fee figure here is arithmetic on Kajabi's published pricing page rather than something observed on an invoice. What this means.
You already have a Stripe account, so bringing it to a course platform looks like the neutral choice — same payouts, same customer records, same dashboard. On Kajabi it is not neutral. Every Kajabi plan adds a percentage of your sales when you route them through your own provider in a country where Kajabi Payments is available, and on Basic that percentage is 2%. Here is what it costs in dollars, and the arithmetic behind every figure.
The short answer
| Plan | Costs you at $5,000/mo | Per year | Own-payments fee | Plan cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi Basic | $100 | $1,200 | 2% | $143 /mo |
| Kajabi Growth | $50 | $600 | 1% | $199 /mo |
| Kajabi Pro | $25 | $300 | 0.5% | $399 /mo |
The fee is charged on revenue, not on profit, and it has no cap in the published pricing. It does not get smaller in a slow month relative to what you sold — the only thing that shrinks it is moving up a plan, which is the part most people get backwards.
This is not a Kajabi-only practice, and Kajabi is not the expensive one. Thinkific charges a “third-party payment gateway fee” for the same decision: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow. On the entry plan that is 5% against Kajabi Basic's 2%.
Both fees are limited by region, and only one is capped. Thinkific charges it only to creators in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the EU, and only on the first $1,000,000 of sales in a calendar year — after that it is waived. Kajabi charges its surcharge only in the 25 countries where Kajabi Payments is available, publishes no cap, and exempts PayPal on every plan. Staying on the platform's own payments avoids both. The region point is the section below, and it is the one we got wrong the first time.
For Teachable and Podia we have nothing recorded either way. That is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence: we have not opened their payment settings yet.
The formula
Nothing on this page is a lookup. Every figure comes out of two lines of arithmetic:
monthly cost = plan + revenue × (own-payments fee + card rate) + sales × $0.30
own-payments surcharge = revenue × own-payments fee
The second line is the whole subject of this article. No threshold, no cap, no per-sale component, so it scales exactly with what you sell: on Basic, every $1,000 of revenue costs $20, whether that is your first thousand or your twentieth.
What it costs at each revenue level
Annual billing, $200 average sale. The only thing that changes between the two "keep" columns is the own-payments fee:
| Plan | Revenue | Extra cost | Per year | Keep — Kajabi Payments | Keep — your own provider |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi Basic | $2,000 (10 sales) | $40 | $480 | $1,796 89.8% | $1,756 87.8% |
| Kajabi Basic | $5,000 (25 sales) | $100 | $1,200 | $4,705 94.1% | $4,605 92.1% |
| Kajabi Basic | $10,000 (50 sales) | $200 | $2,400 | $9,552 95.5% | $9,352 93.5% |
| Kajabi Growth | $2,000 (10 sales) | $20 | $240 | $1,742 87.1% | $1,722 86.1% |
| Kajabi Growth | $5,000 (25 sales) | $50 | $600 | $4,654 93.1% | $4,604 92.1% |
| Kajabi Growth | $10,000 (50 sales) | $100 | $1,200 | $9,506 95.1% | $9,406 94.1% |
| Kajabi Pro | $2,000 (10 sales) | $10 | $120 | $1,544 77.2% | $1,534 76.7% |
| Kajabi Pro | $5,000 (25 sales) | $25 | $300 | $4,459 89.2% | $4,434 88.7% |
| Kajabi Pro | $10,000 (50 sales) | $50 | $600 | $9,316 93.2% | $9,266 92.7% |
Read the Basic rows first, because that is the plan most people start on. At $5,000 a month, keeping your own payment provider moves you from 94.1% of revenue down to 92.1% — $100 a month, $1,200 a year, for a payment preference.
Outside 25 countries, the surcharge does not apply
Correction, September 13, 2026. This section used to say that outside the supported countries the 2% could not be escaped, because a third-party provider is the only option there. That was our inference, not Kajabi's statement, and Kajabi's pricing-update page contradicts it. The paragraphs below replace it.
Kajabi Payments can only be set up by businesses based in United States, Canada, Australia, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom, plus 20 European countries. Sign up from anywhere else and the payment setup will not offer it — the in-product help says to connect a third-party provider instead. On the pricing page alone that looks like a seller who must pay the surcharge on everything. Kajabi says otherwise:
If Kajabi Payments is not available in your region, you will not be charged a 3rd party payment provider fee.
The same page defines the scope in one sentence:
the 3rd party payment provider fee applies to all transactions processed through a 3rd party payment provider (like Stripe) in regions where Kajabi Payments is also available. It does not apply to transactions processed with Kajabi Payments or PayPal in any region, or a 3rd party payment provider in regions where Kajabi Payments is not available.
So every figure on this page is for a seller inside the supported list who chooses their own provider over Kajabi Payments. Outside the list, the "Keep — Kajabi Payments" column is the one that applies to you, even though you cannot use Kajabi Payments, because there is no surcharge to subtract. On either side of the line, PayPal is exempt — the pricing page's footnote reads “*Excludes PayPal & Kajabi Payments. Subject to additional fees from selected payment provider.” What you lose outside the list is Kajabi Payments itself, and that is on the country page.
The penalty shrinks as the plan gets more expensive
The three rates are not proportional to the plan prices. Basic costs $143 a month and charges 2%. Pro costs 2.8× as much and charges 0.5% — 4× less. So the surcharge inverts the usual advice about entry plans.
You can see the inversion in the upgrade maths. If you use Kajabi Payments, moving from Basic to Growth does not pay for itself on fees until about $56,000 a month, because all you gain is a card rate of 2.9% dropping to 2.8%. If you use your own payment provider, the same upgrade pays for itself at about $5,091 a month — roughly 11 times sooner. Pro overtakes Basic on the same basis at about $15,059 a month.
That is the practical finding. If you are committed to your own payment processor, Basic stops being the cheap Kajabi plan almost as soon as you are selling anything, and the decision that matters is which Kajabi plan you sit on rather than whether to swallow the fee.
When the surcharge costs more than the software
| Plan | Surcharge passes the plan fee above | Own-payments fee | Plan cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi Basic | $7,150 a month | 2% | $143 /mo |
| Kajabi Growth | $19,900 a month | 1% | $199 /mo |
| Kajabi Pro | $79,800 a month | 0.5% | $399 /mo |
On Basic, that point arrives at $7,150 a month in sales — 36 sales at $200 each. Above it you are paying Kajabi more for the payment routing than for the software you came for.
What this comparison holds constant
- Annual billing. The billing period changes the plan line and nothing else. The surcharge is revenue × rate, so switching to monthly does not change it by a cent.
- An average sale of $200, so $2,000 is 10 sales and $10,000 is 50. Card processing carries a flat $0.30 per sale on top of the percentage, so the number of sales changes the answer and not just the revenue.
- The card rate Kajabi publishes for each plan — 2.9%, 2.8% and 2.7% — is held in place in both columns, so the only thing moving is the surcharge. This is the assumption most likely to understate the cost: those rates are what Kajabi publishes against its own payments product, and your own provider bills you at its own rate. The spread across Kajabi's own three plans is 0.2%, or $10 a month at $5,000. Set that beside the surcharge on Pro, $25, before you treat the Pro row as precise.
Who this is not for
- Anyone not shortlisting Kajabi. This is a fee in Kajabi's pricing, and Thinkific charges one like it. If you are choosing between platforms rather than between payment routes, the arithmetic you want is in what each platform actually leaves you.
- Anyone happy to use Kajabi Payments. Then the surcharge is zero, every "Kajabi Payments" column above applies to you, and this page costs you nothing to skip.
- Anyone who needs their own processor for a reason this page cannot price. Subscriptions already running in an account you cannot migrate, bookkeeping wired to that account, a payment method your buyers expect — none of that is priced here. If that is you, the figure above is not an argument, it is a price tag: $100 a month on Basic at $5,000. Decide whether the reason is worth it.
- Anyone near $2,000 a month who has not chosen a platform yet. At that revenue the surcharge on Basic is $40 a month, while the gap between Kajabi Basic and Thinkific Basic — the plan that keeps the most in our data set at that level — is $103. Put both numbers next to each other before you fix either one.
What this page cannot tell you
This is arithmetic on published pricing. No payment provider has been connected to a Kajabi site for this article, and the box at the top says so. Not covered:
- Whether Kajabi Payments is offered, or offers what you need, in the country you sell from
- What your own provider actually charges you, which replaces the card rate held constant above
- Payment routes other than the two compared here
- Whether the plan you are already on is part of the line-up Kajabi publishes today — every figure above prices the current published plans
- Refunds, chargebacks, affiliate payouts and international card surcharges
- Whether the features on the higher plans are worth their price — this prices fees only
A surcharge is not automatically a reason to walk away. It is a reason to know the number before you agree to it, and to notice that on Kajabi the number depends on a plan choice you may have made for unrelated reasons.
Check it yourself
Kajabi publishes all of this: https://kajabi.com/pricing. The surcharge is in the fee comparison table further down that page, not in the headline plan prices, which is why it is easy to miss when you are comparing monthly costs. Rates on this page were read from that page on September 23, 2026.
What each Kajabi plan costs before any surcharge, and the other cases in which Kajabi does or does not add to your sales, are on Kajabi pricing.
To put your own revenue and sales count through the same formula, our course platform fee calculator has a checkbox for using your own payment provider, and shows every plan in the data set side by side.
If you are going to sign up anyway
This is our affiliate link: start a Kajabi trial. If you subscribe through it, Kajabi pays us a percentage. It costs you nothing extra and it does not change a single number on this page — the arithmetic above came from Kajabi's published rates and was written before we joined their partner program.
We would rather you read the section on supported regions first. If you are outside the 25 countries where Kajabi Payments is available, the surcharge does not apply to you, but Kajabi Payments is not available either, and that may matter more than the fee. We are paid the same whether you read that part or skip it, so we put it above this link rather than below it.
Prices checked September 23, 2026 against the vendor's public pricing page. If a number here is out of date, tell us at hello@feesandfigures.com and we will fix it and note the change at the top of this article.