Kajabi vs Teachable vs Thinkific: what you actually keep

Last updated: October 1, 2026

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Kajabi, Thinkific and Teachable. 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: Not hands-on — published pricing only — every figure here is computed from the published pricing pages, and the Kajabi vs Teachable section also quotes both vendors' help pages. We opened trial accounts on Kajabi and Thinkific in August 2026, but no product testing went into this page, and we have never held a Teachable account. What this means.

Update, October 1, 2026. Added the Kajabi vs Teachable section below the short answer, a line under the introduction pointing to it, and a Kajabi vs Teachable sentence in the short answer; the page description now leads with that comparison. The section uses the same assumptions as the tables further down, and no figure in those tables changed. The notes on international card fees and tax at the end of the article now point to it.

Update, October 1, 2026. The short answer said Teachable Starter's transaction fee costs more than a plan upgrade "the moment you are selling anything at all". That was wrong: below about $533 a month in sales, Starter costs less than Builder, as the crossover table further down shows. The sentence now gives that figure.

Correction, September 23, 2026. Until this date the list of assumptions said that using your own Stripe account instead of the platform's payments matters for Kajabi and nobody else. It also matters for Thinkific, as the section on that surcharge further down already said. The line has been fixed. None of the figures in the tables changed.

Every one of these platforms publishes a monthly price, and not one of them tells you what is left after the transaction fee and the card processing fee come out. So we worked it out for all 11 plans at three revenue levels. The plan with the lowest sticker price finishes last at $10,000 a month.

Only want Kajabi vs Teachable? Go to the head-to-head.

The short answer

On published pricing, Thinkific Basic keeps more of your money than anything else here at all three revenue levels — 95.0% at $2,000 a month, rising to 96.5% at $10,000. It wins for a dull reason: it is cheap and it takes no cut of your sales.

The more useful finding is the other end of the table. Teachable Starter has the lowest sticker price of any plan here at $29 a month, and at $10,000 a month it leaves you less than every other option — $8,916, against $9,655 for the best. Its 7.5% transaction fee costs more than the upgrade to Teachable Builder once you sell more than about $533 a month.

Kajabi vs Teachable: on the same assumptions, Teachable Builder leaves you $74 a month more than Kajabi Basic on annual billing, at every revenue level, because on the fees we can price the two take the same from each sale and differ only in plan price. Teachable Growth and Kajabi Basic are within $10 a month of each other, so between those two the fees settle nothing and the features, payments and tax do. The head-to-head has the numbers and the quotes.

Kajabi vs Teachable, head to head

This section also has its own page, with monthly billing, the two Growth plans set against each other, and the trial, refund and own-Stripe terms: Kajabi vs Teachable pricing, plan by plan.

The 6 plans from the two platforms, on the same assumptions as the rest of this page: annual billing, each platform's own payments, an average sale of $200, and the U.S. card rates on each pricing page. They are sorted by annual price, so plans at similar prices sit next to each other.

Under each plan: its price per month on annual billing, and the platform's own cut of each sale on its own payments. Card processing is in the "Keep" figures. Highlighted rows lead at one of the three levels among these 6 plans.

Where the fee arithmetic flips, and where it cannot

Each platform's monthly cost is a plan price plus a rate times your revenue, so for any pair there is either one revenue level where the lines cross, or none at all.

Annual billing. "Kajabi ahead above" is the monthly revenue above which the Kajabi plan leaves you more; "Price gap" is how much more the Kajabi plan costs per month. The crossover is the price gap divided by the difference in what each plan takes per dollar of sales.

Kajabi Basic and Teachable Builder take the same from each sale in these tables: 0% from the platform, and 2.9% plus $0.30 in card processing, which is the rate Kajabi's pricing page shows for U.S.-based creators and the rate Teachable's shows for U.S. card sales. So on the fees we can price the difference is the plan price and nothing else: $74 a month on annual billing ($888 a year), or $90 a month on monthly billing ($1,080 a year), at every revenue level. The fees we can price cannot close it, because they do not differ; Teachable's tax and recurring-payment bundle fees, whose amounts we have not read, are not in them. The 0% on Builder carries a condition in Teachable's own words, from its “Teachable Pay” help page, dated June 23, 2026: “Builder, Growth, Advanced, Business plans: 0% transaction fee for Teachable Payments.”

Kajabi Basic and Teachable Growth are the close call. On the fees we can price they take the same from each sale too, so again only the price differs. On annual billing Teachable Growth is $4 a month cheaper; on monthly billing Kajabi Basic is $10 a month cheaper. Which one is cheaper depends on how you pay. A gap that size will not decide it. What each plan includes, and how each handles payments and tax, will; both are below.

Teachable Starter against Kajabi Basic is the pair where the lines do cross. Starter is $114 a month cheaper on annual billing but takes 7.5% of each sale, so Kajabi Basic leaves you more above ($143 − $29) ÷ 7.5% = $1,520 a month in revenue, or $1,867 a month on monthly billing. Teachable's own Builder overtakes Starter sooner; that crossover is worked out on Teachable pricing and the 7.5% fee.

At the top end, on Kajabi Payments, Kajabi's higher plans lower the card rate (2.9% on Basic, 2.8% on Growth and 2.7% on Pro, on Kajabi's U.S. rates) and nothing else about what comes off a sale in our tables. (On your own Stripe, the surcharge also changes by plan; see below.) For Kajabi Pro to overtake Teachable Builder, a 0.2% lower rate has to cover a $330 a month price gap: that takes $165,000 a month in sales, or $1,980,000 a year. For Kajabi Growth it is $130,000 a month. So a move up Kajabi's plans against Teachable is paid for by features, not by fees, at any revenue these tables cover. Kajabi's UK, Europe, Canada and Australia fee pages give base rates by type of card, not a rate per plan; what they say about plan discounts is quoted below.

What each plan includes

Kajabi Basic against the two Teachable plans nearest its price, from each pricing page's own table. The two tables do not list the same features, so this is the rows that line up, not a full comparison.

Kajabi's “Marketing Emails” row and Basic's contact limit were checked by a person on September 14, 2026; its products and admin users were read by machine on September 14, 2026 and not checked by a person; its community, affiliate, domain and branding rows were read by machine on September 27, 2026 and not yet checked by a person. “No row” means Kajabi's table has no row for certificates, which is not the same as Kajabi not offering them. Teachable's rows were read by machine on October 1, 2026 and not yet checked by a person. Our data holds no contact limit for Teachable's “Built-in email marketing”.

Teachable's products row carries this note: “1 product = 1 course, coaching offering, or digital download — regardless of how many videos, modules, or lessons it contains.” Kajabi's table gives no definition we hold, so the two product counts may not count the same thing. On the rows that line up, Teachable Growth lists more products and admin users than Kajabi Basic, and has the affiliate program and branding removal that Basic does not. Kajabi Basic lists unlimited marketing emails to 2,500 contacts. Kajabi Growth, the next Kajabi plan, lists 25,000 contacts and 50 products, and its table marks these for Growth and not Basic: Cohorts Courses, Affiliate Programs, Advanced Automations, Webhooks, Comment-to-DM and Remove Kajabi Branding. It is $199 a month billed annually. Kajabi's pricing FAQ makes its own case for the price:

Isn't Kajabi expensive for a course platform? If you are just looking at a course delivery platform, yes. But, Kajabi is also the email tool, the website, the community and the checkout, and it takes no cut of your sales. Price the pieces à la carte and Kajabi is the cheaper way to run the whole business from a few thousand contacts up.

Whether the bundled email is worth it depends on your list size; the nearest page we have for that is Kajabi's bundled email vs Thinkific + Kit, which compares Kajabi with Thinkific plus a separate email tool, not with Teachable.

Payments and tax: where the two differ most

Both platforms tie their tax features to their own payment system, and they do not do the same thing with the tax once it is collected.

Kajabi. Its sales tax feature, Kajabi Sales Tax, needs Kajabi Payments on the offer: “Kajabi Payments must be selected as a payment option in the offer for you to collect sales tax. Sales tax can be enabled for any Offer you choose.” What it does with the tax, from the same help page:

Kajabi Sales Tax also makes it easy for you to file and remit any sales tax you collect with detailed sales tax reporting. It does not file or remit sales taxes on your behalf. You are responsible for filing and remitting any sales tax that you collect.

What it does do: “Kajabi partnered with Quaderno (one of the world’s leading sales tax compliance platforms) to enable at-checkout calculation and collection of sales tax factoring in the tax jurisdictions you set up, the product or service (i.e., offer) being sold, and your customer’s location.” And it is charged for: “With Kajabi Sales Tax, you only pay for what you use. The fee is charged per successful transaction and will only apply to transactions for Offers that have Kajabi Sales Tax enabled.” So on Kajabi Payments, Kajabi can calculate and collect the tax at checkout, and filing and paying it stays with you.

Teachable. Its tax help, for Teachable Payments:

On Teachable Payments, Teachable automatically calculates, collects, and remits tax on product sales in multiple markets — covering US sales tax, EU and UK VAT, and digital content taxes across 20+ additional markets worldwide. Teachable only collects and remits taxes in jurisdictions where local laws legally require the platform to do so.

And: “You never need to remit collected tax yourself — Teachable handles this entirely on your behalf when taxes are collected from the buyer.” That is for Teachable Payments only. For the other route, Custom Payment Gateway (CPG), where you connect your own Stripe account: “For Custom Payment Gateway schools, creators are solely responsible for collecting and remitting tax to the relevant authorities.” On Teachable Payments the tax handling is not free either. Teachable's setup help describes the default bundle, Standard, as: “Default for all Teachable Payments schools. Includes core payment processing with additional fees for tax handling and recurring transactions.” and the other, Go Global (+2.8%), as: “Everything in Standard, plus automated author/affiliate payouts, 35+ local payment methods, and Adaptive Pricing. Tax handling and recurring transaction fees waived.” The amounts are on a page titled “Understand your transaction fees and bundles”, which we have not read, so they are not in any table here.

Put side by side, in each vendor's own terms: on Kajabi Payments, with Kajabi Sales Tax enabled on the offer (charged per transaction), Kajabi calculates and collects and you file and remit; on Teachable Payments, Teachable calculates, collects and remits, in the places where the law requires the platform to. Without Kajabi Payments on an offer, Kajabi Sales Tax does not collect on it, by the condition quoted above; off Teachable Payments, Teachable says the tax is the creator's. (Kajabi's page was read by machine on September 27, 2026 and not yet checked by a person; Teachable's was read by machine on October 1, 2026 and not yet checked by a person.)

Where each payment system is available. Kajabi's two help pages on where Kajabi Payments is available, the overview and the page for Europe, list 25 countries between them. Teachable: “Teachable Payments is currently available to creators based in the following 41 countries. If your country is not listed, you'll be routed to CPG onboarding automatically.” Every country on Kajabi's list is on Teachable's. Teachable's list also has Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Hungary, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland. The United Kingdom and Australia are on both. Teachable's list is from its help page on setting up Teachable Payments, marked “Updated over 3 weeks ago” when we read it on October 1, 2026. A differently named help page, “Teachable Pay”, dated June 23, 2026, gives a different list, and we cannot tell you which one describes today.

Card rates are not the same outside the U.S. Every figure in the tables above uses U.S. rates. Kajabi says of the rates on its pricing page: “The rates shown on our pricing page are for U.S. based Heroes only. Kajabi Payments fees vary by country.” Its UK page gives 1.5% + £0.20 GBP for standard cards, 1.9% + £0.20 GBP for premium, 2.5% + £0.20 GBP for EEA cards and 3.25% + £0.20 GBP for international ones. Its Australia page gives 1.70% + $0.30 AUD domestic and 3.5% + $0.30 AUD international, marks the domestic rate “Lower pricing from 1 Oct 2026” and the international one “Lower pricing from 1 Apr 2027”, and does not say on that page whether the figures are before or after those changes; it links to an update page we have not read. On plans, the UK, Europe and Australia pages say: “You may qualify for discounted card rates based on your plan. To check, go to Account Settings > Billing for details of your current plan.” Teachable's pricing page gives two card rates: U.S credit & debit card sales, 2.9% + 30¢, and International credit & debit card sales, 3.9% + 30¢. Its “Teachable Pay” help page, dated June 23, 2026, says the rates are “Same across all plan levels; varying by payment method and student location”. We have no Teachable rate specific to the UK or Australia. (Kajabi's country pages were read by machine on September 27, 2026 and not yet checked by a person; Teachable's rates were read by machine on October 1, 2026 and not yet checked by a person.)

The free trial

Kajabi: “Kajabi offers a maximum free trial period of 14 days, and extensions are not available once this period ends.” “When you sign up for a free trial on Kajabi, a $149 authorization hold is placed on your card to validate your payment method. This hold confirms that the card works as expected and helps prevent fraudulent payment methods from being used.” “This is not a charge; the hold will be immediately reversed when the validation on the card succeeds.” Its pricing FAQ adds: “Yes. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel whenever you like, and every plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee.” (Kajabi's trial help was read by machine on September 27, 2026 and not yet checked by a person.)

Teachable: each plan card says “7-day free trial. 30-day guarantee.” The pricing FAQ, asked “Is there a free plan?”, answers: “Teachable is a paid service that includes a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. That means you can explore Teachable at no cost before committing.” Whether Teachable asks for a card to start the trial, we did not find on the pages we read on October 1, 2026. Not finding it there is not the same as Teachable not saying it anywhere. (Teachable's lines were read by machine on October 1, 2026 and not yet checked by a person.) What the trial and the refund policy cover is on Teachable pricing.

Who this head-to-head is wrong for

• You are choosing on the bundled email. The table above shows which plans have email. Whether a bundle beats a separate email tool depends on your list size, and Kajabi's bundled email vs Thinkific + Kit prices that by list size, against Thinkific plus Kit rather than Teachable, so treat it as the nearest comparison and not this one.
• You plan to connect your own Stripe account. Kajabi adds a surcharge for that in the countries where Kajabi Payments is available; what it costs is on Kajabi's fee for connecting your own Stripe. Whether Teachable adds anything on CPG we have not confirmed, and its 0% on Builder and Growth is stated “for Teachable Payments”. On CPG, by Teachable's help, the tax on your sales is yours too.
• You sell from outside the U.S. The dollar figures here use U.S. card rates. The rates that apply to you, and whether your country has either payment system, are in the payments section above; the tables are not.

Who pays us for this pair

Both do, on our records. Kajabi pays us 30%, for as long as that customer keeps paying (a caveat: this comes from their application page and we have not been able to re-check it inside the dashboard). Teachable pays 30%, for up to 12 months, then it stops. What each percentage is a share of, the plan price only or the plan price plus any transaction fee, we have not confirmed. Every Kajabi plan in the pairs above has the higher plan price of its pair, so if both are shares of the plan price, a Kajabi signup through our link pays us more. On the fee arithmetic, Teachable Builder comes out ahead of Kajabi Basic at every revenue level in the table, and we have left it that way.

What each plan costs before any sales

The sticker prices first, since that is what the pricing pages lead with. Every platform here charges less per month if you pay for a year up front.

Sorted by the annual price. Connecting your own Stripe instead adds a surcharge on Kajabi and Thinkific — see below. Sources: Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, Podia.

How much does Kajabi cost? Basic is $179 a month, or $143 a month billed annually. Growth is $249 a month, or $199 a month billed annually. Pro is $499 a month, or $399 a month billed annually. What Kajabi takes from each sale, what Growth adds, the tax on top and Kajabi's own answer to whether it is expensive are on Kajabi pricing.

How much does Thinkific cost? Basic is $54 a month, or $40 a month billed annually. Start is $109 a month, or $82 a month billed annually. Grow is $219 a month, or $164 a month billed annually. What Thinkific takes from each sale, what Start and Grow add, the tax and what its pages say about cancelling are on Thinkific pricing.

How much does Teachable cost? Starter is $39 a month, or $29 a month billed annually, and takes 7.5% of each sale. Builder is $89 a month, or $69 a month billed annually. Growth is $189 a month, or $139 a month billed annually. What each plan includes, the trial, the tax, and the revenue at which a higher Teachable plan becomes the cheaper one are on Teachable pricing.

The sticker price is not what you pay once you are selling. Teachable Starter and Podia Mover take a cut of every sale on top of the plan (7.5% on Starter and 5% on Mover), which is why the order changes in the tables below.

What we assumed

All of the numbers below use the same three assumptions, so you can check them:

• Annual billing. It is cheaper on every platform here. Monthly billing makes every row worse by the same shape.
• The platform's own payment processing, not your own Stripe account. This matters for Kajabi and Thinkific — see below.
• An average sale of $200, so $2,000 a month 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.

What each plan leaves you

Sorted by what you keep at $5,000 a month. Highlighted rows lead at one of the three levels.

Where the money actually goes

Three separate costs come out before you see anything, and only the first is on the pricing page. At $5,000 a month across 25 sales:

Card processing is roughly the same everywhere — about 2.9% plus $0.30 a sale, charged by Stripe whichever platform you pick. It is not a reason to choose one over another. The plan fee and the transaction fee are.

When the cheap plan stops being cheap

A transaction fee is a percentage and a plan upgrade is a flat number, so there is always a revenue level where paying more per month starts costing you less. These are the crossover points, solved from the same pricing:

Read the first row literally: on published pricing, Teachable Starter is the wrong plan for almost anyone who is actually selling. Above roughly $533 a month — under 3 sales at $200 each — the more expensive plan puts more money in your pocket, and the gap widens every month after that.

Kajabi is missing from that table because every Kajabi plan takes 0% of your sales. Its higher plans shave the card processing rate instead — 2.9% on Basic down to 2.8% on Growth — and that difference is far too small to pay for the upgrade. On fees alone, Kajabi Growth does not overtake Basic until about $56,000 a month. If you move up a Kajabi plan, move up for the features, because the arithmetic will not do it for you.

The surcharge for bringing your own Stripe

Kajabi publishes a rate for it: 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth and 0.5% on Pro, on top of Stripe's own cut. On Basic at $5,000 a month that is $100 a month, or $1,200 a year, for a payment preference.

Kajabi is not the only one, and it is not the worst of the two. Thinkific charges the same kind of fee for the same choice — 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow — under the name “third-party payment gateway fee”. On the entry plans that is 5% against Kajabi's 2%, or 2.5× as much for the identical decision.

Two limits come with it, and they are the reason this is not simply the bigger number. 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; past that it is waived. Staying on Thinkific Payments avoids it entirely. Kajabi's is limited by region too — it is charged only in the 25 countries where Kajabi Payments is available, and Kajabi says it is not charged where Kajabi Payments is unavailable — but it has no cap, and PayPal is exempt from it on every plan.

The tables above assume each platform's own payments, so neither surcharge is in them. For Teachable and Podia we have nothing recorded either way — that means we have not found such a fee, not that we have confirmed there is none.

Who each one is wrong for

• Kajabi is wrong for you if you are under about $2,000 a month. Kajabi Pro at $2,000 leaves 77.2% — the plan fee alone eats a fifth of your revenue. Kajabi's argument is the bundled email and funnel tooling you would otherwise buy separately, not the fee arithmetic, and this article cannot price that for you.
• Teachable Starter is wrong for almost everyone, for the reason above. Teachable Builder is the plan to compare against the others.
• Thinkific Basic wins on fees precisely because it is the entry plan, and entry plans have limits on courses, admins and features that we have not tested. It leads this table on arithmetic alone.
• Podia Mover carries a 5% transaction fee and is beaten by Podia Shaker above $840 a month.

What this does not tell you

This is a pricing comparison and nothing else. We have not run these platforms — the box at the top of this article says so — and fees are not the only thing that should decide it. Not included:

• Email marketing, if the plan does not bundle it
• Course, admin and student limits on entry plans
• Affiliate payouts, refunds and chargebacks
• International card fees. The tables use U.S. rates. The published international rates for Kajabi and Teachable are quoted in the head-to-head; for Thinkific and Podia we have not put a number on them here
• Taxes and VAT/GST handling, except for Kajabi and Teachable, whose own words on it are in the head-to-head

A platform that is 1% worse on fees and saves you a tool you were paying for is the better buy. What the arithmetic does rule out is paying a percentage of every sale for no reason.

Who pays us, and what that would look like if it changed the table

Kajabi, Thinkific and Teachable pay us a commission if you sign up through our link. Podia does not pay us anything, and its plans are in the table on the same terms as everyone else.

The plan that finishes first here — Thinkific Basic — is one of the ones that pays us. That is exactly the arrangement you should be suspicious of, so here is the check you can run without trusting us: every figure in the table comes from the published prices linked at the top, and the formula is one line — plan price, plus revenue times the transaction and card rates, plus $0.30 per sale. Put a different revenue number in the calculator and the order changes. It is not our opinion; it is arithmetic you can redo.

• Start a Kajabi trial — affiliate link
• Start a Thinkific trial — affiliate link
• Start a Teachable trial — affiliate link

Using one costs you nothing extra and changes no number on this page. Not using one costs you nothing either. We wrote the table before we were accepted into any of these programs.

Run your own numbers

Our course platform fee calculator takes your revenue, your number of sales and your billing choice and gives you this table for your own situation, including the own-Stripe surcharge.

Prices checked September 23, 2026 against each 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.