Head to head · Teachable re-checked 27 August 2026 · Kajabi 14 August
Kajabi vs Teachable: you're not comparing two course platforms
Short answer: Teachable hosts and sells courses. Kajabi replaces your course platform, your email tool, your funnel builder and your website. Teachable starts at $29 a month on annual billing; Kajabi's realistic tier is $199. Take Teachable for a first course, or if course hosting is all you need. Take Kajabi only if it's genuinely retiring several other subscriptions — do the consolidation sum below before you decide.
We have no affiliate relationship with Kajabi or Teachable. Neither company pays us anything, whichever you choose. Further down we mention Systeme.io as a cheaper alternative for some readers — that one does pay us a commission, and the FAQ says so where it comes up.
Almost every comparison of these two lines up their features and declares Kajabi the premium option. That's true and not very useful, because they aren't doing the same job. One costs several times the other because it's doing several times as much. The real question is whether you want to consolidate — and whether the arithmetic works at your size.
The short answer
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First course, still validating | Teachable | Kajabi is several times the price of a tool that does the job |
| Already paying for email + site + course host | Kajabi, maybe | Do the consolidation sum below before deciding |
| You want 0% platform fees | Teachable, from Builder up | Kajabi charges at every tier. Or see Thinkific below |
| Running cohorts or a community | Kajabi | Handled natively on Growth |
| You need a specific integration | Teachable | Much larger third-party ecosystem |
What each costs
| Plan | Annual | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter | $29 | $39 | 1 published product, 100 students — and a 7.5% platform fee on every sale |
| Teachable Builder | $69 | $89 | 0% platform fee. Custom domain, affiliates, more products. The real entry point if you sell regularly |
| Teachable Growth | $139 | $189 | 0% fee, no student cap, advanced marketing and reporting |
| Kajabi Basic | $143 | $179 | 1 website, 5 products, 2,500 contacts, custom domain |
| Kajabi Growth | $199 | $249 | 25,000 contacts, affiliate tools, advanced automations, cohorts, branding removal |
| Kajabi Pro | $399 | $499 | 100,000 contacts, code editor, branded mobile app |
US dollars per month. Teachable also sells an Advanced tier at $309 annual / $399 monthly, above the range most readers here need. Annual billing saves roughly 22–26% on Teachable and about 20% on Kajabi — but Teachable's annual plan locks you in for the year, while monthly can be cancelled at any time, so pay monthly while you're still deciding. Teachable offers a 7-day trial with a card required, and its published terms are widely reported to include a 30-day money-back guarantee — worth confirming at checkout rather than taking ours or anyone's word for it. Teachable re-checked 27 August 2026. Kajabi's figures are from 14 August and were not re-checked in that pass — we'd rather show you the older date than pretend both were done together. Confirm both on the vendors' own pages.
Watch which Teachable you're reading about
Teachable replaced its old Free / Basic / Pro / Business plans with Starter, Builder, Growth and Advanced, and a great many guides — including ones published this year — still describe the retired ladder. The tell is a 5% transaction fee or a free plan: both belonged to the old structure and neither exists now.
The numbers in those guides are real, which is what makes them convincing. They just belong to plans you can no longer buy. If a page quotes you a Teachable price, check the plan name against the current four before you trust the figure.
The fee is the number that decides your tier
This is the thing to understand before either trial, and it catches people out on both platforms.
Teachable charges 7.5% of every sale on Starter — and only on Starter. On top of that sits your payment processor's own cut, typically 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards and roughly a percentage point more for international ones. So a $100 sale on Starter costs you somewhere around $10.70 before you've counted anything else. Builder at $69 removes Teachable's 7.5% entirely, which means it pays for itself the moment your monthly sales clear a few hundred dollars. If you are selling at all regularly, Starter is the expensive plan.
Kajabi has no escape at any tier. Use your own Stripe and Kajabi adds a surcharge on top — around 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, 0.5% on Pro. Use Kajabi Payments instead and you pay their processing rates. There is no configuration where Kajabi takes nothing.
If a flat 0% on every plan is what you want, that's Thinkific, which charges nothing on any plan in its primary markets. That's a genuinely different structure from either tool on this page, and Thinkific pays us nothing either.
The consolidation sum
Kajabi only makes sense if it's replacing several bills rather than adding one. So do this before the trial:
Add up what you currently pay for course hosting, email marketing, a funnel or landing page builder, and your website. Compare that total to $199 — Growth, which is realistically the tier you'll need.
- If your total is close to $199, Kajabi is a fair trade and one bill is simpler than four
- If it's under $100, you're paying for consolidation you don't need yet
- If you don't currently pay for email or a website at all, this sum is telling you something
Why Growth and not Basic
Kajabi's January 2026 restructure cut Basic's contact allowance from 10,000 to 2,500 — a 75% reduction — while raising prices across the range and withdrawing the old $89 entry tier.
2,500 contacts is tight for a platform sold on running your whole business. If you're using Kajabi for email — which is the point of using it — you'll cross 2,500 long before you outgrow 5 products. Affiliate tools, advanced automations, cohorts and branding removal all sit above Basic too.
Existing customers were not grandfathered at the old rates. Worth knowing as a cost signal and as a signal about how the company treats long-term customers.
Where Teachable wins
- Price, by a wide margin, if all you need is course hosting and a checkout — $29 against $143 at the entry, and $69 against $199 at the tier most people actually end up on
- The largest third-party integration ecosystem in the category — more connectors, more tutorials, more solved problems
- Better multi-country tax handling, which matters once you sell outside your own market
- A route to 0% platform fees by upgrading, which Kajabi doesn't offer at all
Where Kajabi wins
- It genuinely replaces four tools, and for an established creator the maths can work
- The most polished student-facing experience among course platforms, by broad consensus — we haven't built in it ourselves, so treat that as its reputation rather than our own testing
- Cohort-based programmes and communities handled natively rather than bolted on
- One bill, one login, one support contact — worth real money if you're the only person running everything
What's true of both
- Neither has a free plan. Teachable removed its free tier in 2025; Kajabi never had one
- Both raised prices recently and moved existing customers rather than grandfathering them
- Both discount annual billing and both want a year from you to give it. Pay monthly while you're testing
- Any comparison written before 2026 is quoting plans that no longer exist — and many of them still rank
Questions
Is Kajabi worth several times the price?
Only if you're actually retiring the other subscriptions. Do the consolidation sum above. For an established creator replacing email, a website and a course host, it often works. For a first course, it almost never does.
Which plan will I really need on each?
On Kajabi, Growth at $199 — Basic's 2,500-contact limit binds early for anyone running email through the platform, and affiliate tools, advanced automations and branding removal all sit above it. On Teachable, Builder at $69, because Starter's 7.5% transaction fee costs more than the upgrade as soon as you're selling with any consistency.
Can I avoid transaction fees on either?
On Teachable, yes — Builder and above carry no platform fee at all. On Kajabi, no, at any tier and with any payment configuration. Payment processor fees apply on both regardless. If a flat 0% across every plan is your priority, Thinkific is the comparison you want.
Why did Kajabi's price change?
It restructured in January 2026 after nearly a decade of stable pricing — raising tiers, cutting Basic's contact allowance and adding a processor surcharge, without grandfathering existing customers. That generated significant pushback in creator communities. Note that our Kajabi figures were checked on 14 August 2026 and are the oldest on this site, so confirm them before you act.
Is there a cheaper way to do all of this?
Sometimes. An all-in-one like Systeme.io covers funnels, email and checkout from $0–$97 — but it has no quizzes, certificates or drip content on any plan, so it is not a course platform substitute if the learning experience is your product. That's a real limitation, not a caveat. Know our incentive before you act on this one: Kajabi and Teachable pay us nothing, and Systeme.io pays us a commission — it's the only suggestion on this page we'd earn from, and it's our highest-paying one anywhere. Its free tier costs nothing to test, so check that limitation against the product rather than taking our word for it.
How to decide today
Do the consolidation sum. If your existing stack costs less than about $150 a month, choose Teachable and revisit in a year — and budget Builder at $69 rather than Starter unless you're genuinely only validating. If it's already near $199 and you're tired of four logins, take Kajabi's trial, and price Growth, not Basic.
Either way, pay monthly until you're sure. Both platforms discount the annual plan and both want the year up front.
Read the full Teachable review →
Neither of those links earns us anything — we have no affiliate relationship with Kajabi or Teachable. The Systeme.io mention above links to our own review of it; the affiliate link sits on that page, and Systeme.io does pay us a commission.