Kajabi vs Teachable vs Thinkific: Online Course Pricing Playbook

Three platforms sell the same promise: record a course once, sell it while you sleep. The bills look nothing alike. Kajabi charges the most per month and takes no cut of sales. Teachable charges the least and takes 7.5 percent of every sale on its entry plan. Thinkific sits in the middle on price, caps current students at 10,000 on every self-serve plan, and takes no platform fee through its own checkout. All prices below come from the vendors' own pricing pages, fetched on November 9, 2026.

The three vendors at a glance

Teachable Starter's 7.5 percent is 75 dollars a month at 1,000 dollars of revenue and 750 dollars at 10,000 dollars.

Kajabi: the highest rent, no cut of sales

Kajabi sells one subscription for courses, coaching, memberships, website, email, community, funnels, and checkout. Its pricing page states the pitch in one line: "0% revenue share." The FAQ adds: "Kajabi does not take a revenue share as a platform, you keep whatever you earn." A standard card processing fee applies on Kajabi Payments, but the page does not print the rate, so this playbook does not state one. The cost math below uses 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per order as a labelled assumption.

Basic is 179 dollars a month, or 143 dollars billed annually; Growth is 249 dollars, or 199 dollars billed annually; Pro is 499 dollars, or 399 dollars billed annually.

Kajabi's ceilings are products and contacts, not students. Basic allows 5 products and 2,500 contacts. Growth allows 50 products and 25,000 contacts. Pro allows unlimited products and 100,000 contacts. A product is a course, a coaching offer, a membership, a download, or a podcast, so six small offers outgrow Basic. Extra contacts come in blocks of 25,000 for 125 dollars a month.

AI is metered in credits: 0 a month on Basic, 500 on Growth, 1,000 on Pro, with a top-up of 500 credits for 15 dollars a month. Kajabi Cofounder and Kajabi MCP are included on all three plans; API access is Pro only.

Teachable: the lowest rent, a 7.5 percent fee on Starter

Teachable is the cheapest way in and the most expensive way to stay small. Starter costs 39 dollars a month, or 29 dollars billed annually. Builder costs 89 dollars, or 69 dollars billed annually. Growth costs 189 dollars, or 139 dollars billed annually.

The transaction fee is the whole story. Starter carries a 7.5 percent transaction fee on every sale; Builder, Growth, and Custom carry 0 percent. The pricing page FAQ states it plainly: "Only on the Starter plan, which has a 7.5% transaction fee."

Products run 5 on Starter, 10 on Builder, and 50 on Growth. Students enrolled through Teachable checkout are unlimited on Builder and Growth, with video storage up to 1 terabyte. Growth lists 5 admin-level users against Builder's 1. All three plans include Create with AI, student apps, and upsells.

Teachable prints its processing figures on the pricing page: PayPal sales at 3.49 percent plus 49 cents, international PayPal at 4.99 percent plus 49 cents, a 15-dollar chargeback fee, and an optional BackOffice fee of 2 to 2.8 percent.

Thinkific: the middle rent, a 10,000-student ceiling

Thinkific prices three self-serve plans and a quoted Plus tier. Start costs 109 dollars a month, or 82 dollars a month billed annually. Grow costs 219 dollars a month, or 164 dollars a month billed annually. Expand costs 499 dollars a month, or 374 dollars a month billed annually. The page claims 330 dollars of annual savings on Start, but our editorial analysis found the gap is 324 dollars.

Every self-serve plan includes unlimited courses, digital downloads, and coaching products. The ceiling is current students: 10,000 unique students with unexpired access to at least one course, on Start, Grow, and Expand alike, with a custom limit on Plus. Expand lists 15 administrator accounts.

The vendor page prints no platform fee percentage: Thinkific Payments customers incur no third-party gateway fee, and TCommerce fees vary by payment method. Independent 2026 reads corroborate the missing number: Coachful, StartSiteNow, GettingGrowth, and PM Study Circle each report 0 percent platform fees through Thinkific Payments or TCommerce, with card processing around 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Treat the 0 percent as corroborated-secondary, not as a vendor-page figure. The same reads report a surcharge for your own Stripe or PayPal account: 5 percent on Basic, 2 percent on Start, 1 percent on Grow.

Bulk email carries no monthly sending limit on every plan, email automation is included on every plan, and white-labeling starts on Grow. The AI teaching assistant sits on Expand and Plus. The trial is 30 days.

The transaction fee math, worked twice

Every monthly total below follows one formula: subscription plus platform fee plus card processing. Card processing is assumed at 2.9 percent of revenue plus 30 cents per order, with an average order value of 100 dollars. Kajabi's own card rate is not printed on its pricing page, so the 2.9 percent figure is a labelled assumption.

Example: at 1,000 dollars of monthly revenue, card processing is 32 dollars; Teachable Starter adds 75 dollars of platform fee.

Builder costs 40 dollars more per month than Starter on annual billing and saves 7.5 percent of revenue.

Above 533.33 dollars of monthly revenue, Builder is cheaper than Starter on annual billing. On monthly billing the gap is 50 dollars, so the breakeven rises to 666.67 dollars a month.

Monthly cost at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 dollars

The table uses annual billing, the 2.9 percent plus 30 cents processing assumption, and a 100-dollar average order.

At 1,000 dollars of revenue, Teachable Builder at 101 dollars a month is cheapest, and Thinkific Start at 114 dollars is second. At 10,000 dollars, Start at 402 dollars, Builder at 389 dollars, and Basic at 463 dollars sit within 75 dollars of each other, while Starter at 1,099 dollars costs more than double. > [!KEY TAKEAWAY]

Per-student cost at 100, 1,000, and 5,000 students

The table divides the annual-billed subscription by the student count, excluding transaction fees and processing.

At 100 students the subscription alone is 17.16 dollars per student per year on Kajabi Basic, 8.28 dollars on Teachable Builder, and 9.84 dollars on Thinkific Start. At 1,000 students those figures fall under 2 dollars.

Our editorial analysis found the Kajabi contact block is a trap worth pricing. One block costs 125 dollars a month, taking Basic to 3,216 dollars a year. Growth costs 2,388 dollars a year. Buying the block costs 828 dollars more and buys less.

Ceilings and forced upgrades

Each vendor hides a different tripwire. Kajabi trips on products and contacts: 5 and 2,500 on Basic, 50 and 25,000 on Growth, unlimited products and 100,000 contacts on Pro. Teachable trips on products and fees: 5 on Starter, 10 on Builder, 50 on Growth. Thinkific trips on current students: 10,000 on every self-serve plan.

Map your next twelve months against the tripwire, not the price. Count the products you will sell, including coaching, memberships, downloads, and bundles, because both Teachable and Kajabi count those against the product cap. Count the contacts you will email, not only the students who paid, because Kajabi counts every contact.

Email and AI: what the rent actually buys

Email is where Kajabi's high rent starts to pay for itself. Every Kajabi plan includes unlimited email sends, unlimited landing pages, and unlimited funnels, plus a single inbox for email, comments, and direct messages. Thinkific includes bulk email with no monthly sending limit and email automation on every plan, with white-label sending from Grow. Teachable includes built-in email marketing and abandoned cart emails.

AI is metered on Kajabi and bundled on the other two. Kajabi Basic includes 0 AI credits a month, Growth 500, and Pro 1,000, with top-ups of 500 credits for 15 dollars a month. Teachable includes Create with AI on all three plans with no credit meter stated on the pricing page. Thinkific includes course outline generation across the platform, with the AI teaching assistant on Expand and Plus.

Payouts, tax forms, and the entity behind the school

Course revenue is business income from the first sale. The three vendors pay out through their own checkout rails or a connected processor, and the payout lands in a business bank account by ACH transfer. Keep course revenue in a business account from day one.

A United States seller completes a Form W-9 with a Social Security Number (SSN) for an individual or an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for an entity, and a resident alien who cannot obtain an SSN uses an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). An LLC that has not elected corporate treatment is taxed under its owner rules, while an LLC that elected corporate treatment, an S-Corp, and a C-Corp are each taxed as the corporation they elected to be. The election changes reporting, not pricing. Export the sales ledger as a CSV file at least monthly and reconcile it against the payout deposits, because the tax return needs the gross figure, not the net deposit. Kajabi exposes an API on Pro, Thinkific from Grow. All three are SaaS products billed monthly or annually, and none of them files your taxes.

For the newsletter side, the Kit vs beehiiv vs Substack playbook prices the email list behind the funnel, and the beehiiv vs MailerLite vs Substack playbook compares the hosts. For the membership side, the Patreon vs Ko-fi vs Gumroad playbook prices the revenue beside the catalog. To model the tax on a month of course revenue, use the profit calculator.

The decision, by operator profile

No profile picks Teachable Starter: it is cheaper than Builder only below 533.33 dollars of monthly revenue.

Execution checklist

1. Write down your expected monthly revenue and average order value, then run the total-cost formula for each plan.
2. Count your products, including coaching and bundles, and strike any plan whose cap you exceed.
3. Count contacts on Kajabi, current students on Thinkific, and admin seats on Teachable, and strike any plan whose ceiling you will cross.
4. If you are on Teachable Starter, move to Builder before your next launch.
5. Confirm the checkout route: Thinkific Payments for the 0 percent fee, Kajabi Payments for the discounted rate, Teachable Payments for the printed PayPal rates.
6. Collect a Form W-9 with an SSN or EIN before the first payout, and set a monthly CSV export of the sales ledger.
7. Start the trial on the plan you intend to buy: 14 days on Kajabi, 7 days on Teachable, 30 days on Thinkific.
8. Re-price the platform every quarter against actual revenue.