Kajabi vs Teachable vs Thinkific: Pricing and Limits

We did not sign up for Kajabi, Teachable or Thinkific. None of the three has a free plan, and our rule for these guides is no card at signup and no real-money purchases. Kajabi's standard trial takes a card, and for Teachable and Thinkific we couldn't confirm a no-card trial on their own pages. So this is a comparison from public pages, read on October 10, 2026, with every source linked. Where a vendor's own pages don't answer a question, we say so instead of guessing.

There are no affiliate links here. We're not in any of these programs.

Why we didn't sign up

Our courses guides run on free plans with no card, so readers can repeat them at no cost. Systeme.io Free met that bar, so our free mini-course and checkout are real runs. These three don't:

• Kajabi: its help page says that when you start a trial with a card, Kajabi places an authorization hold, and "if you entered a card at signup, Kajabi charges it for your first subscription period on the day your trial ends." It also says "Not every trial places a hold" for trials started without a card, but the standard trial we checked asks for one. (Kajabi trial information)
• Teachable: the pricing page says "7-day free trial. 30-day guarantee." and plans "auto-renew each billing cycle until canceled." We found no Teachable page that says whether the trial needs a card. Third-party reviews say it does; we haven't confirmed that ourselves. (Teachable pricing)
• Thinkific: the pricing FAQ says you can explore "for a full month before you pay a cent." Its terms say a valid card is required to process orders "with the exception of free trial subscriptions", which is about taking payments, not about signing up. When we checked on October 7, its signup app included a card pre-authorization step. Third-party sources disagree. (Thinkific pricing, terms 8.1)

If you're happy to enter a card and cancel before the trial ends, you can try any of them yourself. Set a reminder: Kajabi and Teachable trials convert to paid plans unless cancelled.

Prices (October 10, 2026)

Plan	Monthly	Billed annually (per month)
Kajabi Basic / Growth / Pro	$179 / $249 / $499	$143 / $199 / $399
Teachable Starter / Builder / Growth	$39 / $89 / $189	$29 / $69 / $139
Thinkific Basic / Start / Grow	$54 / $109 / $219	$40 / $82 / $164

Kajabi's pricing page also showed a time-limited launch offer ending October 13, 2026. We've left it out because it will have changed by the time you read this.

Trials, guarantees and fees

	Kajabi	Teachable	Thinkific
Free plan	No	No ("Teachable is a paid service")	No
Trial	14 days	7 days	30 days
Card at signup (vendor's own words)	Standard trial: yes, with an authorization hold	Not stated	Not stated; signup app showed a card pre-authorization step on Oct 7
Money-back guarantee	30 days, every plan	30 days	Not stated on the pricing page
Platform fee on sales	None ("0% revenue share")	7.5% on Starter; 0% on Builder and up with Teachable Payments	None stated
Card processing (own processor)	Kajabi Payments, US: 2.9% + $0.30 (Basic), 2.8% (Growth), 2.7% (Pro), plus $0.30	"Standard payment processing fees may still apply"	Thinkific Payments "at 2.9%"
Extra fee with another processor	2% / 1% / 0.5% by plan (excludes PayPal)	Not stated on the pricing page	"An additional third-party payment gateway fee applies and it varies per plan type"

Kajabi's trial locks a few features until you pay, including automation actions that send emails and bulk contact imports (Kajabi trial information).

What you get on the cheapest plan

	Kajabi Basic	Teachable Starter	Thinkific Basic
Products	5	5 published products (a course, coaching offer or download each; bundles and drafts don't count)	Unlimited courses; up to 5 digital downloads
Contacts / students	2,500 contacts	Not stated as a cap on the pricing page	10,000 current students
Community	1	Not listed for Starter	1
Email marketing	Unlimited marketing emails	Built-in email marketing (listed in the feature table)	Email automation
Checkout extras	Checkout pages, funnels	Upsells and cart recovery; coupons, upsells and order bumps	Order bumps, coupons, abandoned-cart emails; upsells need Start
Branding	Kajabi branding stays until Growth	Removed on Growth	Removed on Grow

Which one, honestly

We haven't used any of them, so this is about fit, not quality:

• Lowest monthly cost to start: Teachable Starter at $39 (or $29 annually), but the 7.5% fee on every sale adds up. On $1,000 of sales that's $75 a month on top of processing fees, so Builder's 0% may cost less once you sell regularly.
• Longest time to try before paying: Thinkific's 30-day trial, with unlimited courses on Basic.
• Everything in one place: Kajabi includes email, website, community and checkout, and its own FAQ admits it's expensive "if you are just looking at a course delivery platform."
• Nothing to pay at all: none of these. If you need free, our real runs used Systeme.io's free plan, which includes one course and an order bump, with its own trade-offs.

Prices and terms change often. Check each pricing page before you decide, and look at the date on any comparison, including this one.

Sources (all read October 10, 2026)

• Kajabi: pricing, trial information
• Teachable: pricing and FAQ
• Thinkific: pricing and FAQ, terms of service