Kajabi vs Teachable 2026: Plans, Fees and Hidden Costs

AdvLaunch is the AI agency for coaches and consultants. In our paid community program, we run paid Meta acquisition into paid communities, including communities on Kajabi, so we see how a course platform behaves once ad traffic lands on it. We sell ad management, not software, so weigh our view with that stake in mind.

Kajabi vs Teachable at a Glance

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for courses, email, funnels and checkout, while Teachable is a course-selling platform with a lower price and a shorter feature list. The table below uses each vendor's own pricing page as read on 8 October 2026. All prices are US dollars, and the lower figure is the annual-billing price per month.

Want every Kajabi plan, contact limit and fee in detail? See our Kajabi pricing breakdown →

Where Kajabi Is the Better Fit

Kajabi is the better fit when you want the marketing side of a course business in the same account as the course. Kajabi's pricing page says every plan includes unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, funnels and access groups, so a cold-traffic campaign can run from ad to landing page to email sequence to checkout without a second subscription.

The limits that matter on Kajabi sit in other places. Basic has 2,500 contacts and two admin users, and Kajabi's feature table marks advanced automations, webhooks, affiliate programs and cohort courses as Growth and Pro features, not Basic. Kajabi's pricing FAQ also says Kajabi takes no revenue share, which is true, but Kajabi Payments still charges card-processing rates of 2.9%, 2.8% or 2.7% plus $0.30 per sale in the US.

Kajabi's trade-off is price and the community cap. One community on Basic and Growth is a real constraint if members are meant to talk to each other every day. If community is the product, our ranking of Kajabi alternatives for community builders covers the dedicated options.

Ruling Kajabi out for community reasons? See seven Kajabi alternatives, ranked for community builders →

Where Teachable Is the Better Fit

Teachable is the better fit when you want to host and sell courses at the lowest cost with no platform cut. Builder costs $69 a month billed annually and has a 0% transaction fee, 10 published products, a custom domain, an affiliate program, built-in email marketing and the iOS and Android student apps. Teachable's pricing FAQ adds that bundles and memberships do not count toward the product limit.

Starter is where Teachable gets expensive. It costs $29 a month billed annually, but it takes 7.5% of every sale, allows 5 products, and Teachable's feature table shows no custom domain and no built-in email marketing on it. The worked example below shows the sales level at which Starter stops being the cheap option.

Teachable has one cost that surprises people who move an existing audience in. Teachable's usage-fee policy, last updated 28 September 2026, gives new schools 100 students added outside Teachable checkout for free and then charges $0.50 a month per student above that. Students who buy through Teachable checkout never count, which is a reason to have buyers check out on Teachable rather than importing them.

Teachable's Community Feature Is Closed to New Schools

Teachable's Community feature is in maintenance mode and is no longer available to new schools, so a new Teachable school cannot add a native community. Teachable's help center, dated 10 August 2026, says it has paused investment, is not adding features or fixing community bugs, and recommends course comments, or Discord or Slack linked through dashboard links.

Teachable's pricing page still lists Community among the Builder features, so ask Teachable support in writing before you buy for this reason. Teachable's app directory lists Circle as an integration on every plan, which is the usual route for a creator who wants a course on Teachable and a community elsewhere. Kajabi is the only one of the two with a native community today, and it is a bundled one.

Worked Example: A $5,940 Month on Each Platform

Worked example, not a benchmark: a creator sells 20 copies of a $297 course in a month, all paid by US cards, has 3,000 contacts and one admin, and pays annually. That is $5,940 of sales. The example ignores refunds, taxes, PayPal and international cards, all of which change the totals.

Now run the same month on Teachable Starter. The plan is $29 and the card processing is the same $178.26, but Teachable also takes 7.5% of $5,940, which is $445.50. The total is $29 + $445.50 + $178.26 = $652.76, which is $405.50 more than Builder. Starter only beats Builder when the $40 monthly plan difference exceeds the fee: $40 / 0.075 = $533 of sales a month on annual billing, or $50 / 0.075 = $667 on monthly billing.

The decision rule that follows is simple. Price the tools Teachable does not include, such as the funnel or landing-page software and any email tool you would use for a list beyond your students, at your real list size. If that total is above $124 a month in this example, Kajabi is the cheaper stack. If you would run those jobs on free tiers anyway, Teachable Builder is cheaper.

Tracking Meta Ads on Kajabi and on Teachable

Both platforms can report purchases to Meta, but they set it up differently. Kajabi's help center says Kajabi supports the Meta Conversions API, sending lead and purchase events from Kajabi's servers alongside the browser pixel, with Meta deduplicating the two by event ID. It also warns that adding a third-party gateway such as Stape on top of Kajabi's access token can double-count purchases, so use one route, not both.

Teachable's July 2026 help article says it added server-side events for the GA4 Measurement Protocol and the Meta Pixel Conversions API, moved purchase events to fire on the checkout page, and changed the checkout URL format for schools that move to the latest checkout. If you built custom conversions or audiences on old URL patterns, Teachable tells you to review them. Teachable's App Hub lists a Meta Pixel app on every plan, with Starter allowed one installed app, and its code-snippet help page says Builder and above can also add Meta tracking pixels through Code Snippets.

Who Should Pick Kajabi, and Who Should Pick Teachable

Pick Teachable Builder for a low-cost course with an audience you already have, Kajabi Growth for paid traffic and one login, and a dedicated community platform when members need to talk to each other every day.

Picked Kajabi? The harder part is filling it. See how we run paid-member acquisition on Kajabi →

Our Take: When the Platform Is Not the Problem

Our honest view is that if you are comparing Kajabi and Teachable, you may be comparing the wrong constraint. Both platforms host an offer competently. Neither brings buyers. If your course or membership has not sold steadily, a $124 monthly difference in platform cost is small next to what a month without steady sales costs you.

AdvLaunch is the right call when your problem is members, growth or revenue, and you already have an offer that people pay for. It is probably not the right call yet if your community or course revenue is under about $20K a year, because the Scale Program would be premature. Ad spend is separate and paid from your own Meta Business Manager, and the budget is set with you on a call. Teachable Builder is a perfectly good setup at that stage, and we would tell you so on a call.

Comparing Teachable with Thinkific instead? See Teachable vs Thinkific for that head-to-head →

How AdvLaunch Fills a Kajabi or Teachable Business: The Community Flywheel™

Neither platform changes what we do. We do not replace your course host or your checkout. We build the front end a Meta ad needs, and your products and members stay in your own account. We call the system The Community Flywheel™:

1. Hook: a Meta ad points to a paid challenge, webinar or masterclass we control, not to your Kajabi or Teachable sales page or checkout.
2. Result delivered: over seven days or one live event, your method produces a real outcome, so people experience your teaching before anyone pays.
3. Community upsell: graduates are offered the paid community, or your course bundled with it, at a founder rate. On Teachable the community itself lives elsewhere, such as Circle or Discord.
4. Retention compounds: members arrive already bought in, and retention and lifetime value are measured against the campaign cohort, not assumed from a generic benchmark.

Want the Teachable side of this comparison run out in full, with the break-even math on its 7.5% Starter fee? See our Teachable pricing breakdown.