Kajabi vs Thinkific
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedKajabi compared with Thinkific
The closest direct competitor. Thinkific starts far cheaper at $54 a month, is a stronger and more structured course platform, and now ships Communities with spaces, events, and direct messages. Kajabi wins on marketing infrastructure (email, funnels, affiliates) and includes the branded app that Thinkific charges $199 for. Choose Thinkific if you teach and already have a marketing stack; choose Kajabi if you want to delete the marketing stack.
Thinkific compared with Kajabi
Kajabi costs $179 to Thinkific's $54 and buys you email marketing, funnels, affiliates, a stronger website builder, and a branded mobile app included on every tier. Thinkific is the better teaching platform, with real assessments, certificates, and cohort tooling, and it lets you keep the email stack you already have. Take Thinkific if education is the product and you have a marketing stack; take Kajabi if you want to delete four subscriptions.
Choose Kajabi if
Coaches, course sellers, and creator businesses already doing meaningful revenue who want courses, email marketing, a website, checkout, and a community on one bill under one brand, and who value the branded mobile app included at every tier more than they value best in class discussion software.
Choose Thinkific if
Course businesses and training providers who take teaching seriously, need real curriculum tooling with quizzes, assignments, and certificates, want a community attached to those courses under their own domain, and already have an email marketing platform they are happy with.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Kajabi | Thinkific |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Community | Community |
| Starting price | $179 per month (Basic), or $143 per month billed annually (free trial) | $54 per month (Basic), or $40 per month billed annually (30 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly subscription across three published tiers with limits on products, contacts, admins, websites, and communities, plus transaction fees through Kajabi Payments or a surcharge for using your own gateway. | Flat monthly subscription across four published tiers plus a custom priced Plus tier, with limits on communities, spaces, admins, and video bandwidth, and a transaction fee that depends on whether you use Thinkific Payments or your own gateway. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | One month free, self serve, no sales call | 30 days, full platform access, no sales call |
| Best for | Coaches, course sellers, and creator businesses already doing meaningful revenue who want courses, email marketing, a website, checkout, and a community on one bill under one brand, and who value the branded mobile app included at every tier more than they value best in class discussion software. | Course businesses and training providers who take teaching seriously, need real curriculum tooling with quizzes, assignments, and certificates, want a community attached to those courses under their own domain, and already have an email marketing platform they are happy with. |
| Setup time | A weekend for a working store and community, a few weeks for a polished one. The account, domain, first product, checkout, and a community channel can be live in a few hours; the time goes into page design, email sequences, and course content. | A day for a working school with one course and a community, a few weeks for a polished one. Domain, theme, first course, checkout, and a community with a handful of spaces are all achievable in an afternoon. |
| Learning curve | Moderate to steep, because the platform is large. Products, offers, access groups, pipelines, and automations are five separate concepts you have to hold at once, and new users routinely mis-model entitlements on the first attempt. | Low to moderate. The course builder is the most approachable in the category, and the community concepts (communities, spaces, roles) are only three ideas deep. The confusing part is the plan matrix, not the software. |
| Platforms | Web, iOS and Android via the Kajabi app, Branded iOS and Android apps included on all plans | Web, iOS and Android via the Thinkific mobile app, Branded iOS and Android apps as a paid add on |
| Compliance | GDPR, PCI DSS handled through Kajabi Payments and Stripe | GDPR, PCI DSS via Thinkific Payments and Stripe, SOC 2 reporting available to Plus customers |
| Founded | 2010 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Irvine, California, United States | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Ownership | Venture-backed and growth equity backed | Publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (THNC) |
Strengths and limitations
Kajabi
Strengths
- Genuinely all in one. Courses, coaching, memberships, podcasts, community, website, blog, funnels, email, affiliates, and checkout in one account with one member record, which removes an entire class of integration work.
- Kajabi Payments is close to standard card processing rather than a platform tax, so the effective fee rate falls as revenue rises instead of scaling with it.
- A branded mobile app in the App Store and Google Play is included on every tier, including the $179 entry plan, which no other product in this category does at a published price.
- Custom domain and full white labelling on every plan, so members never see a vendor's brand anywhere in the experience.
Limitations
- The community product is competent but shallow next to a dedicated platform. Space level permissioning, member directory depth, and discussion culture all trail Circle, and the forum experience trails Discourse badly.
- No public search indexed community content. Kajabi communities are gated member areas, so discussion contributes nothing to acquisition and the blog is your only organic surface.
- Expensive floor. $179 a month, or $143 annually, before you have a single member, with no free plan and no lower tier.
- Basic is tighter than it looks: five products, two admins, one community, and 2,500 contacts. Many buyers discover the real price is Growth at $249.
Thinkific
Strengths
- The best course tooling among the platforms in this category, with graded quizzes, reviewed assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and per student progress reporting.
- A publicly traded company with audited financials, roughly $74M in trailing revenue and 276 employees, which is a materially different risk profile from a venture stage community startup.
- Communities is a real product now: spaces with independent permissions, post approval, read only spaces, a scoped moderator role, pinned posts, live events inside private spaces, and direct messages as of 2026.
- Entry price of $54 a month with unlimited courses, up to 10,000 students, and a custom domain undercuts Kajabi heavily.
Limitations
- Community limits are tight where it hurts: one community and five spaces on Basic, one admin seat, and unlimited only on a custom quoted plan.
- The 5 percent penalty for using your own payment gateway on Basic is punitive, and even Grow charges 1 percent, so payment independence is never free.
- Thinkific's own branding cannot be removed until the $219 Grow plan, which undercuts the white label promise at the price points most small businesses buy.
- No email marketing platform, no funnel builder, and a thin affiliate story, so the real monthly cost includes at least one more vendor.
Pricing compared
Kajabi
Flat monthly subscription across three published tiers with limits on products, contacts, admins, websites, and communities, plus transaction fees through Kajabi Payments or a surcharge for using your own gateway.
- Basic$179
- Growth$249
- Pro$499
Judged as a community platform in isolation, Kajabi is bad value: $179 a month for a discussion product that Circle beats at half the price and Skool beats at a twentieth. Judged as the whole stack, it is often the cheapest option on the page. A creator running courses, email marketing to 20,000 contacts, a website, a checkout, an affiliate program, and a community would spend more than $249 a month assembling that from Teachable, Kit, Webflow, and Circle, and would spend it across four vendors with four sets of member data. The fee structure also favours scale in a way its competitors do not: near raw card processing rather than a platform cut means a business doing $50,000 a month keeps far more here than on Patreon or Podia's entry plan. Buy Kajabi for the bundle, never for the community alone.
Thinkific
Flat monthly subscription across four published tiers plus a custom priced Plus tier, with limits on communities, spaces, admins, and video bandwidth, and a transaction fee that depends on whether you use Thinkific Payments or your own gateway.
- Basic$54
- Start$109
- Grow$219
- Expand$499
- PlusCustom
Thinkific is fair value for a course business and poor value for a community business. At $54 a month the entry tier undercuts Kajabi by more than two thirds and gives you unlimited courses, up to 10,000 students, a custom domain, and a community, which is a lot of platform for the money. The catches are all structural rather than hidden: one community with five spaces, one admin, visible vendor branding until $219, and a 5 percent gateway penalty if you refuse to use Thinkific Payments. Where it genuinely wins is instructional depth. Quizzes, assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and per student progress reporting are things Circle and Skool do badly or not at all, and if your product is education rather than access, that is worth paying for. Where it loses is everything Kajabi bundles: no email platform, no funnels, no affiliate engine, and a branded app that costs $199 a month extra.
Editorial verdict on each
Kajabi
Kajabi is the wrong purchase if you want a community and the right one if you want a business. The discussion product is decent, with channels, chat, challenges, leaderboards, and native meetups, but Circle is better at it for half the money and Skool is better at engagement for a twentieth. What justifies $179 a month is everything around it: courses, coaching, memberships, private podcasts, a website, funnels, email marketing to tens of thousands of contacts, an affiliate program, near raw card processing, and a branded mobile app included at every tier rather than sold as a $199 add on. The fee model rewards scale, dropping from about 7 percent of revenue all in at $5,000 a month to about 4 percent at $50,000, which is the opposite of Patreon. Buy it when you have stopped assembling tools and want one system with one member record. Do not buy it to host a free community, and do not expect the community to bring you anyone new, because none of it is indexed.
Read the full Kajabi profileThinkific
Thinkific is the most credible teaching platform in this category and a competent, deliberately limited community platform. If your members are students rather than an audience, the quizzes, assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and progress reporting are worth more than the extra polish Circle brings to discussion, and the $54 entry price is a third of Kajabi's. Being publicly traded with audited numbers is also a real advantage over venture stage rivals whose roadmap depends on the next round. The reservations are specific and worth negotiating around: one community with five spaces and one admin on Basic, vendor branding you cannot remove until $219, a branded app that costs $199 a month extra, no email marketing included, and a 5 percent penalty if you insist on your own Stripe. Buy Thinkific to run an education business with a community attached. Do not buy it to run a community with some lessons in it.
Read the full Thinkific profileKajabi profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Thinkific last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.