Is Podia or Thinkific cheaper?

Podia starts at $42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly (30 days trial). Thinkific starts at $54 per month (Basic), or $40 per month billed annually (30 days trial).

Podia 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 assessed

Podia compared with Thinkific

Thinkific at $54 is the better teaching platform, with graded assignments, prerequisites, certificates, and cohorts, and allows 10,000 students. Podia has no assessment depth at all but includes a website, a blog, coaching, and a stronger community, and takes no fee where Thinkific penalizes you up to 5 percent for using your own gateway. Thinkific if education is the product; Podia if the course is one item on a small storefront.

Thinkific compared with Podia

Podia at $42 includes community, courses, downloads, coaching, a website, and email in one plan, which Thinkific does not. But Podia's email limits are tiny, its course tooling has no real assessments or certificates, and its entry plan takes 5 percent of sales. Podia is the simpler all in one for a small creator; Thinkific is the better platform once teaching quality and student volume matter.

Choose Podia if

Solo creators, coaches, and very small businesses who want a community, a course, a website, and a checkout on one bill under one brand for well under $100 a month, and who value simplicity and a complete feature set on every plan over depth in any single area.

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	Podia	Thinkific
Category	Community	Community
Starting price	$42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly (30 days trial)	$54 per month (Basic), or $40 per month billed annually (30 days trial)
Pricing model	Flat monthly subscription across three tiers, all of which include every feature, differing on transaction fee, team seats, and email subscriber allowance.	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	30 days, full feature access, no credit card required	30 days, full platform access, no sales call
Best for	Solo creators, coaches, and very small businesses who want a community, a course, a website, and a checkout on one bill under one brand for well under $100 a month, and who value simplicity and a complete feature set on every plan over depth in any single area.	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	An afternoon. Podia is deliberately the simplest platform in this category, and a site, a product, a checkout, and a community with several spaces can all be live the same day.	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	Very low. There are only products, spaces, and plans to understand, with no funnel builder, automation graph, or entitlement matrix to model. This is the main reason people choose it.	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, mobile responsive, No native or branded mobile apps	Web, iOS and Android via the Thinkific mobile app, Branded iOS and Android apps as a paid add on
Compliance	GDPR, PCI DSS via Stripe and PayPal, Sales tax and VAT handling across 230 countries	GDPR, PCI DSS via Thinkific Payments and Stripe, SOC 2 reporting available to Plus customers
Founded	2014	2012
Headquarters	New York, New York, United States	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Ownership	Venture-backed but profitable and independent	Publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (THNC)

Strengths and limitations

Podia

Strengths

Every feature on every plan. Community, courses, coaching, events, downloads, website, blog, landing pages, and custom domain are not tiered, which removes the usual pricing page archaeology.
Zero platform transaction fee on Shaker and Earthquaker, so at high revenue Podia is cheaper than Circle, Patreon, Memberful, or Podia's own Mover plan by a wide margin.
Unlimited products on every plan, which suits download and template sellers who would immediately breach Teachable's and Kajabi's entry tier caps.
The 2026 community relaunch produced a genuinely complete product: spaces, group chat, direct messaging in both directions, profiles with privacy controls, badges, search, pinned posts, welcome messages, and member controlled notification frequency.

Limitations

Email subscriber allowances of 100, 500, and 1,000 are very small, so email marketing is included in name more than in substance and most creators will keep or pay for something else.
No branded mobile app at any tier and no path to one, which puts Podia behind Teachable at $39 and Kajabi at $179.
The 5 percent fee on Mover makes the headline price misleading for anyone selling more than about $900 a month.
Community permissions and moderation are simpler than Circle's, with less granular roles and no automated spam classification, which will bind on communities beyond a few thousand members.

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

Podia

Flat monthly subscription across three tiers, all of which include every feature, differing on transaction fee, team seats, and email subscriber allowance.

Mover$42
Shaker$84
Earthquaker$150

Shaker at $84 a month with a 0 percent platform fee is the most complete package under $100 in this category. You get a website with a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, a genuine community with spaces, chat, DMs, profiles, badges, and search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, on one bill. Circle at $89 gives you a better community and takes 2 percent of your sales; Kajabi at $179 gives you far more marketing machinery. The honest limits are three: the email subscriber allowances are so small that email is effectively a trial feature rather than an included one, there is no branded mobile app at any price, and the community, while complete, is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation. For a solo operator who wants one subscription and no fee on sales, this is the best value on the page. For a team of five running a large paid community, it will feel thin.

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

Podia

Best Value

Podia is the best value all in one in this category for a solo operator, and the 2026 community relaunch finally makes it a real community platform rather than a course tool with a comments section. Shaker at $84 a month billed annually gives you a website, a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, spaces with group chat and direct messages, member profiles and badges, search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, with zero platform fee on your sales. At $50,000 a month in member revenue that fee structure makes it cheaper than Circle by around $1,000 a month. The three things to check before buying are all real: the email subscriber allowance is so small that email is effectively a demo feature, there is no branded mobile app at any price and never will be, and the community is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation in ways a large community will feel. Buy Podia if you are one or two people who want one subscription, one domain, and no cut taken. Buy Circle if the community itself is the business, and Kajabi if email marketing at scale is how you sell.

Read the full Podia profile

Thinkific

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 profile

Podia 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.