What does each one actually cost in 2026?

Kajabi is 179, 249 or 499 dollars a month, or 143, 199 and 399 billed annually. Teachable is 39, 89 or 189, or 29, 69 and 139 annually, with a Custom tier through sales. Neither has a free plan: Kajabi runs a 30-day trial, Teachable a 7-day trial with a 30-day guarantee.

Which has lower transaction fees?

It depends which fee you mean. On the platform fee alone, Teachable: 0% on Builder and Growth when you sell through teachable:pay or its Monthly Payment Gateway, against a 0.5% floor on Kajabi. All-in, Kajabi on its two upper plans: Kajabi Payments bundles processing at 2.9% plus 30 cents on Basic, 2.8% on Growth and 2.7% on Pro, while Teachable card processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents applies on every plan and Starter adds 7.5% above it. An outside processor on Kajabi adds 2%, 1% or 0.5% by tier.

Why is Kajabi four times the price for the same course?

Because courses are one module of it. The subscription also buys websites, unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails, a contact database of 2,500 to 100,000 people, and community spaces. If you only ever open the course builder, you are paying for five modules to use one.

Do both have quizzes and certificates?

Quizzes, yes on both. Certificates are where Teachable gets complicated. Kajabi supports quizzes placed anywhere in a curriculum and can send a certificate automatically on completion. Teachable ticks auto-graded quizzes and short-answer assessments on all three of its plans, but its pricing grid marks certificates unavailable on Starter at 39 dollars and Builder at 89 and ticks them only from Growth at 189. An older Teachable help center article from June 2025 says certificates are included on all plans, but it lists a plan lineup the current pricing page no longer carries, so check inside the trial before you buy a tier for it.

How many products and team members does each allow?

Kajabi gives 5 products on Basic, 50 on Growth and unlimited on Pro, with 2, 11 and 26 admin users. Teachable gives 5, 10 and 50 products, with 1 admin user on Starter and Builder and 5 on Growth. Kajabi also counts contacts, which Teachable does not.

When is neither one the right answer?

When the audience is already in a Telegram channel and a course website is an extra address rather than a destination. Delivering lessons inside the chat removes the signup, but there are no quizzes, no certificates and no owner-facing progress roster on that side, so it suits reaching students rather than measuring them.

Guide

Kajabi vs Teachable: which one fits your course

Kajabi runs $179–$499 a month and sells a marketing stack. Teachable opens at $39 and sells a course. Fees, limits, and who needs neither.

September 5, 2026 AdminHub

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TL;DR. These are not the same product at two prices. Kajabi is a marketing platform with courses inside it — $179 / $249 / $499 a month ($143 / $199 / $399 annually), 2.9% / 2.8% / 2.7% + 30¢ through Kajabi Payments or 2% / 1% / 0.5% on top of an outside processor, 2,500 to 100,000 contacts by tier, unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails. Teachable is a course platform — $39 / $89 / $189 ($29 / $69 / $139 annually), 7.5% on the cheapest plan and 0% platform fee above it when you sell through teachable:pay or its Monthly Payment Gateway, 5 / 10 / 50 products. Both run quizzes; on Teachable’s pricing grid a certificate appears only from the $189 plan. Both have a trial and no free plan. The question is never which is better; it is whether you need the five modules around the course.

Notice one number before anything else: Kajabi’s cheapest plan is $179 and Teachable’s most expensive standard plan is $189. At the top of Teachable you are at the bottom of Kajabi. That is the whole shape of this comparison — you are not choosing between a cheap tool and an expensive one, you are choosing how much surrounding software comes attached.

Who each is built for

Kajabi is built for a business that runs on funnels and email. The course is one of several products the subscription hosts. What you are really buying is a website, unlimited landing pages and funnels, unlimited marketing emails, a contact database priced in tiers, and community spaces — with courses, quizzes, drip scheduling, progress tracking, hosted video and automatic certificates alongside them. There is also AI that will generate a course outline of modules and lessons, and students can open the course in Kajabi’s mobile app or a branded one.

Teachable is built for someone whose product is the course. You get the school, the player, quizzes, assessments, drip content and card checkout, and you do not get — and do not pay for — a marketing platform. A certificate sits at the top of the ladder: the pricing grid ticks it on the $189 plan and crosses it on the two below. Its entry plan exists to let a first product go on sale for $39.

The mismatch that sends people looking for the other one is always the same: a Kajabi customer who opens the course builder and nothing else, or a Teachable customer whose email list and landing pages have outgrown a course platform.

Side by side

	Kajabi	Teachable
What it is	Marketing platform with courses inside	Course platform
Monthly plans	$179 / $249 / $499	$39 / $89 / $189, plus a Custom tier
Annual (per month)	$143 / $199 / $399	$29 / $69 / $139
Platform transaction fee	2.9% / 2.8% / 2.7% + 30¢ via Kajabi Payments; 2% / 1% / 0.5% on top of a third-party processor	7.5% on Starter; 0% on Builder and Growth with teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway
Payment processing	Included in the Kajabi Payments rates above	2.9% + 30¢ US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ international; PayPal 3.49% + 49¢ US
Free plan / trial	No free plan; 30-day trial	No free plan; 7-day trial, 30-day guarantee
Products	5 / 50 / unlimited	5 / 10 / 50
Priced by contacts	Yes — 2,500 / 25,000 / 100,000	No
Admin users	2 / 11 / 26	1 / 1 / 5
Website, funnels, email	Unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails; 1 / 1 / 3 websites	Not the product; custom domain from Builder

Where Kajabi wins

It replaces a stack, not a tool. Funnels, landing pages, marketing email and a contact database in one subscription. Assembled separately, those are three or four bills.
Room for a team. 2, 11 and 26 admin users against Teachable’s 1, 1 and 5. Anyone with a marketer and an assistant runs out of Teachable seats on the first two plans.
Product headroom. 50 products on Growth and unlimited on Pro, where Teachable’s top standard plan stops at 50.
Communities and multiple websites. 1, 1 and 3 of each by tier — a membership brand can run more than one property.
A rate that falls as you climb. Kajabi Payments goes 2.9% → 2.8% → 2.7% + 30¢ across the three plans, and the surcharge for bringing your own processor drops 2% → 1% → 0.5%. Pro’s 2.7% + 30¢ is the lowest all-in card rate in this comparison — Teachable’s own rail stays at 2.9% + 30¢ — though Teachable gives up less on top of processing: a 0% platform fee from Builder up (with teachable:pay), against Kajabi’s 0.5% floor.
Course production is not thin. Quizzes anywhere in the curriculum, automatic certificates, drip, progress and completion insights, hosted video that is view-only by default.

Where Teachable wins

The floor. $39, or $29 annually, against $179. For one course and one person, that difference is the entire argument.
0% platform fee from $89. Builder and Growth advertise no platform transaction fee at all, footnoted as applying when you sell through teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway. Kajabi never reaches zero: its smallest platform cut is 0.5% on top of a processor, and only on the $499 plan. Card processing is separate and stays at 2.9% + 30¢, so Teachable’s all-in rate lands level with Kajabi Basic and above its two upper plans.
Nothing to grow into before you sell. No contact tier to manage, no funnel builder to learn, no website to design before lesson one exists.
A quicker read of the bill. One plan price plus processing. Kajabi’s cost depends on which processor you use and which contact tier you have climbed into.
Support levels that come with the plan. Email on Starter, real-time on Builder, priority plus a dedicated account manager on Growth.

The third option: doing it inside Telegram

Both of the above assume a destination — a site the student visits, an account they create, a password they later forget. One case makes that assumption wrong: your audience already reads you in a Telegram channel, and the school site sits between trust and sale.

Delivered in chat, lessons are blocks of text, image, video, audio and files arriving in the bot’s direct chat, with no account to create. A lesson can name a prerequisite the student marks done and carry a scheduled date, and both gates apply together. Live sessions carry a meeting link and the recording afterwards. An AI tutor answers out of your own lesson content, and Telegram’s protocol-level protection blocks forwarding and saving on every lesson message.

Our cut is 0%, with no monthly floor. That is our cut, not the whole cost: a buyer pays $19.99 per 1,000 Stars as a store pack or $14.10 at Telegram’s sell rate and Telegram’s developer terms put the payout at $0.013 — plan on the second number, and see what withdrawing Stars actually pays for the withdrawal floor and the 21-day hold.

Do not choose it if you need quizzes, certificates, or a view of who finished which lesson: all three are missing, and the completion data that unlocks the next lesson is never shown to you. Do not choose it for the Kajabi job at all — no website, no funnel builder, no email marketing. And course access is digital delivery, which Telegram policy puts on Stars exclusively, so card-only buyers are out of reach.

If… then…

If	Then
Your revenue comes from an email list and landing pages	Kajabi. Teachable does not do that job and neither do we
The course is the entire product and you are one person	Teachable — $39 against $179 is not a close call
You need more than one admin before $189 a month	Kajabi: two seats on Basic, eleven on Growth
You sell fifty products and want the lowest rate per sale	All-in, Kajabi Growth by a tenth of a point: 2.8% + 30¢ through Kajabi Payments, against Teachable Growth’s 0% platform fee on top of 2.9% + 30¢ of processing. Teachable still wins the bill, $189 against $249
You want quizzes and a certificate at the lowest price	Quizzes: Teachable from $39. A certificate: its grid ticks one only on Growth at $189, which is $10 above Kajabi Basic — so weigh what else each buys you
Your students already live in your Telegram channel	Chat delivery removes the signup and the login rather than styling them
You must know who stalled on lesson two	Either platform. That view does not exist on our side

Where to start

Count the modules you would actually open. If the answer is courses and email and a funnel, Kajabi’s $179 is a bundle price and it is a fair one. If the answer is courses only, you are comparing $39 against $179 for the same job, and the rest of the Kajabi subscription is shelfware.

Then ask where your next hundred students come from. If they arrive from search or ads, you need a page to land them on and both of these build one. If they are already reading your channel every morning, try one module in the chat before paying for either.

The single-product versions of this argument: Kajabi alternatives and Teachable alternatives. The course-website comparison one tier down: Thinkific alternatives and Teachable vs Thinkific. How chat-delivered courses work in practice: selling courses on Telegram. Price a course in Stars and the Telegram Stars calculator shows what the student pays next to what lands.

Kajabi plan prices, annual rates, Kajabi Payments and third-party transaction fees, trial length, product, contact, website, community and admin limits: kajabi.com/pricing, checked September 2026. Kajabi course features — quizzes, automatic certificates, drip scheduling, progress tracking, hosted video, AI outline generation: kajabi.com/product/online-courses, checked September 2026. Teachable plan prices, annual rates, the 7.5% Starter fee, the 0% footnote naming teachable:pay and the Monthly Payment Gateway, processing rates, product and admin limits, support tiers and the certificates row (crossed on Starter and Builder, ticked from Growth): teachable.com/pricing, checked September 2026. The older, conflicting claim that certificates are on every plan: Teachable’s help center article New Teachable plans in June 2025, checked September 2026. Star payout rate: Telegram’s terms for bot developers, section 6.2.4.

What people usually ask

What does each one actually cost in 2026?: Kajabi is 179, 249 or 499 dollars a month, or 143, 199 and 399 billed annually. Teachable is 39, 89 or 189, or 29, 69 and 139 annually, with a Custom tier through sales. Neither has a free plan: Kajabi runs a 30-day trial, Teachable a 7-day trial with a 30-day guarantee.
Which has lower transaction fees?: It depends which fee you mean. On the platform fee alone, Teachable: 0% on Builder and Growth when you sell through teachable:pay or its Monthly Payment Gateway, against a 0.5% floor on Kajabi. All-in, Kajabi on its two upper plans: Kajabi Payments bundles processing at 2.9% plus 30 cents on Basic, 2.8% on Growth and 2.7% on Pro, while Teachable card processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents applies on every plan and Starter adds 7.5% above it. An outside processor on Kajabi adds 2%, 1% or 0.5% by tier.
Why is Kajabi four times the price for the same course?: Because courses are one module of it. The subscription also buys websites, unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails, a contact database of 2,500 to 100,000 people, and community spaces. If you only ever open the course builder, you are paying for five modules to use one.
Do both have quizzes and certificates?: Quizzes, yes on both. Certificates are where Teachable gets complicated. Kajabi supports quizzes placed anywhere in a curriculum and can send a certificate automatically on completion. Teachable ticks auto-graded quizzes and short-answer assessments on all three of its plans, but its pricing grid marks certificates unavailable on Starter at 39 dollars and Builder at 89 and ticks them only from Growth at 189. An older Teachable help center article from June 2025 says certificates are included on all plans, but it lists a plan lineup the current pricing page no longer carries, so check inside the trial before you buy a tier for it.
How many products and team members does each allow?: Kajabi gives 5 products on Basic, 50 on Growth and unlimited on Pro, with 2, 11 and 26 admin users. Teachable gives 5, 10 and 50 products, with 1 admin user on Starter and Builder and 5 on Growth. Kajabi also counts contacts, which Teachable does not.
When is neither one the right answer?: When the audience is already in a Telegram channel and a course website is an extra address rather than a destination. Delivering lessons inside the chat removes the signup, but there are no quizzes, no certificates and no owner-facing progress roster on that side, so it suits reaching students rather than measuring them.