If you’re building an online business around what you know, you’ve probably come across Thinkific and Kajabi. But how do you decide which one is right for you?
Throughout this comparison, you’ll see me talk about Podia as a third option. Podia is an all-in-one home for your online business where your courses, community, website, and email are connected in one place.
If you’re not able to find exactly what you’re looking for with Kajabi or Thinkific, it’s helpful to know about other options like Podia that can help you build a great business.
Keep reading to learn:
- How Kajabi and Thinkific's 2026 pricing breaks down
- What each tool does well
- Where the gaps are, and how Podia fits into the picture
The value of the creator economy in 2026 is estimated to be over $250B, so there’s never been a better time to turn what you know into something other people can learn from. (SharkPlatform)
What changed for Kajabi and Thinkific in 2025–2026
Kajabi raised prices in 2026, and Kajabi now has three plans: Basic, Growth, and Pro. Plans start at $179/month, and all three plans include unlimited marketing emails, landing pages, and funnels. Each plan has increasingly higher product limits, contact limits, and admin seats.
Thinkific retired its free plan in 2025, and in 2026 they added a cheaper $54 entry plan. Today, Thinkific's core plans are Basic, Start, and Grow. They also provide more tools for larger, established businesses with a custom-priced Thinkific Plus tier. This comes with things larger operations need like CRM integrations, SSO, or SCORM compliance.
In recent reports from the company, they’ve said they’re leaning into AI features like their new Thinker AI teaching assistant, available on the Plus plan.
Let's look at the numbers.
Kajabi vs. Thinkific pricing
When picking an online course tool, the first question that comes up is often, “How much does it cost?” So here’s a look at Kajabi and Thinkific’s pricing. (Pricing verified in July 2026)
Kajabi pricing:
- Basic: $179/month ($143/month paid annually): 5 products, 2,500 contacts, 1 website, 1 community, 2 admin seats
- Growth: $249/month ($199/month paid annually): 50 products, 25,000 contacts, 1 website, 1 community, 11 admin seats, remove Kajabi branding, advanced automations, affiliate program
- Pro: $499/month ($399/month paid annually): Unlimited products, 100,000 contacts, 3 websites, 3 communities, 26 admin seats, branded mobile app, API access, custom code editor
Every Kajabi plan includes unlimited marketing emails, landing pages, and funnels.
There’s no extra transaction fee if you use Kajabi payments, but using a third-party processor instead adds a fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, or 0.5% on Pro.
Thinkific pricing:
- Basic: $54/month (or $40/month billed annually): 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 100GB of video bandwidth a month, 1 community, up to 5 digital downloads, up to 5 coaching sessions and webinars, no paid memberships
- Start: $109/month (or $82/month billed annually): 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 200GB of video bandwidth a month, 1 community, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited coaching and webinars, paid memberships
- Grow: $219/month (or $164/month billed annually): 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 400GB of video bandwidth a month, 3 communities, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited coaching and webinars, paid memberships
All three standard Thinkific plans cap you at 10,000 students and have bandwidth limits.
If you’re a larger, established business, you can also consider Thinkific Plus. This plan has custom pricing, the possibility to add on more students, unlimited communities, and video bandwidth starting at 7,500GB a month. Plus also comes with enterprise-level features like structured learning paths and SCORM compatibility, as well as Thinkific’s new AI teaching assistant.
While neither Kajabi nor Thinkific has transaction fees, Kajabi has product limits on the lower tier plans, and Thinkific has student limits on all plans except for Thinkific Plus.
If you’re worried about running out of space, another alternative is Podia.
Podia doesn’t have student limits on any plans, and you get room for 50 products on the Mover plan. Everyone gets a great community that's automatically connected to your events, products, website, and email marketing. And as you grow, you have the option to upgrade to Earthquaker for unlimited products, video storage, and community spaces.
Podia pricing:
Every Podia plan includes your community, website, courses, and email marketing.
- Mover: $49/month ($42/month billed annually), with a 5% transaction fee. Includes 50 products, storage for 500 videos, 25 community spaces, and email marketing for up to 100 subscribers.
- Shaker: $99/month ($84/month billed annually) with no transaction fees. Includes 150 products, 1,000 videos, 100 community spaces, affiliates, upsells, and email marketing for up to 500 subscribers.
- Earthquaker: $179/month ($150/month billed annually), with no transaction fees. Includes unlimited products, unlimited community spaces, unlimited assistant seats, unlimited video storage, email marketing for up to 1,000 subscribers.
With Podia Email, you can pay to add on more email subscribers any time as your list grows.
What Thinkific does well
Thinkific is best known for course building. You can make unlimited courses on all plans, including both self-paced and cohort programs. Quizzes are included starting on Basic, and more features like assignments and course compliance tools are available starting on Start. If your course business has more complex needs, you can upgrade to Thinkific Plus for more advanced tools.
Beyond courses, the Start and Grow plans let you make unlimited digital downloads, coaching, and webinars, along with the option to run a paid membership. Thinkific also includes 1 community on Basic and Start, with the option to add up to 3 communities on Grow.
Thinkific comes with a website and landing page builder, as well as an email automation tool so you can build marketing funnels. If you'd like to send a one-time bulk message to everyone in your business, you'll need the mass emailing feature, which is available on the Grow plan and above. Recently, they've also added more built-in AI tools to their lineup.
The tradeoff is the 10,000-student ceiling that applies across Basic, Start, and Grow. If your business scales past that, you'll need a custom Plus contract to keep growing.
Worth noting too: Basic doesn't include paid memberships, so if recurring revenue is part of your plan from day one, you'll want to budget for Start instead. Thinkific also doesn't include a blog, so if content marketing is part of how you grow, you'll need a separate tool for that.
What Kajabi does well
Kajabi is an all-in-one option with lots of built-in marketing features. You can create and sell courses, coaching, communities, and memberships, and they also have features for running your podcast.
Kajabi's course builder supports self-paced and cohort programs, drip content, and assessments, and you can charge a one-time price, subscription pricing, or offer payment plans. Kajabi includes 1 community on Basic and Growth, expanding to 3 on Pro.
You can make funnels, landing pages, and send marketing emails on every plan, which is helpful if you plan to use automated sequences to convert leads into customers. Kajabi also has newsletters built in so you can send messages to your list, and you can charge for newsletter access.
Like Thinkific, Kajabi has new AI features built into the product. You can use these tools based on a credit system, with 500 credits included on Growth and 1,000 credits included on Pro. Kajabi also includes AI tools to help you draft your newsletter fast. If you like using AI in your workflows, this is a perk.
The tradeoff is the higher price and tight product limit. At $179/month for just 5 products and 2,500 contacts, the Basic plan can be pricey for businesses just starting out, and if you have lots of things you want to make, you could use up your 5 product allotment very fast. And if you want to upgrade for unlimited products, you'll need the top-tier Pro plan ($499/month).
Why Podia might be a better fit
Kajabi's Basic plan caps you at 5 products and 2,500 contacts. Thinkific caps every standard plan at 10,000 students.
Podia takes a different approach.
There's no student cap on any plan, and your community, website, blog, and email marketing are included for everyone.
The Mover plan gives you 50 products for $49 a month with no wall waiting for you at 10,000 students. That’s much more space to expand into, no matter what size your business is today.
At Podia, we see your community as a single place where all your customers and members can connect, giving your business a cohesive feel. Your community plans live alongside your courses and products from day one.
Members get a single home feed showing everything they have access to, and you can bundle community access with courses, events, coaching, or any other product type without needing to be on a higher-tiered plan.
You can create paid resource libraries, bundle courses with coaching and community, create VIP access, and even host events that are only available for people on certain membership tiers. No matter how you want to build your business, you can probably do it in Podia.
Podia's course builder is known for being easy to use, and you can add videos, text, images, audio, files, and embeds into your course lessons. You can create quizzes and issue course completion certificates, and you can set your pricing to subscription, one-time, or payment plan.
Podia also gives you availability controls so you can set future start dates, seat limits, and access durations.
Podia Email is a full email marketing tool that's built in from day one, and it comes with campaigns, newsletters, automations, segmentation, and tagging. You get unlimited email sends on all plans, and each plan comes with a certain number of subscribers out of the box. If your list grows in the future, you can upgrade your email list size at any time.
According to course creator and founder of the 10K institute Khe Hy,
“We design all of our courses around two fundamental principles: A delightful learning experience and massive student outcomes. Podia's rich set of teaching tools, relentless focus on design and deep integrations across the creator ecosystem enable us to deliver for our students AND grow our sales.”
If you’re a solo creator building an online business around the things you love to teach, we made Podia just for you.
What’s the best fit for you ?
Thinkific makes sense if making unlimited courses is your top priority and you're comfortable with a student ceiling for now. It also makes sense if you’re a larger organization that needs Thinkific Plus features like SSO, SCORM compliance, and CRM integrations.
Kajabi makes sense if you're an established coach or course creator who depends on marketing automation and funnels to drive sales, and you’ve got the budget to invest in premium infrastructure from the start.
Podia is a great option if you're a creator or small business owner who wants your courses, community, website, and email connected without worrying about student caps or strict product limits.
You can upgrade to our unlimited plan when your business is ready so you never run out of space, and everything stays smoothly connected to your community and the people you serve.
Start your free trial today to see what you can make.
