Course Platforms: Teachable vs. Thinkific vs. Kajabi — What the Transaction Fees Actually Cost

A business selling $50,000 a year in course revenue on Teachable's entry tier is paying $39/month in subscription fees and roughly $2,500/year in transaction fees on top — a number that never shows up in a monthly-price comparison, because it scales with sales, not with the plan you picked. That's the actual decision point between these three platforms: not which one has the nicest course builder, but which one takes a cut of your revenue, and how big that cut gets once sales are actually happening.

Teachable: cheap to start, with a transaction fee that scales against you

Teachable's Basic tier (roughly $39/month) is the cheapest entry point of the three, and its course builder is genuinely the easiest to learn — upload video, set a price, start selling, with the least setup friction. The detail easy to miss on the pricing page: the Basic tier carries a per-transaction fee (commonly around 5%) that only goes away on a higher tier. For a course business doing modest volume, that fee is a rounding error. Past roughly $30-50K/year in course sales, it's a bigger number than the gap between Teachable's Basic and Pro plans — and most creators don't run that math until a year-end revenue review.

Thinkific: no transaction fee at any tier, priced accordingly

Thinkific's differentiator is structural, not cosmetic: no transaction fee on paid courses at any plan tier, including its entry tier (roughly $36/month on an annual plan). Its course-builder is more customizable than Teachable's, and its quiz/assessment engine is the strongest of the three — genuinely useful for certification-style courses that need graded assessments, not just video playback. The tradeoff is a steeper initial setup for that added customization, which is a real cost in time for a first-time course creator who just wants to publish quickly.

Kajabi: the highest price, bundling tools you'd otherwise buy separately

Kajabi's pricing (roughly $150-400+/month depending on tier) is the highest of the three, and it's priced that way because it bundles email marketing, landing pages, and sales-funnel/pipeline tools alongside the course platform itself — for a business that would otherwise be paying separately for an email tool and a funnel builder, that bundle can be a genuine consolidation win rather than a premium. The failure mode is buying Kajabi for the course builder alone and never using the marketing tools it's priced around — at that point, it's meaningfully more expensive than Teachable or Thinkific for the same core job.

The decision rule

Just starting out, low volume, want the simplest builder: Teachable Basic, and revisit the tier once sales pass roughly $30-50K/year. Established creator or certification-heavy content: Thinkific, for the fee-free structure and stronger assessment tools. Already need (or would otherwise buy) email marketing and funnel tools: Kajabi's bundle is a real consolidation, not just a premium tier.

Run the free StackMatch audit to see how a course platform fits into the rest of your marketing and finance stack — and whether a bundled option would actually consolidate spend you're already making elsewhere.