Kajabi Pricing 2026: What Each Plan Costs After the Surcharge

Kajabi costs $179 a month on Basic, $249 on Growth, and $499 on Pro, dropping to $143, $199, and $399 on annual billing. There is no free plan and the trial runs 30 days. The number that decides most Kajabi bills is not on the plan card, though: if you process payments through your own Stripe account instead of Kajabi Payments, Kajabi adds a surcharge of 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Growth, and 0.5 percent on Pro. Pricing verified on Kajabi's own pricing page in August 2026. Last updated August 2026.

That surcharge arrived in January 2026, when Kajabi restructured its pricing for the first time in nearly a decade. It changes how the ladder works in a way that is genuinely counterintuitive: past a certain monthly revenue, the more expensive plan is the cheaper plan. Most pricing pages you will read about Kajabi have not been rechecked since the change, so here is the current picture with the arithmetic done.

Kajabi pricing: all plans compared

	Starter	Basic	Growth	Pro
Monthly	Not published	$179	$249	$499
Annual, per month	Not published	$143	$199	$399
Products	1	5	50	Unlimited
Funnels	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Admin users	2	2	11	26
Outside processor surcharge	5%	2%	1%	0.5%
Kajabi Payments rate	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30	2.8% + $0.30	2.7% + $0.30
Free trial	30 days	30 days	30 days	30 days
Free plan	None

Card processing rates shown are for US entities. Every figure above except the Starter price came off Kajabi's pricing page in August 2026.

The Starter plan has a feature list and no price

This is worth stating plainly because most articles gloss over it. Kajabi's pricing page shows Starter in the plan comparison with its limits filled in (1 product, unlimited funnels, 2 admin users, 5 percent surcharge on outside processors, 2.9 percent plus 30 cents through Kajabi Payments), but it does not display a dollar amount next to it.

Third-party sites widely report $89 a month, or $71 on annual billing, sometimes under the name Kickstarter. That figure may well be correct. We could not confirm it at source, so treat it as reported rather than verified, and check what you are actually offered at signup. Some coverage suggests the tier has limited availability, which would explain why it appears in the table without a price.

Either way, one product and a 5 percent cut of everything you sell is a starting point rather than a plan. If Starter really is $89 and you use your own Stripe, it costs more than Basic at $179 the moment you clear about $3,000 a month in sales, which is a lower bar than it sounds for anyone selling a course at $500.

The surcharge break-even: when the expensive plan gets cheaper

Software pricing normally works one way: you pay more to get more. Kajabi's surcharge ladder inverts that, because each tier up cuts the percentage it takes from your revenue. So the gap between two plans is a fixed monthly cost, and the saving from upgrading is a variable one that grows with your sales. They cross.

Here is where, on monthly billing, assuming you process through your own Stripe account:

Staying on	Instead of	Monthly saving	Surcharge difference	Upgrading pays off above
Starter (reported $89)	Basic $179	$90	5% vs 2%	about $3,000/mo in sales
Basic $179	Growth $249	$70	2% vs 1%	about $7,000/mo in sales
Growth $249	Pro $499	$250	1% vs 0.5%	about $50,000/mo in sales

On annual billing the numbers move in your favor slightly: Basic at $143 against Growth at $199 is a $56 gap, so the crossover falls to roughly $5,600 a month.

The practical takeaway is that the plan you should be on is a function of revenue, not of features. If you are selling $8,000 a month through your own Stripe on Basic to save $70, that decision is costing you money every month. If you are on Pro at $499 selling $12,000 a month, you are paying $250 extra to save $60 in surcharge, and Growth is the correct plan.

None of this applies if you use Kajabi Payments, which is the point of the design. Run the numbers against your actual monthly sales rather than the number you hope to hit, because the crossover is sensitive to it and creator revenue is lumpy across launches. If your income arrives from several places and you genuinely do not know the monthly figure, that is worth fixing first with something that pulls every payout into one running total before you pick a tier off a hunch.

Kajabi Payments or your own Stripe?

Kajabi Payments charges 2.9 percent plus 30 cents on Basic, 2.8 percent on Growth, and 2.7 percent on Pro, for US entities. Those are ordinary card processing rates, roughly what Stripe charges directly, and no surcharge applies on top.

Bring your own Stripe and you pay Stripe's rate plus Kajabi's surcharge. On Basic that is roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents to Stripe plus 2 percent to Kajabi, so close to 5 percent all in. The gap is not the platform being punitive so much as it is Kajabi pricing the convenience of you keeping your own processor relationship.

Reasons people keep their own Stripe anyway are real: an existing payout history and reserve terms, accounting integrations already wired to Stripe, subscriptions billing from Stripe for other products, or operating in a country where Kajabi Payments is not supported. If none of those apply to you, using Kajabi Payments is the straightforward way to delete the surcharge from the conversation entirely.

What actually changes between the tiers

Funnels are unlimited on every plan, which surprises people who expect that to be the metered thing. What Kajabi meters is products and admin seats.

Products go 1, 5, 50, unlimited. A product is a course, a coaching offer, a membership, a podcast, or a community, so the count runs out faster than it reads. Bundling a course with its workbook and a community can be three products.

Admin users go 2, 2, 11, 26. Note that Basic gives you no more seats than Starter. If you have a VA, a course manager, and a customer support person, you are on Growth at $249 for seat count alone regardless of revenue.

The surcharge goes 5, 2, 1, 0.5 percent, as covered above.

Beyond those three, higher tiers add affiliate program access, advanced automations, and code editor access, but the seat count and the surcharge are what actually decide the plan for most buyers. Both are easy to model before you buy, which is more than can be said for platforms that meter contacts.

Why did Kajabi raise its prices?

Kajabi restructured in January 2026 after nearly a decade of stable pricing. Reported changes include Growth moving from $159 to $199 a month on annual billing, about a 25 percent increase, alongside the introduction of the outside-processor surcharge. The change drew real pushback in creator communities, mostly aimed at the surcharge rather than the headline increases, because a percentage of revenue behaves very differently from a subscription when your business grows.

The strategic logic is not hard to read. A flat subscription earns the same from a creator doing $2,000 a month and one doing $200,000. A revenue share scales with the customer. Kajabi has effectively moved to a hybrid, with Kajabi Payments as the route that keeps the arrangement simple for both sides.

How Kajabi compares on price

Platform	Entry price	Tier most buyers land on	Cut of your sales
Kajabi	Not published	$179/mo Basic	5% to 0.5% on outside processors
Kartra	$59/mo Essentials	$119/mo Starter	5% on Essentials, 0% above
ClickFunnels	$97/mo Launch	$197/mo Scale	None published, 1% on outside processors (reported)
Systeme.io	$0 free forever	$47/mo Webinar	0% on every tier
GoHighLevel	$97/mo Starter	$297/mo Unlimited	None, usage billed on top

Kajabi is the most expensive per month of the five and the only one that publishes a percentage above its entry tier. What it buys you is the most polished course and membership experience in the group, a genuinely good mobile app for students, and email plus site plus checkout that do not need to be wired together. Creators who have used both usually say Kajabi feels finished in a way Kartra does not.

Whether that is worth $179 against Kartra's $119 depends on how much of the polish your buyers see. It matters for a $2,000 cohort program. It matters much less for a $47 mini-course. The full field, including the transaction-fee math across all of them, is on our ClickFunnels alternatives roundup, with the individual ladders in the ClickFunnels pricing guide and the GoHighLevel pricing guide.

Frequently asked questions about Kajabi pricing

How much does Kajabi cost per month?

Kajabi costs $179 a month for Basic, $249 for Growth, and $499 for Pro on monthly billing, or $143, $199, and $399 on annual. A Starter tier appears in the comparison table without a published price; third parties report $89. Add 5 percent to 0.5 percent of your sales if you process through your own Stripe rather than Kajabi Payments.

Does Kajabi have a free plan?

No. Kajabi offers a 30-day free trial, which is the longest in its competitive set, but there is no free forever tier. If a genuinely free plan is a requirement, Systeme.io has one with 2,000 contacts, 3 funnels, 1 course, unlimited email sends, and no transaction fee, though the editor and templates are noticeably plainer than Kajabi's.

Does Kajabi take a percentage of sales?

Yes, if you use an outside payment processor. Kajabi charges 5 percent on Starter, 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Growth, and 0.5 percent on Pro when payments run through your own Stripe account. Use Kajabi Payments instead and there is no surcharge, only ordinary card processing at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, falling to 2.7 percent on Pro.

What is the cheapest Kajabi plan?

Starter, though Kajabi does not display its price on the pricing page and third parties report $89 a month. On paper it is the cheapest; in practice the 5 percent surcharge and the one-product limit mean Basic at $179 becomes cheaper once you sell roughly $3,000 a month through an outside processor. Price the surcharge, not just the subscription.

Can you use your own Stripe with Kajabi?

Yes. Kajabi supports outside payment providers on every tier, and the trade is the surcharge: 5 percent on Starter down to 0.5 percent on Pro, on top of whatever Stripe charges you. Creators usually keep their own Stripe for accounting continuity, existing integrations, or country support. If none of those apply, Kajabi Payments removes the surcharge entirely.

Is Kajabi cheaper than ClickFunnels?

No, on both counts. Kajabi Basic is $179 against ClickFunnels Launch at $97 and Scale at $197, ClickFunnels publishes no revenue share on any tier while Kajabi publishes 2 percent on Basic through an outside processor, though reviewers report ClickFunnels adds 1 percent of its own if you connect your own Stripe. Kajabi is the stronger course and membership platform; ClickFunnels is the stronger checkout with order bumps and upsells.

Is Kajabi worth the money?

It is worth it if you sell courses or memberships as the main business and the student experience affects what you can charge. The mobile app, the community features, and the finish of the product genuinely support higher prices. It is poor value if you mainly need landing pages and email, where $179 a month buys far more capability elsewhere.

Does Kajabi charge per contact?

No, and that is a real advantage over most of its competitors. Kajabi meters products and admin seats, not contacts or email subscribers, so a list that grows does not move you up a tier. Contact-metered platforms look cheaper at 1,000 contacts and stop looking cheap at 25,000, which is the comparison most roundups get wrong.

Before you commit to a tier

Pick the plan from two numbers: how many admin seats you need, and what you sell in a typical month. Seats are the hard gate (2 on Basic, 11 on Growth), and revenue decides whether the surcharge or the subscription is the bigger line. Everything else on the feature comparison is noise for most buyers.

And before you conclude that the platform is why sales are flat, check the page doing the selling. Course sales pages fail for the same reasons every other page does: a headline about the curriculum instead of the outcome, a buy button that never appears above the fold on a phone, testimonials placed after the price rather than before it, and a checkout that asks for more than it needs. Those are page problems, and moving them to a different platform changes nothing about them.

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