Skool vs Kajabi: Pricing, Fees and Which to Pick

Skool costs less, and Kajabi does more. For a $49-a-month community, our arithmetic puts Skool Pro at $185, $443 and $1,820 a month in fees at 50, 200 and 1,000 members, against $229, $487 and $1,864 on Kajabi Basic. Pick Skool if the community is the product, Kajabi if you also need a website, funnels and email.

Both prices come from the companies' own pages on 2 November 2026, and Circle is included as the third option most people compare. If you have not decided what to sell yet, our course creation guide covers picking a topic, testing demand and pricing; this page is only about where to host it.

What do Skool, Kajabi and Circle cost?

Sources: Skool pricing and Skool's payments FAQ (updated 29 September 2026); Kajabi pricing; Circle pricing and Circle's transaction fee article. Kajabi's card rates are for US entities. Kajabi Basic charges 2% extra if you use a third-party payment processor other than PayPal.

Kajabi's FAQ says "Kajabi does not take a revenue share as a platform", only a card processing fee through Kajabi Payments. Skool runs payments through its own merchant account and charges one combined fee. Circle charges its own percentage and you pay Stripe on top.

What does each cost at 50, 200 and 1,000 members?

This is the comparison that matters for a community business. Every member pays $49 a month on a US card. Each row adds the plan price to the per-transaction fees.

That is our arithmetic from the published rates. As a share of revenue at 1,000 members, Skool Pro takes 3.7%, Kajabi Basic 3.8%, Circle Professional 6.4% and Skool Hobby 10.6%.

Three things the table leaves out:

• International cards. Skool's FAQ notes Stripe charges an additional 1.5% for international cards and 0.5% for subscriptions. Run your own mix through the Stripe fee calculator.
• Kajabi's limits. Basic allows 5 products, 2,500 contacts and 2 admin users. Past 2,500 contacts you move to Growth at $199 a month billed yearly.
• Circle's higher tiers. Circle Business at $199 a month billed yearly drops its fee to 1%. At 1,000 members that plan comes to about $2,753 a month on our arithmetic, still above Skool Pro and Kajabi Basic.

What does each cost over a year?

Yearly billing cuts the plan price on all three, which matters most at small member counts, where the plan is most of your cost.

Our arithmetic from the monthly prices above. Skool's page advertises "2 months free" on yearly billing without showing the yearly price, and Circle's page lists only yearly prices, so check both at checkout.

Before paying a year upfront on any of them, run a month on the monthly plan. Kajabi's yearly saving on Basic is $432, which is real money, but not if you move platforms in month three.

How fast do you get paid?

Skool's payments FAQ says "The available balance is paid out every Wednesday directly to your bank account", with US deposits typically taking 1 to 3 business days and international ones 3 to 5. Your first payout can take up to 14 days. Kajabi and Circle pay through Kajabi Payments and your own connected Stripe account, so payout timing follows those processors' schedules for your country.

For a new community, the first-payout delay is the one to plan around: if you launch on 2 November, do not count on Skool money in your bank before mid-November.

What about Whop as a fourth option?

Whop comes up in "Skool vs Whop" searches because it also sells access to communities, often through Discord. It prices each feature separately rather than charging a plan fee: card processing is 2.7% + 30 cents per domestic transaction, plus 1.5% for international cards, with optional add-ons such as 2% tax remittance, per its fee page. On a $49 membership that is $1.62 per member before add-ons, so 1,000 members cost about $1,623 a month on our arithmetic, below Skool Pro's $1,820, with no plan fee at all.

The trade-off is that Whop's costs and features depend on which add-ons you switch on and where your members gather (often Discord), so compare the whole setup, not only the fee. Our Whop guide covers its costs, disputes and the discovery problem in detail.

When should you move from Skool Hobby to Pro?

Hobby's 10% fee is cheap to start and expensive to grow on. Pro saves 7.1 percentage points on every transaction, and costs $90 a month more. The saving covers the extra $90 once paid revenue passes about $1,270 a month (our arithmetic: $90 divided by 7.1%). At $49 a month, that is about 26 paying members. Skool's pricing page also advertises "2 months free" on yearly billing, which moves the crossover lower.

Does your price change which platform wins?

Yes, because of the fixed 30 cents. On Skool Pro, 2.9% + 30 cents is what each payment costs you:

Our arithmetic. The same pattern holds on Kajabi Basic and on Stripe-based platforms, because they charge the same 2.9% + 30 cents. A cheap community pays proportionally more in fees and needs far more members to cover any plan price. At $9 a month you need 11 members just to cover Skool Pro's $99 plan before fees; at $49 you need 3.

If you are unsure what to charge, price your community against what members get from it each month (calls, feedback, a course) rather than against other communities. A higher price with fewer, more committed members is also less work to run.

What does Kajabi give you that Skool does not?

Skool's pricing page lists the same features on both plans: unlimited members, courses, videos and live calls, a custom URL and affiliates. It is a community with courses inside it.

Kajabi's Basic plan, per its pricing page, includes 1 website, 1 community, 5 products and unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails. That is the case for paying more: if you would otherwise pay separately for a website builder and an email tool, Kajabi replaces them.

The question to ask is where your buyers come from. If they come from your YouTube channel or social posts straight into a community, Skool has what you need. If you sell through email sequences and sales pages, Kajabi's tools do work you would otherwise pay another company to do.

Is Circle a better middle option?

Circle is the option for communities run by several people: its plans include 3 admins on Professional and 5 on Business. It costs more in fees than both Skool Pro and Kajabi Basic at every member count in our table, because its own percentage sits on top of Stripe's processing and the 0.7% Stripe Billing fee its help centre lists for subscriptions.

If the community is a side feature of a larger business with a team, the extra admins may be worth it. If the community is the business, the fee gap at 1,000 members (about $1,300 a month against Skool Pro) is hard to justify.

Who is behind Skool?

Skool's co-founder and CEO is Sam Ovens, per his Skool profile. Before Skool he sold consulting courses through Consulting.com. Our Sam Ovens review covers that business: courses priced $2,000 to $6,000 sold through webinars and sales calls, and a rating of 2.1 out of 5. That review is about the course business, not the software. Skool's own fees, above, are low and published, which is the part that affects you as a creator using it.

Which should you pick?

• Paid community first, small budget: Skool Hobby until about $1,270 a month in paid revenue, then Pro.
• Courses sold through email and sales pages: Kajabi Basic, and budget for Growth once you pass 2,500 contacts.
• A community run by a team inside a larger business: Circle, accepting the higher fees.
• Selling one-off digital downloads, not memberships: none of these. Our comparison of platforms to sell digital products covers cheaper options for that.

Communities for specific niches have their own playbooks: online fitness coaching uses community check-ins to keep clients, and Discord marketing covers paid Discord servers as an alternative to a hosted platform.

Who should skip this?

• Anyone without an audience who wants a platform to bring members. Skool lets people browse communities, but a new one with no members is easy to miss. Members come from content you already publish.
• Anyone planning to charge before they have helped anyone. Run a free community or a few free calls first, and charge once people ask for more.
• Anyone who wants a course store with no community. You will pay for features you do not use.
• Anyone who cannot show up weekly for at least three months. A paid community is a promise of regular calls, posts and answers, and members are paying for that promise every month.

Your first 30 days, dated

• Week of 2 Nov: Start Skool's 14-day free trial on Hobby. Set up one course module and one weekly live call.
• Week of 9 Nov: Invite 20 people from your existing audience for free. Run the first call. Note the questions they ask.
• Week of 16 Nov: Before the trial ends on 16 November, decide whether to keep paying. Add a paid tier at a price you can defend from the calls.
• Week of 23 Nov: Ask your 20 free members who would pay. Count the yes answers. That is your real demand.
• 30 Nov: If paid revenue is heading past $1,270 a month, switch to Pro. If you need sales pages and email sequences to sell it, price Kajabi instead.