Kajabi vs Teachable vs Podia vs Skool for Freelancers (2026)
The real 2026 prices and transaction fees for the four platforms freelancers use to sell courses and communities.
The Delivvo team· August 29, 2026 8 min read
Pick Teachable's Builder plan if you mostly sell structured courses and want no transaction fees at a fair monthly price. Pick Kajabi if you want the course, the email list, the funnels, and the website on one bill and can absorb the cost. Pick Podia if you want courses, a paid community, and digital downloads in one place without spending much. Pick Skool if the community is the actual product and the course is a bonus. Here is what each one really costs in 2026, where the fees bite, and how to choose based on what you sell.
The 2026 prices, side by side
Four platforms, four pricing philosophies. This is the entry price and the first plan that removes the platform's own cut, before any card processing.
| Platform | Entry plan | Fee on entry plan | First zero-platform-fee plan | |---|---|---|---| | Kajabi | $179/mo ($143 annual) | 0% platform fee | Basic (all plans 0% on Kajabi Payments) | | Teachable | $39/mo ($29 annual) | 7.5% | Builder $89/mo ($69 annual) | | Podia | $42/mo (Mover) | 5% | Shaker | | Skool | (Hobby) | | Pro ( processing) |
Keep reading
$84/mo
$9/mo
10%
$99/mo
2.9%
A few things the table hides. Kajabi charges no platform fee on any plan when you use Kajabi Payments, but you still pay card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic, 2.8% + $0.30 on Growth, and 2.7% + $0.30 on Pro (kajabi.com/pricing). Bring your own Stripe instead and Kajabi adds a surcharge of 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, and 0.5% on Pro, a change it rolled out at the start of 2026. Teachable's Starter plan looks cheap at $39/mo until you see the 7.5% fee on every sale, and its Builder plan at $89/mo ($69 billed annually) drops that to 0% (teachable.com/pricing). Podia's Mover plan is $42/mo with a 5% fee, and Shaker at $84/mo removes it (podia.com/pricing). Skool is the odd one: $9/mo on Hobby but a punishing 10% on every payment, falling to 2.9% on the $99/mo Pro plan, which is really just card processing (skool.com/pricing). On top of all of them, your payment processor still takes its standard cut, which for Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 per card charge (stripe.com/pricing).
Comparing course platform fees with a calculator and printed statements at a desk
Kajabi: the all-in-one, if the price fits
Kajabi is the priciest of the four and the most complete. Basic runs $179/mo, or $143/mo if you pay for the year up front. Growth is $249/mo ($199 annual) and Pro is $499/mo ($399 annual). For that you get course hosting plus email marketing, sales funnels, a website builder, and a 0% platform fee through Kajabi Payments. The pitch is consolidation. Cancel your separate email tool, your funnel builder, and your course host, and the $143 starts to look reasonable. If you only need to park a course somewhere, it is a lot of money for features you will not open. Freelancers who already have an audience and want one system to sell to it are the right fit. Everyone else is renting a marketing suite they could assemble cheaper in pieces.
Teachable: course-first and honest
Teachable does one thing well, which is host and sell courses. Avoid the Starter plan. At $39/mo with a 7.5% cut, a freelancer doing $3,000 a month in sales hands over $225 in fees before processing, which makes the $89/mo Builder plan ($69 annual, 0% fee) cheaper almost immediately. Growth at $189/mo ($139 annual) adds upsells, deeper reports, and completion certificates. There is no free plan, only a 7-day trial. Payments run through Teachable:pay on top of Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30. If courses are your product and you do not want a community or a storefront bolted on, Teachable is the clean choice.
Podia: the value pick for a bit of everything
Podia is what you reach for when you want courses, a paid community, digital downloads, and basic email under one login without the Kajabi bill. Mover is $42/mo and carries a 5% fee. Shaker at $84/mo removes the fee and turns on affiliate marketing, and the two plans cost the same once you clear roughly $840 a month in sales, after which Shaker wins every month. Earthquaker sits at $150/mo. There is no free plan anymore, just a 30-day trial. For a freelancer testing whether an audience will pay before committing to a heavier platform, Podia is the sensible middle.
Skool: community-first, mind the Hobby fee
Skool flips the model. The community is the front door: discussion, a leaderboard, gamified points, and courses tucked inside as a perk. Hobby is $9/mo, which sounds great until the 10% fee lands on every membership payment you collect. On a community charging $50 a month to a hundred members, that is $500 a month gone to Skool before Stripe even touches it. The $99/mo Pro plan cuts the platform fee to 2.9%, close to processing cost, so the math flips in Pro's favor once you have real revenue. Skool is the right tool when engagement and belonging are what people pay for, and the teaching is secondary.
When should a freelancer turn expertise into a product?
Watch for a few signals. You answer the same questions on every discovery call. Clients ask if you can "just teach me how to do it." You have a repeatable process written down somewhere. You have an email list or an audience that already trusts you. And your calendar is full, so selling more hours is not an option. A course or a paid community turns trapped knowledge into income that does not depend on your next booking. The pattern shows up in the data: MBO Partners counted 72.9 million independent workers in the US in 2025, and 5.6 million of them earned more than $100,000 (mbopartners.com). The high earners are usually the ones who stopped selling time one hour at a time. If you want a way to package what you do before you pick a platform, start with productized services for freelancers, and grow the list first with lead magnets that actually convert.
Sticky notes on a wall used to map out the modules of a new online course
Which one should you pick?
Here is the verdict by goal. If you sell courses to cold traffic and want email, funnels, and a site in one place, pick Kajabi and use the whole suite so the price earns its keep. If courses are the product and you want low fees at a fair price, pick Teachable's Builder plan and skip Starter entirely. If you want courses, a community, and downloads together on a budget, pick Podia, and move from Mover to Shaker once you pass about $840 a month. If the community itself is what people pay for, pick Skool, and jump to Pro before the 10% Hobby fee eats your margin. For recurring community or membership pricing, the same logic behind design-as-a-service subscription pricing applies: price for the second year, not the first month.
Delivvo gives freelancers one branded portal for proposals, contracts, file delivery, and invoices on the client work you still deliver by hand, so your service income stays organized while a course platform runs the storefront. Clients pay you directly through your own gateway, and Delivvo takes 0% of it. See how it works
Frequently asked questions
Do these platforms take a cut beyond the monthly fee?
Some do. Teachable's Starter charges 7.5%, Podia's Mover charges 5%, and Skool's Hobby charges 10% on every sale. Kajabi charges 0% through Kajabi Payments, and Teachable Builder, Podia Shaker, and the upper tiers drop the platform fee to zero. Card processing from Stripe or PayPal always applies on top.
Can I move my course to another platform later?
Yes, but it is manual. You can export your videos, PDFs, and student list, then re-upload them elsewhere. What does not transfer cleanly is your sales pages, member logins, and active subscriptions, so plan a migration for a quiet month and expect to rebuild the checkout.
Is Kajabi ever worth it for a solo freelancer?
Only if you use the marketing tools. If Kajabi replaces your email platform, funnel builder, and website host, the $143/mo annual price can beat the sum of those separate tools. If you just want to host a course, Teachable Builder or Podia will cost you a fraction of that.
What about payment processing fees?
Every platform here sits on top of a processor. Stripe's standard US rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per card charge, and PayPal is higher. That fee is separate from the platform's own cut, so a 0% transaction fee plan still costs you processing on every sale.
The takeaway
Match the platform to what you actually sell. Teachable Builder for pure courses, Podia for a bundle on a budget, Skool for a community that teaches, Kajabi when you want the whole engine in one place and will use it. Ignore the cheap entry plans with fat percentage fees. A 10% or 7.5% cut costs more than a higher monthly price the moment you make real sales. Run the numbers at your expected revenue, then commit.
