Skool, Kajabi and Circle all let you sell a course and run a community, so on the surface they look alike. They are built for different coaches. We checked each platform's official pricing pages in October 2026 and compared price, fees, community, courses, marketing tools and who really owns your audience, so you can pick once and stop switching.
Choose Skool if your business is a paid community and you want it simple and cheap to start. Choose Kajabi if you sell courses and coaching and want email, funnels and a website in one place. Choose Circle if you want a polished, branded community with more control over spaces, events and design.
Who this is for: Coaches and consultants choosing a platform to sell a course, membership or community.
At the time of writing (October 2026), the official pricing pages show three very different models. Skool has two plans: Hobby at $9 a month with a 10% + 30¢ transaction fee, and Pro at $99 a month with 2.9% + 30¢ on sales up to $899 and 3.9% + 30¢ above that (source: skool.com/pricing and Skool's Payments FAQ). Paying yearly gets you two months free.
Kajabi has three plans: Basic from $179 a month ($143 a month billed yearly), Growth from $249 ($199 yearly) and Pro from $499 ($399 yearly). Kajabi says it takes no revenue share. You pay card processing through Kajabi Payments (2.9% + $0.30 on Basic in the US, a little less on higher plans), or a 2%, 1% or 0.5% surcharge if you use your own processor (source: kajabi.com/pricing).
Circle starts from $89 a month on Professional, $199 on Business and $419 on Scale, all quoted on yearly billing, with a custom Circle Plus plan above that. On top of Stripe's card fees, Circle takes 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus (source: circle.so/pricing).
Here is what that means in practice. Say you run a $100 a month membership with 50 members, so $5,000 a month. On Skool Hobby you would lose roughly $524 a month to plan and fees. On Skool Pro it is roughly $259. On Kajabi Basic (monthly billing) it is roughly $339, but that includes your email and funnels. On Circle Professional it is $89 plus $100 in Circle's fee, plus Stripe's own charges. The cheapest sticker price is rarely the cheapest month once you start selling.
Skool is a community first. Every group gets one feed, a classroom for courses, a calendar for live calls and a points and leaderboard system that rewards members for posting. Members use the same Skool app on iOS and Android for every group they join. It is deliberately plain: you cannot redesign it, and that is the point. Coaches who want members talking every day tend to like it.
Circle is also community first, but with far more control. You build separate spaces (20 on Professional, 30 on Business, 100 on Scale), run events and live streams within plan limits, and add courses alongside. It suits a coach who wants a cohort space, an alumni space and a paid inner circle under one brand. A fully branded iOS and Android app is only on Circle Plus.
Kajabi is a course and coaching business first, with community as one part of it. You get one community on Basic and Growth and three on Pro, plus courses, cohort courses and coaching products. The course side is the most complete of the three. The community side works well for members who already bought something, but it is not built to be the main draw in the way Skool's and Circle's are.
A simple test: if people would join mainly to talk to each other and to you, lean towards Skool or Circle. If they would join mainly to work through your programme, lean towards Kajabi.
This is where the three split hardest. Kajabi includes unlimited marketing emails, funnels and landing pages on every plan, with contact limits of 2,500, 25,000 and 100,000. You can build a lead magnet page, an email sequence and a sales page without paying for another tool. If you are starting from nothing, that saves you stitching together three or four apps.
Skool has no funnel builder or landing pages beyond your group's about page. Its email tool is a broadcast that sends a post to your members, which is useful for reminders but is not email marketing to leads who have not joined yet. Most Skool coaches pair it with a separate email tool and a page builder.
Circle sells email as an add-on, the Email Hub, listed at $99 a month for 10,000 contacts (included on Circle Plus). Workflows and automations start on the Business plan. It has a website area, but no funnel builder like Kajabi's.
Getting found is Skool's unusual strength. Skool has a public discovery page where people browse communities, and its Growth Boost feature (on by default) takes a 30% commission only on customers Skool itself brings you, according to Skool's Payments FAQ. Your own customers pay only the normal fee. Kajabi and Circle do not advertise a marketplace like this, so every member comes from your own marketing. Do not plan your business around discovery, though. It is a bonus, not a pipeline.
On all three, your members pay you and your content is yours. The difference is how much of the relationship lives inside someone else's product. Kajabi keeps your contacts in your own email list with your own website and domain, so the audience feels like yours even though it sits on Kajabi's servers.
Skool members have a Skool account and use the Skool app, where they also see other communities. On Hobby, Skool shows suggested communities to your members; Pro lets you hide them. Payouts run through a new Stripe Express account set up by Skool, prices are in US dollars and you cannot connect an existing Stripe account. Before you commit, check exactly what member data you can export.
Circle sits between the two. Members join your branded space on your custom domain, you connect your own payments, and the Email Hub add-on lets you keep a list there. Whichever you pick, build an email list you control from day one. If you ever move platforms, the list is what moves with you.
Prices and features below come from each platform's official pricing pages at the time of writing (October 2026). Prices change often, so check current pricing before you sign up.
| Feature | Skool | Kajabi | Circle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price from | $9 a month (Hobby), $99 (Pro) | $179 a month ($143 billed yearly) | $89 a month (billed yearly) |
| Platform transaction fee | 10% on Hobby; 2.9% to 3.9% + 30¢ on Pro (includes processing) | None; Kajabi Payments from 2.7% to 2.9% + $0.30, or 0.5% to 2% with your own processor | 2% Professional, 1% Business and Scale, plus Stripe fees |
| Community | Yes, one feed per group, gamification | Yes, 1 community (3 on Pro) | Yes, 20 to 100 spaces by plan |
| Courses | Yes, unlimited | Yes, plus cohort courses and coaching | Yes |
| Live calls and calendar | Yes, unlimited live calls and calendar | Live events through community | Events and live streams, limits by plan |
| Email marketing | Broadcast to members only | Unlimited marketing emails | Email Hub add-on, $99 a month for 10,000 contacts |
| Funnels and landing pages | No | Unlimited | Website area, no funnel builder |
| Payments | Built in, via Skool's Stripe Express, USD prices | Kajabi Payments or your own processor | Built in |
| Custom domain | Custom URL | Yes | Yes, all plans |
| Mobile app | Shared Skool app, iOS and Android | Kajabi member app; branded app on Pro | Branded app on Circle Plus only |
| Discovery or marketplace | Yes, with a 30% cut only on members Skool brings | No | No |
The new coach testing a paid group. You have a small following and want to see if people will pay $30 a month to be in a room with you. Pick Skool. Start on Hobby while it is free or tiny, then move to Pro as soon as you are taking real money, because 10% adds up fast. Use our consulting rate calculator to see how many members you need to replace one-to-one income.
The course creator with a signature programme. You sell a $997 course, run a launch twice a year and need a sales page, a webinar sign-up page and an email sequence. Pick Kajabi. The higher monthly price is offset by not paying for separate email and funnel tools, and everything talks to everything else.
The coach with several groups or a premium brand. You run a cohort, an alumni group and a high-ticket mastermind, and you want them to look and feel like your business, not a shared app. Pick Circle. Its spaces, events and design control suit a layered offer, and Business adds the automations you will want once there are a few hundred members.
The one-to-one coach adding a group offer. Most of your income is private clients booked through calls, and you want a lower-priced group to sit under them. Pick Skool if the group is mainly a community, or Kajabi if you also want the email and pages to bring leads in. Price the group so it feeds your main offer rather than undercutting it; our guide on how to price your coaching offer walks through it.
Here is the honest part. A platform is a room. Skool, Kajabi and Circle all give you a good room, and none of them fills it. They will not write the content that brings strangers in, they will not follow up with the people who downloaded your freebie and went quiet, and they will not have the sales conversation for you. Skool's discovery page helps a little, but it does not replace your own marketing.
So before you migrate, ask a harder question: is the platform really the problem? If you have an audience that likes you but does not buy, start with how to turn your audience into paying customers. If people find you but do not turn into calls, map the path from post to lead magnet to follow-up to call with our sales funnel for coaches. Switching platforms with a leaky funnel just moves the leak.
The DIY route works: pick the platform that matches your offer from the scenarios above, set up one lead magnet, one email follow-up sequence and one clear invitation to buy, and run it for 90 days before judging anything. If you would rather someone else built and ran that system, that is where a done-for-you studio fits. We find where your marketing is losing people, build the content, funnel and follow-up around whichever platform you choose, and run it with you each week. Start with a free marketing audit and we will tell you what to fix first.
On sticker price, yes: Skool starts at $9 a month and Kajabi at $179 a month (October 2026). But Skool's Hobby plan takes 10% of every sale and Skool has no email marketing or funnels, so once you are selling and paying for other tools the gap narrows. Work it out on your own numbers before deciding.
Yes. Every Kajabi plan includes at least one community, so you can run courses and a community in one place. It works best when members join to do your programme; if the community itself is the main product, Skool or Circle are built more around that.
Skool is simpler, cheaper to start and has a discovery page that can send you members. Circle gives you more spaces, more design control, your own branding and stronger automations on higher plans. Pick Skool for one simple group, Circle for several groups under a premium brand.
It can. Skool has a public discovery page, and its Growth Boost feature takes a 30% commission only on customers Skool brings you, according to its Payments FAQ. Treat it as a bonus; most members will still come from your own content and follow-up.
With Skool, usually yes, because its broadcast only reaches people already in your group. Circle offers an Email Hub add-on at $99 a month for 10,000 contacts. Kajabi includes unlimited marketing emails on every plan.
Send us your setup and we will tell you honestly where it is leaking customers and what to fix first. Free, no pitch.