Whop vs Kajabi (2026): Fees, Features and Which to Pick

Kajabi vs Whop: the short version

Kajabi vs Whop is a choice between a monthly bundle and paying per sale. Kajabi charges $179 to $499 a month for courses, community, checkout, email marketing, funnels and a website builder under one login. Whop charges nothing monthly and takes a fee on each sale. Its apps cover courses, community, checkout and hosted websites, but it has no built-in email marketing.

If you mostly sell access to courses and a community run in Whop's own apps, Whop costs less at every revenue level we modeled below. If your sales come from email automations and funnels you built in Kajabi, weigh the savings against the work of rebuilding them, because Kajabi doesn't export either and on Whop the email side needs a third-party app. If you're weighing more than two platforms, we ranked six Kajabi alternatives by yearly cost.

What you pay on each platform

Whop's costs are per-sale fees only. Kajabi's are a monthly plan plus per-sale fees, and both add charges for international cards, disputes and faster payouts.

Prices as of October 2026, from each company's pricing and help pages. Sources at the end of this page.

Worked examples at three revenue levels

We used the same assumptions on both sides: a $49 monthly membership, US cards, Kajabi billed monthly through Kajabi Payments, and no add-ons, payout fees or currency conversion. Charges per month = revenue ÷ $49, and monthly cost = plan price + revenue × (card rate + subscription surcharge) + charges × $0.30. That rate is 3.2% on Whop, counting the 0.5% billing fee Whop lists "when enabled", and 3.6%, 3.5% or 3.4% on Kajabi Basic, Growth or Pro.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

At $10,000 a month, Whop costs $219 to $519 less per month, or $2,628 to $6,228 a year. Paying Kajabi yearly lowers each Kajabi column by $36, $50 or $100 a month, which narrows the gap without closing it. At $50,000 the gap is $379 to $599 a month, about 1% of revenue. On Pro, Kajabi's 2.7% card rate matches Whop's, so what's left is the $499 plan fee and the 0.2-point difference in subscription surcharges.

A few costs sit outside the table. Whop lists $0.07 per transaction for Radar fraud screening, about $14 a month at the $10,000 level, plus $0.03 whenever 3D Secure runs. If you connect your own Stripe to Kajabi instead of using Kajabi Payments, add Kajabi's third-party fee on top of Stripe's own rates: $200 a month on Basic, $100 on Growth or $50 on Pro at $10,000 in sales. Kajabi's add-ons also raise its side: 5,000 extra contacts cost $25 a month, 10 extra products $50 a month, and the branded app $199 a month below Pro.

Model your own price and volume in the fee calculator. Our pages on Whop's full fee schedule and Kajabi's plans, fees and 2026 price changes list every line item.

Courses

Both platforms host video courses well. Kajabi connects them more tightly to marketing automation.

Kajabi courses sit alongside coaching products and, on Growth and Pro, cohort courses. Its automations can grant an offer or send a certificate when a student takes an action, and students learn on the web or in the free Kajabi app. Growth includes 500 AI credits a month and Pro 1,000, which Kajabi spends on transcription, translation and AI dubbing.

Whop's Courses app groups lessons into chapters with video, text, PDFs and downloads. It adds quizzes and graded tests, completion certificates, video watermarking, and an option to require each lesson before the next one unlocks. Members use it on the web or in the Whop app for iOS and Android.

If your course is videos, worksheets and quizzes, either platform does the job. If you use Kajabi automations that tie course progress to emails and offers, list them before you move. Whop has no built-in automation builder, so you'd rebuild them with Zapier or an App Store app.

Community

Kajabi includes one community on Basic and Growth and three on Pro, with channels, challenges and gamification. Whop offers Chat and Forums apps, Events, built-in livestreaming, and access control for Discord and Telegram servers.

Some Kajabi creators struggle to get members active there. In a December 2025 post on r/SKOOL, one creator said Kajabi's community was hard to use, so they moved their members to a WhatsApp group. Whop's community pieces are separate apps you attach to a product, which suits chat-first groups and anyone already running a paid Discord.

Check one fee before you gate a Discord or Telegram server with Whop. Whop's fee page lists no charge for those apps, but each app's store listing says adding it puts a 3% fee on that product's payments. Until Whop settles it, budget for both cases: on $10,000 a month in $49 memberships, Whop's fees are about $381 without the 3% and about $681 with it (before the $0.07 Radar fee), more than Kajabi Basic ($600) and Growth ($660) at that level. At $50,000 it would be about $3,406, more than every Kajabi plan.

If community is the main product, Skool and Circle belong on your shortlist too. Our three-way Kajabi vs Skool vs Whop breakdown and the Whop vs Circle comparison cover them.

Email, funnels and your website

Kajabi bundles email marketing, funnels and a website builder into every plan. Whop builds and hosts websites through Whop Websites, with checkout built in, but has no built-in email marketing or funnel builder.

Every Kajabi plan includes unlimited marketing emails, landing pages and funnels, plus a website builder that can run on your own domain. Kajabi is also testing Amplify, an ad network inside Kajabi where creators pay to appear in other creators' email broadcasts, or get paid to feature them.

Whop Websites, launched in August 2026, hosts your site free at a whop.site address. You can start from a blueprint, describe the site to Whop's AI, write code, or paste your current site's URL and have Whop's AI rebuild it (announced October 2, 2026). Checkout, products and Whop's tracking pixel come built in, and since October 1, 2026 sites can run ecommerce stores with carts, variants and inventory. The limits: you edit through AI chat or code rather than a drag-and-drop editor, there's no built-in blog, custom domains currently need Whop's API, and SEO settings stop at a site title and description.

For selling, Whop has branded checkout with free trials, installments and buy now, pay later, plus multi-item carts, promo codes, tracking links, embeddable checkout, a first-party pixel and Whop Ads for Meta campaigns. It has no built-in one-click upsells, downsells or checkout A/B tests. Whop's 2025 blog introduced locked-app upsells and order bumps, but its current help docs don't cover them, so confirm they appear in your dashboard before you plan around them.

Email is the clearest gap. As of October 3, 2026, Whop has no broadcasts, sequences or segments. It sends automatic welcome and goodbye messages with an optional email copy, transactional emails, and forum posts by email. For newsletters and sequences, add a third-party email app from Whop's App Store or connect your own email tool.

Whichever way you go, Kajabi doesn't export email sequences, broadcasts or funnel pages. If you send weekly broadcasts and run evergreen funnels, list every sequence and page before you decide; that list is most of your migration work.

Payments, checkout and payouts

Whop gives you more ways to get paid and more ways to find buyers. Kajabi gives you free standard payouts and lets you bring your own processor, at a fee.

Kajabi Payments accepts cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, Klarna and Afterpay, and you can connect PayPal without a Kajabi fee. You are the seller in every Kajabi sale. Kajabi Sales Tax calculates and collects tax at checkout for $0.15 per transaction, and you file and pay it yourself. New Kajabi Payments accounts start on monthly payouts with a 7-business-day delay, and faster schedules can open up after the first sale.

Whop runs every sale through Whop Payments, so you can't connect your own Stripe. Checkout accepts cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, crypto and ACH, and approved sellers can offer buy now, pay later through about ten financing partners (Whop's pricing page says 10; its financing docs list 13 options), typically at 15% per financed sale. Funds become withdrawable 1 to 4 business days after a sale, and a standard payout then takes up to 5 business days, once you've passed ID and bank checks. Whop says it is the merchant of record on Whop Payments. Its optional tax service (2% when tax is collected) can either collect sales tax for you to remit, or collect and remit it for you in the US, EU and UK. Existing businesses default to handling tax themselves, and Whop handles tax on Discover marketplace sales.

Whop's distribution is the bigger difference. Its published Discover marketplace commission has been 0% since May 12, 2025, and its affiliate network lets other people sell your product for a commission you set. Kajabi's affiliate program needs Growth or Pro, and Amplify is still in beta.

When Kajabi is the better choice

Kajabi is the better pick if any of these describe your business.

• Your sales run on a funnel you built in Kajabi, from lead magnet to email sequence to webinar to checkout. Leaving means rebuilding every page and email by hand, because Kajabi exports neither.
• You send regular broadcasts and want email marketing in the same tool as your courses. Whop has no built-in broadcasts or sequences, so you'd add a third-party email app.
• Your website, blog, email list and courses all live in Kajabi, the plan fee is small next to your revenue, and the savings don't justify a rebuild.
• You sell through your own branded app. Kajabi Pro includes one, and Basic and Growth can add it for $199 a month.
• Most of your members pay through Kajabi Payments, and your audience is unlikely to re-enter a card. Asking them to sign up again risks losing some of them.
• You're on a Founder or Beta Invite plan that kept its old price when Kajabi repriced legacy plans in January 2026.

When Whop is the better choice

Whop is the better pick in these situations.

• You sell memberships, courses or community access, and Kajabi's plan fee is a large share of revenue. At $1,000 a month, Kajabi Basic's plan and fees take 22% of sales, while Whop's fees take about 4%.
• You want buyers you didn't bring yourself, through Whop's marketplace (0% published commission) or its affiliate network.
• Your community already runs on Discord or Telegram, which Whop can gate for you. Budget for a possible 3% fee on those products: the app listings say it applies, and Whop's fee page doesn't list it.
• You want crypto or a wider choice of buy now, pay later providers at checkout.

Whop's limits, stated plainly:

• No built-in email marketing (broadcasts, sequences or segments) and no funnel builder or one-click upsells. Email comes from a third-party App Store app or your own tool.
• Whop Websites has no drag-and-drop editor or built-in blog (you'd build one with Whop's AI or code), and custom domains currently need Whop's API.
• New accounts can face reserves and a $2,500 per-checkout cap until approved, and r/whop has 2026 reports of 90-day holds and slow replies from support.
• Whop has no Kajabi importer. Active and trialing card subscriptions on your own Stripe can move with Whop Migrations; free and one-time buyers claim access through a link, and Kajabi Payments subscribers re-subscribe.
• Course videos don't move automatically; you re-upload them or embed them from YouTube or Loom.
• You can't use your own Stripe account, so payout timing depends on Whop's risk decisions. Our Whop review for sellers covers holds and payouts in more depth.

What creators say

Public threads show the tradeoff from both sides. These are individual reports, not statistics.

About Kajabi:

• In September 2025, an r/kajabi user said the new pricing would add $1,200 a year to their bill, about 25% more for the same plan.
• In November 2025, another creator asked what people switched to, and said they still needed courses, email marketing, funnels, scheduling and a CRM without stitching six tools together.
• In December 2025, a creator described months of slow and sometimes wrong answers from support and said they were looking at other platforms.

About Whop:

• In August 2026, a new seller reported a 90-day reserve after about $20,000 in sales, despite a 0% dispute rate, and trouble getting answers.
• In September 2026, a seller said their account was suspended when they tried to withdraw about $1,040 and that they couldn't get a person to review it.
• Also in September 2026, a seller said Whop's AI support wouldn't pass a fee question to a human.

Switching from Kajabi to Whop

The switch is mostly exporting files and rebuilding. Kajabi gives you CSVs of contacts, subscriptions and offer purchases; our step-by-step Kajabi export guide shows where each one lives. The free wizard uses those files to set up member claim links, creates the Whop products and plans you confirm, and rebuilds your course outline from what you paste in, while you re-upload or embed the videos. Active and trialing card subscriptions on your own Stripe can move with Whop Migrations and keep their renewal dates (not Link, ACH or SEPA, and Stripe emails those customers a cancellation notice), and Kajabi Payments subscribers re-subscribe with a free trial that ends on their next renewal. The full plan, including a member email template, is in our Kajabi to Whop migration playbook, and you can start in the free migration tool when you're ready. When everyone has moved, cancel Kajabi once members are across so no subscription keeps billing.

How we compared

We compared published pricing, fees and features from each company's own pricing page, help center and product announcements, checked on October 3, 2026 and listed below. We didn't run paid test accounts for this page, and the worked examples use identical assumptions for both platforms. We earn a referral commission if you create a Whop through our links, and nothing from Kajabi. This page explains published fees. It isn't financial or tax advice.

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