Kajabi Free Trial (2026): Length, Card Rules and What It Costs

As of October 2026, the Kajabi free trial runs 14 days as standard, a card is optional, and if you enter one, Kajabi charges it for your first subscription period on the day the trial ends. Staying costs from $179 a month on Basic, or $143 a month billed annually. There is no free plan to fall back on, and a few features a coach would want to test stay locked until you pay.

That is the short answer. The rest of this guide covers what the lock-outs mean for a coaching business, what happens to your work on the last day, what you would really pay at three business sizes, and how to use the 14 days so you reach a clear decision. We make Coachful, one of the alternatives covered here, so weigh our view accordingly. Kajabi's facts below come from its own pricing page and help center, as listed in October 2026.

How long is the Kajabi free trial?

The standard Kajabi trial lasts 14 days. Kajabi's help center adds that your trial length is set when you sign up, and your exact end date appears in a banner at the top of Settings > Subscription & Billing.

That wording matters because the length has not always been the same. Our September 2026 records cite an older "1 month on us" offer, while the help center now gives 14 days as the standard. If a partner link or promotion offers something else, trust the banner in your own account over any blog post, this one included.

Does the Kajabi free trial need a credit card?

No, a card is optional according to Kajabi's documentation, but what happens next depends on whether you enter one. The help center describes both routes, so check which one your sign-up form presents.

• With a card. Kajabi places an authorization hold to confirm the card works. It appears as a pending transaction, is released once the card is validated, and drops off your statement on your bank's schedule rather than Kajabi's. If the card is declined or short of funds, the account is not created. On the last day of the trial, Kajabi charges the card and your paid plan starts unless you have cancelled.
• Without a card. There is no hold and nothing can be charged automatically. When the trial ends, Kajabi asks you to pick a plan before you can continue working.

For most coaches, skipping the card is the better choice if the form lets you. You lose nothing Kajabi documents as card-dependent, and a forgotten trial cannot turn into a charge. If you do enter a card, a pending amount right after sign-up is almost certainly the hold, not a payment.

What stays locked during the trial?

Most of Kajabi is open during the trial, but its email templates, several automation actions and bulk contact imports stay locked until you activate a paid plan. For a coach, those happen to be the parts that decide whether a client's first week runs properly.

• Editing site-wide email templates
• Editing email content in the Theme Builder
• Sending a test email from an email template
• Automation actions: send an email, send a certificate, send a single-use coupon, grant an offer, and register to an event
• Bulk contact imports (you can still add contacts one at a time or collect them through forms)

Two practical results follow. First, you cannot fully test a welcome sequence: an automation that emails a new client and grants them access to a program uses the locked actions. Second, you cannot find out during the trial how your existing list imports. If moving 800 contacts is part of your plan, that step waits until you are paying, or you add them one by one.

Activating a paid plan unlocks all of it, but it also ends the trial immediately, so any unused days are gone. Kajabi's trial article does not say whether you can take live payments during the trial or which plan's limits apply while you are on it. Neither term is published there, so ask Kajabi support before planning a real launch inside the 14 days.

What happens when the Kajabi free trial ends?

If a card is on file, Kajabi charges it on the day the trial ends and your plan begins. If there is no card, you are stopped at a prompt to pick a plan, and your work stays saved until you do.

Four details are worth knowing before that day arrives:

• Cancel before the end date, not on it. The charge lands on the end day and Kajabi tells you to cancel before that date. It does not publish a cut-off time, so treat the day before as your real deadline.
• Your first period is what you selected. The charge covers your first subscription period. On annual billing, the per-month figures below add up to $1,716 for Basic, $2,388 for Growth and $4,788 for Pro, so confirm your billing period before the trial ends.
• A lapsed trial blocks your dashboard and your site. Nothing is deleted, but you need an active paid plan to get back into the dashboard and to show your site to members.
• How long a lapsed trial is kept is not published. The help center tells you to ask support. Our September 2026 records show data is removed 90 days after a paid account is cancelled, but that older note does not settle what applies to a lapsed trial.

One more billing detail applies after conversion. If a payment fails, the account goes past due. Kajabi suspends a past-due account after 35 days and cancels it after 50 days, and says two charges appearing together usually mean a retried invoice and a current one were collected at once.

What does Kajabi cost after the trial?

Kajabi has three public plans in October 2026: Basic at $179 a month, Growth at $249 and Pro at $499, with annual billing bringing them to $143, $199 and $399 a month. The Kickstarter plan you may see mentioned elsewhere is not on the public pricing page.

Annual billing saves $432 a year on Basic, $600 on Growth and $1,200 on Pro, compared with paying monthly for 12 months. For more on the plans themselves, see our full Kajabi pricing breakdown.

What does each Kajabi plan add?

Each step up mostly raises limits and adds scale features, so the right question is which limit you would hit first.

• Basic gives you unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails. The limits that bite are 5 products, 2,500 contacts and no AI credits. A coach with a one-to-one offer, a group program, a course and a couple of lead magnets is already near the product cap.
• Growth adds automation and scale features, including an affiliate program, along with 50 products, 25,000 contacts and 500 AI credits. The 11 admin users suit a small team.
• Pro adds full customization, dedicated support and room for multiple brands, with 3 communities and 3 websites. Kajabi's comparison table showed the branded mobile app as Pro-only on October 25, 2026.

One inconsistency is worth checking yourself. The same pricing page lists the branded mobile app as included, described as a "$199/mo value", without naming the tier in that spot. If your clients need that app, confirm with Kajabi which plan you need before you decide.

What fees sit on top of the plan?

Beyond the subscription, you pay processing on every sale, plus a Kajabi surcharge if you use a provider other than Kajabi Payments or PayPal. Rates below are the US figures listed in October 2026.

The surcharge sits on top of your provider's own fees, so it is worth pricing out. On $4,800 a month through another provider, Basic adds $96 a month before that provider takes its cut.

These fees also show when an upgrade pays for itself, and when it does not. Moving from Basic to Growth costs $70 more a month on monthly billing. If you use Kajabi Payments, the rate falls by only 0.1 of a point, so you would need $70,000 in monthly sales to cover the difference from fees alone. If you use another provider, the surcharge falls by a full point, and the same move pays for itself at $7,000 a month. Upgrade for the limits and features, unless you are in that second group.

What does a coach actually pay at three sizes?

In these examples, Kajabi costs roughly $286 to $1,165 a month once processing is included, and the tools a coach needs beside it are extra. The client numbers and rates are illustrative, chosen to show the arithmetic rather than to suggest what you should charge.

The "still needed" column is the part trial budgets tend to leave out. Our September 2026 records show that Kajabi's coaching product includes a scheduler and live video, but no e-signature agreements, no habit tracking or daily check-ins, no native SMS and no standalone invoice builder. Coaching in Kajabi runs through products and communities, not per-client plans. Each extra tool brings its own fee and its own login, so price those tools before you compare totals.

What are the hidden costs and gotchas?

Most surprises come from how the trial and limits interact with a coach's real workflow rather than from anything Kajabi hides. Kajabi publishes these terms; they are just easy to miss on a pricing page.

• Fourteen days is short for a full build. Moving a site, offers and emails takes time, and part of that work stays locked. Prepare your content first so the clock is spent testing.
• Testing can cost you the trial. Activating a plan to test locked emails ends the trial at once, and billing starts.
• The contact cap jumps in large steps. Basic stops at 2,500 contacts, and each lead magnet adds to your list. Crossing that line can mean Growth, which raises your plan cost by $70 a month on monthly billing.
• Basic has no AI credits. If AI features are part of why you are looking at Kajabi, you need Growth or a top-up, and the top-up is still marked as coming.
• Payment rates are for US entities. Kajabi's published Kajabi Payments rates apply to US entities. If your business is elsewhere, confirm your rate first.
• Leaving takes manual work. Our records show CSV exports for contacts, subscriptions, sales and members, sent by email, while course content is downloaded by hand, asset by asset. They also note data removal 90 days after cancellation (September 2026 profile data).
• Public reviews are mixed. Kajabi scored 3.4 on Trustpilot from 2,347 reviews, seen on October 25, 2026. Read the recent ones about billing and support if those matter to your decision.

The 30-day money-back guarantee softens some of this. It is listed on every plan, so read its current terms before relying on it, particularly on an annual payment.

How should you use the 14 days?

Use the trial to test the client journey you actually sell, not the features on the pricing page. This schedule assumes the standard 14 days and works around the locked items.

1. Before you sign up: write down your offers, client count, list size and current monthly tool costs. Gather your copy, images and course files so setup starts on day one.
2. Days 1 to 3: build one real offer, its product and its checkout. Count how many products your full business would need against the limit of 5 on Basic.
3. Days 4 to 6: build your main landing page and a funnel, and add a handful of contacts by hand. Join your own funnel from a phone to see what a client sees.
4. Days 7 to 9: try the coaching product with a friendly test client, including scheduling and a live session. Note every step that sends you to another tool.
5. Days 10 to 11: map your welcome and between-session steps. Mark each one as working, locked during the trial, or not offered, because locked and not offered lead to very different decisions.
6. Day 12: add up your real monthly total using the fee rates above and the tools you would keep. Ask support any question the trial could not answer.
7. Day 13: decide. Cancel if the answer is no, or choose a plan and billing period if it is yes. Do not leave this for the end date.

Is Kajabi worth paying for after the trial?

Kajabi is worth paying for if your business is mainly courses, memberships and a marketing engine around them. It is harder to justify if your income comes from working closely with individual clients between sessions.

Credit where due: it puts courses, a community, a website, funnels and email in one account, and even Basic has unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails. The trial terms are also fair. A card is optional, your work is kept, and the surcharge on other payment providers is published. Here is how that plays out by coach type.

• Course-led coach with an audience: a good fit. Growth is usually the realistic plan once you pass 5 products or 2,500 contacts. See our Kajabi review and the course platform guide for coaches.
• One-to-one or small-group coach: often a stretch. You pay for marketing scale while still needing agreements and between-session tracking elsewhere. Life coaches and executive coaches fall here more often than not.
• Fitness, health or habit-based coach: a weak fit on its own, given no habit tracking or daily check-ins. See what a fitness and nutrition setup looks like instead.
• New coach with few clients: hard to justify yet. At $179 a month before any sales, the plan is a real fixed cost, so read what is actually free in coaching software first.
• Multi-brand or team business: a possible fit on Pro for the extra websites and admin seats, as long as a coach-level client view is not your main requirement.

How does the trial compare with the alternatives?

Kajabi's trial is about average in length, shorter than the 30 days at Thinkific and LearnWorlds; the bigger differences are entry price, fees and whether per-client coaching tools exist at all. Vendor details are as listed in October 2026. Coachful leads because this table is built around coaches who deliver to clients between sessions.

If courses are the center of your business, two of these deserve a look. Podia has a simpler storefront and a far lower entry price, though its email allowances are small at 100 to 1,000 subscribers included. Thinkific gives you twice the trial length, and its Start plan lists 10,000 current students; its prices rose about 10% on August 13, 2026.

If marketing automation matters most, compare Kajabi with Kartra and Kajabi with GoHighLevel. For a wider view of trial terms, see our roundup of coaching software with a free trial and the terms of the Skool free trial.

Where does Coachful fit if Kajabi is not right?

Coachful fits coaches whose work happens with individual clients and groups between sessions, rather than coaches whose main product is a course. If that describes you, it is our recommendation over Kajabi, and it is what we built.

Coachful is a coaching platform. One subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant, with one login for the coach and one branded app for the client. It is built for coaches who deliver programs and not just sessions, solo coaches growing into a small team, and coaches replacing 4 to 6 tools. Current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients.

The clearest difference from Kajabi is the client record. Each client has goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments, sessions and an AI briefing in one place, with a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk. That is the per-client view that a products-and-communities structure does not provide.

Multi-week programs carry weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, progress bars and streaks. This walkthrough shows how check-ins are set up:

The items in the "still needed" column above are built in. Booking pages handle availability rules, buffers and time zones, with two-way Google, Apple and Outlook sync, built-in video or automatic Zoom, Meet and Teams links, and SMS and WhatsApp reminders once messaging is enabled. Coaching agreements go out for e-signature before the first call and stay on the client record. Payments run through your own Stripe or Razorpay account with a 0% Coachful platform fee, and each transaction gets an invoice.

It still covers the marketing side a Kajabi user would expect: a section-based website builder with blog and custom domain, booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels, email lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences, and courses with drip and completion tracking. There are more than 40 ready-to-film program templates, 48 course templates and about 25 funnel templates to start from. Michelle, the built-in AI assistant, builds programs, drafts emails and briefs you before sessions; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits.

This walkthrough shows how the client journey comes together in Coachful:

It will not suit everyone, and Kajabi is the better choice in several cases. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified, so it is not for clinical record-keeping or insurance billing. It has no PayPal, no permanent free plan, no third-party plugins, and it is not a course marketplace. The client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account. There is no Salesforce or HubSpot integration and no multi-stage deal board for large sales teams. Affiliate payouts are recorded manually. Pick Kajabi if you need PayPal, your own App Store listing, or a course-first business with a large marketing list.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build for you. From Create > We'll build it for you, you describe what you want, whether a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline, email sequence, form or automation, and attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files. The team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours, and leaves gaps for you rather than inventing credentials, testimonials or prices. A somatic coach leaving Kajabi, for example, had the homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. It does not cover recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Read more about how the white-glove service works.

To start, take a free trial, request a white-glove build for whatever would otherwise eat your first week, and have your clients, programs and content imported for you during onboarding. Monthly plans cancel in one click, and full client data exports as a ZIP. For side-by-side detail, see Coachful vs Kajabi and our Kajabi alternative page.

How can you save money on Kajabi?

The biggest savings come from staying on the lowest plan your limits allow, using a payment route that avoids the surcharge, and committing to annual billing only once you know the platform fits.

1. Start the trial without a card if you can. It removes the risk of an accidental first charge.
2. Prepare before day one. A trial spent gathering files is a trial wasted, and Kajabi's trial article does not mention extensions.
3. Stay on Basic until a limit forces the move. As shown above, the lower processing rate alone will not pay for Growth unless your sales are very high.
4. Use Kajabi Payments or PayPal. That avoids the 0.5% to 2% extra fee, unless another provider's terms more than make up for it.
5. Move to annual after a few paid months. Annual billing saves $432 to $1,200 a year, but that saving only counts if you stay. Paying monthly first keeps your exit cheap.
6. Add up the tools beside it. Cancelling a tool Kajabi replaces is a real saving, and a tool you must keep belongs in your comparison.
7. Export before you leave. If you cancel, pull your CSVs and course files first, so you do not pay to return for them.

If your list is small, also compare coaching software built around client delivery. Newer coaches and established practices tend to weigh this differently: the first group watches fixed costs, while the second often has more to gain from cutting tool count.

Kajabi free trial FAQ

Does Kajabi have a free trial in 2026?

Yes. Kajabi's help center lists a standard 14-day trial as of October 2026, and your exact end date appears in Settings > Subscription & Billing. There is no permanent free plan, so you need a paid plan to continue after the trial.

Do I need a credit card for the Kajabi free trial?

A card is optional according to Kajabi's documentation, and trials can start without one. If you enter a card, Kajabi places a temporary authorization hold and charges it on the day the trial ends unless you cancel first.

Will Kajabi charge me automatically when the trial ends?

Yes, if a card is on file. Kajabi charges it for your first subscription period on the day the trial ends, and your plan starts. Without a card, you are prompted to choose a plan before you can keep working in the dashboard.

How do I cancel the Kajabi free trial?

Cancel from your account before the end date shown in Settings > Subscription & Billing, and you will not be billed. Any authorization hold does not become a charge. Kajabi does not publish a cut-off time, so do it at least a day early.

Do I lose my work if the trial ends and I do not pay?

No. Kajabi says products, pages, contacts and settings are saved, and you pick up where you left off after subscribing. You cannot reach your dashboard or show your site to members until then, and Kajabi does not publish how long a lapsed account is kept.

What can't I do during the Kajabi free trial?

You cannot edit site-wide email templates, edit email content in the Theme Builder, or send a test email from a template. Several automation actions and bulk contact imports are locked too. Activating a paid plan unlocks them but ends the trial immediately.

How much does Kajabi cost after the free trial?

Basic is $179 a month, Growth $249 and Pro $499 on monthly billing, or $143, $199 and $399 a month on annual billing, as listed in October 2026. Processing is on top: 2.7% to 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale through Kajabi Payments in the US.

Can I get a refund after the Kajabi trial converts?

Kajabi lists a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan. Check the current terms before relying on it, especially for an annual payment, and contact Kajabi support promptly if an unexpected charge appears.

Is Kajabi's trial long enough for a coach to decide?

It is enough to judge the builder, checkout and coaching product if you prepare your content first. It is not enough to fully test email-based welcome flows or a bulk list import, because those stay locked until you pay.

What is Coachful's white-glove service?

It is a free build service on every Coachful plan. You describe a website, funnel, program, email sequence or similar, attach references, and the team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing.