Kahunas vs Trainerize: Which Coaching Platform Fits Your Business?
These two get shortlisted together constantly, but they are built around different bets. Kahunas, a UK platform launched around 2020, bets that coaches want their own branded app plus tight habit and check-in coaching, and it prices per client to match. Trainerize bets on breadth: a huge ecosystem of integrations, groups, automation and a mature feature set, priced in feature tiers that include large client counts. Which one wins depends on whether your brand or your toolset is the product.
The short answer, by use-case
Coaches who want their own branded client app
White-label branding is the core of the Kahunas pitch, not a premium add-on. Trainerize offers custom branding too, but full white-label sits behind higher tiers and add-ons.
Habit and check-in based transformation coaching
Daily habits, structured check-ins and progress photos are first-class citizens in Kahunas. Trainerize has habit tracking, but it feels like one feature among fifty rather than the spine of the product.
Integrations and ecosystem
MyFitnessPal, wearables, payment and scheduling connections: Trainerize has spent a decade building hooks into everything. Kahunas is far thinner here.
Lowest cost for a small roster
Trainerize starts at $10/mo for 2 clients and $30/mo covers 20. Kahunas per-client tiers start around $33/mo, so Trainerize is cheaper until your roster gets serious.
Group programs and automation at scale
Groups, program automation and a 200-client Pro tier make Trainerize the safer platform for productized, high-volume offers.
Kahunas vs Trainerize: Feature & Pricing
Generated from our software database. Confirm current pricing on each vendor's site.
| Feature | Kahunas | Trainerize |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $33/mo | $10/mo |
| Free trial | 14 days | 30 days |
| Custom workout builder | ||
| Exercise video library | ||
| Nutrition / macro tracking | ||
| Built-in meal plans | ||
| Progress photos & measurements | ||
| In-app client messaging | ||
| Groups / community feed | ||
| Automations & workflows | ||
| AI plan assistance | ||
| Wearable / Apple Health sync | ||
| Built-in payments & billing | ||
| Custom-branded client app | ||
| Full white-label (own app store listing) | ||
| Public API / Zapier | ||
| Free plan for coaches |
Kahunas
- Starting price
- $33/mo
- Free trial
- 14 days
- Custom workout builder
- Exercise video library
- Nutrition / macro tracking
- Built-in meal plans
- Progress photos & measurements
- In-app client messaging
- Groups / community feed
- Automations & workflows
- AI plan assistance
- Wearable / Apple Health sync
- Built-in payments & billing
- Custom-branded client app
- Full white-label (own app store listing)
- Public API / Zapier
- Free plan for coaches
Trainerize
- Starting price
- $10/mo
- Free trial
- 30 days
- Custom workout builder
- Exercise video library
- Nutrition / macro tracking
- Built-in meal plans
- Progress photos & measurements
- In-app client messaging
- Groups / community feed
- Automations & workflows
- AI plan assistance
- Wearable / Apple Health sync
- Built-in payments & billing
- Custom-branded client app
- Full white-label (own app store listing)
- Public API / Zapier
- Free plan for coaches
Two different pricing models, not just two price tags
This is the most important structural difference and most comparisons skip it. Kahunas prices per client tiers: you pay for a band of active clients, starting around $33/mo, and the bill steps up as your roster grows. Trainerize prices by feature tier: Studio at $10 (2 clients), Grow at $30 (20 clients), Pro at $60 (200 clients), with add-ons for extras like advanced nutrition or white-label. The practical effect: Trainerize is usually cheaper for small and mid-size rosters, while Kahunas costs scale in lockstep with your client count. Neither model is wrong, but you should project your bill at 10, 30 and 60 clients before choosing, and check current pricing on both sites because tiers shift.
Branding and white-label
Kahunas wins this one clearly. The platform is built so your clients see your name, your logo and your app, and that positioning runs through the whole product rather than being bolted on. For coaches selling a premium transformation service, that perceived ownership matters; clients say 'my coach's app', not 'Kahunas'. Trainerize does offer custom branding and a full white-label option, but the deepest branding lives in higher tiers and paid add-ons, so the total cost of looking fully independent is higher there.
Programming and daily workflow
Both cover the fundamentals well: workout builders, exercise video libraries, templates you can reuse, and client apps on iOS and Android where clients log sets and leave feedback. Trainerize has the deeper library and more mature builder simply through years of iteration, though the web app is busy and takes longer to learn. Kahunas feels more modern and more opinionated; if you run structured weekly check-ins with photos, measurements and questionnaires, its workflow is smoother because that loop is what the product was designed around.
Habits, check-ins and accountability
Kahunas treats accountability as the product. Daily habit targets, streaks, scheduled check-in forms and progress photo timelines sit front and center for both coach and client, which suits body-transformation and lifestyle coaching where adherence beats programming complexity. Trainerize has habit coaching and auto-messages too, and its automation engine can nudge clients at scale, but the day-to-day check-in experience is less focused. If your retention strategy is built on weekly check-ins, Kahunas will feel purpose-built.
Nutrition
Trainerize leans on integrations: macro targets, habit-based nutrition coaching and the MyFitnessPal connection, plus a paid advanced nutrition add-on. Kahunas includes its own nutrition tracking with macro targets inside the same branded app, which keeps clients in one place instead of bouncing to a second app. Neither generates meal plans for you. Coaches who sell nutrition as a core deliverable often end up wanting built-in meal planning, which is where all-in-one platforms with native meal libraries have the edge over both.
Ecosystem and integrations
This is where a decade on the market shows. Trainerize connects to wearables, MyFitnessPal, payment processors and studio management tools, and there is an answer, a help article and usually an integration for almost any workflow you can name. Kahunas, founded around 2020, is a younger product with a thinner integration list and a smaller community of coaches trading templates and fixes. If your business already runs on a specific stack, list those tools and check Kahunas support for each one before committing. Both platforms are English-first, so neither helps much if you coach clients in other languages.
Quick side-by-side
<ul><li><strong>Pricing model:</strong> Kahunas per-client tiers from around $33/mo; Trainerize feature tiers at $10/$30/$60 for 2/20/200 clients.</li><li><strong>Free plan:</strong> neither; Kahunas offers a 14-day trial, Trainerize a 30-day trial.</li><li><strong>White-label branding:</strong> core to Kahunas; available on Trainerize via higher tiers and add-ons.</li><li><strong>Habits and check-ins:</strong> Kahunas, clearly.</li><li><strong>Integrations and ecosystem:</strong> Trainerize, clearly.</li><li><strong>Groups and automation:</strong> Trainerize.</li><li><strong>Nutrition:</strong> built-in tracking on Kahunas; integration-led (MyFitnessPal) plus paid add-on on Trainerize; neither builds meal plans.</li><li><strong>Languages:</strong> both English-first.</li></ul>
The honest bottom line
Choose Kahunas if your offer is premium 1-on-1 or transformation coaching where your brand, weekly check-ins and habit adherence carry the business, and you accept that the bill grows with every client band. Choose Trainerize if you want breadth: groups, automation, a deep integration ecosystem and cheaper entry pricing, and you accept a busier interface and paying extra for full white-label. If neither quite fits, Trainera is a newer all-in-one alternative: it generates AI training and nutrition plans natively, has a genuinely free tier for up to 3 clients with no per-client fees on paid plans, and runs in 23 languages with full Arabic right-to-left support, where both Kahunas and Trainerize are English-first. It also lets clients start solo with AI plans and add a real coach later, a model neither of these offers. It trails Trainerize on wearable integrations and in-app video calls, so ecosystem-heavy coaches should still weigh that.
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