Search “best martial arts software” and you get a wall of listicles that never quite tell you what anything costs. This one does. Every price below was read off the vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026, and where a figure comes from a third party instead, it says so.
We build martial arts software ourselves, so treat our own entry with the scepticism it deserves — we have put MyDojo where the evidence puts it, not at the top. The genuinely useful part of this guide is the pricing table, because pricing is the thing vendors make hardest to compare and the thing that decides most purchases.
How these six were chosen
Every platform here is either purpose-built for martial arts or widely used by dojos, and every one publishes its pricing. Products that hide all pricing behind a sales call were excluded — not because they are bad, but because you cannot compare what you cannot see.
Two things matter more than feature lists when you actually run a school:
Does it understand rank? A martial arts platform treats belt progression, grading events and time-in-grade as first-class concepts. General gym software treats them as a custom field you maintain by hand. That difference compounds every single grading.
What does it cost at your size? Almost every platform prices by active student count, so the headline number is meaningless without knowing which band you fall into. A school of 60 students pays roughly double what a school of 40 pays on most of these.
Pricing at a glance
Published monthly prices, verified July 2026. Currencies are as the vendor lists them — note that Clubworx prices in AUD, which materially changes the comparison for UK and US schools.
| Platform | Entry price | Pricing model | Free tier | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kicksite | $49/mo (0–25 students) | Tiered by students, all features at every tier | No | 30 days, via demo |
| Martialytics | $69/mo (0–50 students) | Tiered by active students | No | 30 days, no card |
| Gymdesk | $75/mo (≤50 members) | Tiered by active members | No | 30 days, no card |
| Zen Planner | $99/mo (Studio) | Flat-rate tiers | No | None listed |
| Clubworx | A$0 (≤20 members) | Tiered by members | Yes, ≤20 members | 15 days on paid plans |
| Spark Membership | ~$249/mo | Flat rate, unlimited students | No | Promotional offers |
| MyDojo | Free | Free until 31 March 2027 | Yes, no student cap | n/a — it’s free |
Full published bands:
- Kicksite: $49 (0–25 students), $99 (26–50), $149 (51–100), $199 (101+)
- Martialytics: $69 (0–50), $99 (51–100), $129 (101–200), $199 (200+)
- Gymdesk: $75 (≤50), $100 (51–100), $150 (101–200), $200 (201–400), Enterprise custom
- Zen Planner: $99 Studio, $198 Essentials, $348 Ultimate
- Clubworx: A$0 Free (≤20), A$109 Growing (≤100), A$149 Accelerating (≤250), A$169 Established (unlimited)
The six platforms
Kicksite — cheapest serious entry point
Kicksite prices from $49/month for up to 25 students and makes a specific promise that matters more than it sounds: every feature is available at every tier. There is no version where lead management or two-way texting is locked behind an upgrade because you only have 30 students.
That single policy removes the most common upgrade trap in this category. On platforms that gate features by tier, growing from 45 to 55 students can cost you more than the tier difference, because the tier you land in also unlocks the thing you actually needed.
Best for: small and mid-size schools that want predictable costs and no feature negotiation. Watch for: the trial is tied to booking a demo rather than self-serve signup.
Martialytics — built by martial artists, priced for the long tail
Martialytics starts at $69/month for up to 50 students and, like Kicksite, includes every feature on every plan. Two details set it apart. Leads and inactive students don’t count toward your billing tier, which matters if you carry a long tail of lapsed members. And it states no payment-processing markup beyond standard Stripe rates — a meaningful claim in a category where processing margin is a common hidden revenue stream.
The company operates out of Perth and London, so UK schools get a vendor in a workable timezone, though prices are published in USD.
Best for: schools that care about rank tracking depth and dislike percentage-based fees. Watch for: USD pricing means your cost moves with the exchange rate.
Gymdesk — clean general-purpose option
Gymdesk starts at $75/month for up to 50 active members, includes a responsive website and unlimited staff accounts, and runs month-to-month with no contracts. Frozen and cancelled members don’t count toward your tier.
It is closer to general gym software than a martial-arts-first product. For a school where rank is central to how you run classes, that’s a real gap. For a mixed academy running fitness alongside grappling, it’s arguably an advantage.
Best for: schools running mixed programming where rank isn’t the organising principle. Watch for: third-party sites report a limited free version after trial; Gymdesk’s own pricing page doesn’t list one, so don’t count on it.
Zen Planner — the established name, at established-name prices
Zen Planner is the most recognised product here and the most expensive to run at scale: $99/month Studio, $198 Essentials, $348 Ultimate. Its Capterra listing shows no free trial and no free version, and records reviewer complaints about payment-processing fees, billing errors, and charges tied to cancellation and merchant requirements.
Recognition has real value — staff you hire may already know it, and the integration ecosystem is broad. But at $198/month for the middle tier, you are paying roughly three times a Kicksite school of the same size.
Best for: larger, multi-instructor operations that need the ecosystem and can absorb the cost. Watch for: confirm the full cost including processing and any add-on modules before signing. Several add-ons are priced separately.
Clubworx — the only established platform with a real free tier
Clubworx publishes a free plan for up to 20 active members that is not a trial. It includes online booking, payment acceptance, email and SMS, a self-check-in kiosk and attendance tracking. Paid plans run A$109 (up to 100 members), A$149 (up to 250) and A$169 (unlimited).
Two caveats. Prices are AUD, so the real cost to a UK or US school depends on the exchange rate. And martial arts grading events — the feature most likely to be the reason a dojo chose this category — are a $10/month add-on on paid plans, not a standard inclusion.
Best for: brand-new schools under 20 members who need something free and established. Watch for: the grading add-on, the AUD pricing, and the 20-member ceiling arriving faster than you expect.
Spark Membership — flat rate, aimed at bigger schools
Spark publishes a flat rate around $249/month regardless of student count, which inverts the economics of everything else here. At 40 students it is the most expensive option on this page by a wide margin. At 400 students it is among the cheapest per head.
Reported add-ons include SMS credit packages and a done-for-you marketing module, and some sources note you cannot bring your own merchant services. Treat the sub-$249 promotional rates you’ll find as promotional.
Best for: large schools where per-student pricing has become the dominant cost. Watch for: in-house merchant requirements and add-on costs on top of the flat fee.
MyDojo — free until 31 March 2027
MyDojo is free until 31 March 2027: no subscription, no setup fee and no per-student charge, with no cap on student numbers. It’s purpose-built for martial arts, so belt and rank progression, grading and attendance are core concepts rather than custom fields.
The honest positioning: it is newer than everything else on this page and the ecosystem around it is smaller. If you need a deep third-party integration library or a decade of community documentation, the established platforms have that and we don’t yet. If you want martial-arts-native rank tracking at no cost while we build, that’s the trade on offer.
Best for: schools that want martial-arts-specific rank tracking without a monthly bill. Watch for: early access means the product is still developing. Ask us what’s live before you migrate.
What it actually costs at your school size
The headline price is a poor guide, because the bands differ. Here is roughly what each platform charges at three common school sizes, using published rates verified July 2026.
| School size | Kicksite | Martialytics | Gymdesk | Zen Planner | Clubworx |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 students | $49 | $69 | $75 | $99+ | A$0 |
| 60 students | $149 | $99 | $100 | $99+ | A$109 |
| 150 students | $199 | $129 | $150 | $99+ | A$149 |
Two things jump out. Kicksite is cheapest at the bottom and among the priciest at 150 students — its bands step up faster than the others. And Martialytics is the most consistent across the range, which is what you want if you’re planning to grow.
If you’re modelling this properly, our dojo revenue calculator will tell you what the monthly difference is worth against your actual student fees.
Free options, honestly
Two genuinely free options exist, and they are free in different ways.
Clubworx free plan caps at 20 active members but is a permanent free tier from an established vendor. When you pass 20 members you move to A$109/month, and grading events cost $10/month extra on top.
MyDojo is free until 31 March 2027 with no member cap, because we’re still building and would rather have your feedback than your money.
Everything else on this page offers a trial, not a free tier: 30 days on Kicksite, Martialytics and Gymdesk, 15 days on Clubworx’s paid plans, and nothing listed for Zen Planner.
We’ve written a fuller breakdown of what the no-cost options actually cover, and where they stop being enough, in our guide to free martial arts software.
How to choose without wasting a month
Start from your student count, not the feature list. Find your band on every platform first. That alone eliminates half the shortlist, and it’s the number that will still be true in two years.
Decide whether rank is central. If grading drives your class structure and student retention, a martial-arts-first platform earns its place. If you’re a fitness gym that also teaches kickboxing, general software is fine and often better.
Price the whole thing, not the subscription. Payment processing rates, SMS credits, branded apps and grading add-ons are where the real cost hides. Clubworx charges $10/month for gradings; Zen Planner reviewers report processing costs as a recurring complaint; Spark sells SMS in packages.
Check how you get your data out. The migration you should worry about is not the one into the platform, it’s the one out of it in three years. Ask before you sign, not after.
Run the trial with real data. Import twenty actual students and run one real grading. Demos are built to look effortless; your school’s edge cases are what break software.
Common mistakes
Buying for the school you want to be. Paying for multi-location features at 30 students is the most common overspend in this category. Every platform here lets you move up a tier.
Ignoring the currency. Clubworx prices in AUD and most others in USD. For a UK school, a 10% currency move is a bigger swing than the difference between two of these platforms.
Treating “all features included” as marketing. From Kicksite and Martialytics it’s a specific, checkable commitment, and it’s the single policy most likely to save you money as you grow.
Migrating in your busiest month. Move students during a quiet period, never in the run-up to a grading.
The short version
If you have under 25 students and no budget, Clubworx’s free tier or MyDojo’s early access are the only genuinely free routes.
If you have 25–75 students, Martialytics at $69–$99 is the most consistently priced purpose-built option, with Kicksite cheaper at the very bottom of the range.
If you have 150+ students, compare Martialytics ($129) and Gymdesk ($150) against Spark’s flat $249 — the flat rate starts winning somewhere around the 200-student mark.
If you need the established ecosystem and the budget is there, Zen Planner is the incumbent, but price the processing fees and cancellation terms carefully first.
Prices change. Every figure here was verified against the vendor’s published pricing in July 2026 — check before you buy, and treat any listicle that won’t tell you what things cost as an advert.
Try MyDojo
MyDojo is free until 31 March 2027 — no subscription, no per-student fee, no card required. If rank tracking built for martial arts is what you’re missing, take a look at what it does.
