If you sell a course, your students will ask for an AI coach sooner or later, and there are now several ways to give them one. Some course platforms have built one in. Others are standalone tools that work with any platform.
This guide compares seven of them on what matters: where the AI lives, what it actually does, what it's built from, who can use it, and what it costs. One disclosure up front: we make one of them, expertrelay. We've tried to be as specific about its limits as about everyone else's.
First: an AI tutor or an AI coach?
Most of these tools are AI tutors. A student asks "what does Module 3 mean by contribution margin?" and gets an answer from your lessons, with a pointer to the right lesson. That's useful, and it cuts down the questions you answer by hand.
An AI coach goes further. The student brings their own situation (their offer, their landing page, their sales call) and the AI applies your method to it: asks for what's missing, scores it against your criteria, and tells them what to fix.
Knowing which one you want narrows the list quickly.
At a glance
- Kajabi Expert Agents: inside your Kajabi products. Best for Kajabi creators who want Q&A on their lessons. $79 a month per agent.
- Thinkific Thinker: Thinkific's course player and app. Best for Thinkific Plus customers. Monthly credits included with Thinkific Plus (price on request).
- Circle AI Agents: your Circle community. Best for course and community businesses on Circle. Scale plan, $419 a month billed annually.
- Coursebox: Coursebox's own course platform. Best for building a new AI-first course. Free; Creator from $25 a month billed yearly.
- CustomGPT.ai: its own agents, separate from your course platform. Best for a Q&A agent built from your documents. From $99 a month.
- Chatbase: a chatbot on your website. Best for a general chatbot on any site. Free; paid from $40 a month.
- expertrelay: the student's own ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. Best for tools that apply your method to the student's work. Free to build; $29 a month to sell.
Prices as of October 2026.
Kajabi Expert Agents
Kajabi's Teaching Assistant lives inside a Kajabi product and answers questions from the lessons, transcripts and community posts each member has access to, so a student in Course A never gets answers from Course B. It talks about your expertise in the third person, cites its sources, and only answers from what you've published.
- Good: native to Kajabi, respects what each member bought, quick to set up. Kajabi also describes a Sales Agent for landing pages.
- Limits: text only, and it runs on Kajabi-hosted pages with recent themes. Kajabi's own guide says it's designed to lead with the answer, so it won't reliably ask clarifying questions first, which is what coaching often needs.
- Price: $79 a month per agent from October 1, 2026, with 1,000 messages and 250 AI credits a month.
Thinkific Thinker
Thinker is Thinkific's AI teaching assistant. It sits in the course player as a button and a floating widget, and in Thinkific's mobile app. It answers from your lessons and from reference PDFs you upload, and students can highlight text in a lesson to ask about it.
- Good: a post-quiz review that explains missed questions and links back to the right lesson, analytics on helpful and unhelpful answers, and the option to sell Thinker access in a bundle or membership.
- Limits: only on Thinkific Plus, and it's focused on understanding course content.
- Price: Every Thinkific Plus plan includes a monthly allotment of Thinker credits. Plus is sold through Thinkific's sales team rather than with a listed price.
Circle AI Agents
Circle lets you create up to 10 AI agents per community, each with a role, style and limits, trained on your spaces, courses, posts or files. Circle pitches them for support and coaching.
- Good: several specialist agents, keywords that hand sensitive topics to a person, and one inbox for every agent conversation. Strong if your course and community already live on Circle.
- Limits: you need to run your business on Circle, and AI Agents start on the Scale plan.
- Price: Scale is $419 a month, billed annually. AI Agents aren't included in the Professional ($89) or Business ($199) plans.
Coursebox
Coursebox is an AI course builder and learning platform. Every learner gets an AI tutor inside the course, trained on your course content. It also generates courses from documents.
- Good: the tutor is part of the product from day one, and the free plan lets you try it.
- Limits: you build or move your course into Coursebox, and tutor use is capped by plan.
- Price: Free (100 tutor messages); Creator from $25 a month billed yearly, with 12,000 tutor messages a year.
CustomGPT.ai
CustomGPT.ai builds AI agents from your own documents and content, separate from your course platform.
- Good: works whatever platform you use, with room for many documents per agent.
- Limits: it's a general agent builder, so the coaching behaviour is up to how you set it up.
- Price: Standard $99 a month (10 agents, 1,000 queries a month); Premium $499 a month.
Chatbase
Chatbase is a general AI agent and chatbot builder trained on your data, usually placed on a website.
- Good: flexible, with a free plan to start.
- Limits: not built for courses, so access per student and coaching behaviour are yours to work out.
- Price: Free (50 message credits); Hobby $40, Standard $150 and Pro $500 a month; extra agents $25 a month each.
expertrelay
expertrelay takes a different approach. Instead of a chat window on your course site, it turns the methods in your course into specific tools (an offer audit, a landing-page review, a launch plan) that students use from their own ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. Each tool applies your criteria to the student's own work, asks for what's missing, and stops when your method doesn't support an answer.
- Good: works with any course platform, students use it in the AI app they already have, access follows purchases and refunds, and you can sell the tools on their own or bundle them with your course. You review every tool before students can use it, and expertrelay takes no cut of sales.
- Limits: students need a supported AI app and have to connect it once. It isn't a general Q&A over every lesson, and it doesn't add a chat window to your course site.
- Price: free to build and test; once students get access, it's one plan, Starter: $29 a month with 200 student runs, and extra runs are $10 per 100.
How to choose
- You're on Kajabi, Thinkific or Circle and want Q&A on your lessons: use the assistant your platform already has.
- You're starting a new course and want AI built in: Coursebox.
- You want a chatbot from your documents, on any site: CustomGPT.ai or Chatbase.
- You want students to apply your method to their own work, in the AI app they already use, or to sell that as its own product: expertrelay.
These aren't either-or. A platform assistant for questions about the lessons and expertrelay tools for doing the work is a sensible combination. For more on the difference between a chatbot that talks like you and tools that do what you teach, see AI clone vs AI tools.
FAQ
What's the difference between an AI tutor and an AI coach?
A tutor answers questions about your course content. A coach applies your method to the student's own situation: it asks questions, evaluates their work against your criteria and tells them what to do next.
Can I add an AI coach without changing course platforms?
Yes. CustomGPT.ai, Chatbase and expertrelay all work independently of your course platform.
Which AI coach works inside ChatGPT or Claude?
expertrelay is built for that: students connect once and use your tools from their own ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. The platform assistants in this list live on the course site.
How much does an AI coach for a course cost?
From free plans (Coursebox, Chatbase) to $79 a month per agent on Kajabi and $419 a month for Circle's Scale plan, as of October 2026.
Will an AI coach give students wrong answers?
It can. Look for tools that answer only from your material, cite their sources, and can say when they don't know. Kajabi's assistant, for example, only answers from your published content.
