Arketa in 2026: the 3% on one page, the 2.9% on another

September 11, 2026

Arketa is the name that comes up when a thread turns to design. The member app looks good, the on-demand video library is real, and the founders are a yoga teacher and an engineer who started in 2020 and went through Y Combinator. In 2025 they raised twice: a $7.6 million seed in May led by First Round and a $15 million Series A in June led by Inspired Capital (Athletech News). This week they open their own studio, Powered, at 31 Bond Street in Manhattan, and the CEO's reason is a good one: "you can build software for an industry for years and still miss what it feels like to run the room" (Athletech News). None of that is a warning. It is the context for a pricing page that tells two stories.

The plans

One price is public. The Individual plan is $49 a month billed annually, one login, with a "3% transaction fee + Stripe fees" printed under it (Arketa pricing). Vibefam's August 2026 read of the same page lists two more Individual tiers, Growth at $83 and Suite at $124, both annual (Vibefam, a competitor, so read it as one). The three Studio plans, Core, Growth and Suite, say "Request a demo for pricing" and their transaction-fee line says "Let's talk." The branded member app is in Studio Suite. Email and text campaigns and automations are in Studio Growth and up. Point of sale and payroll reporting start at Studio Core.

The two fee stories

Arketa's own comparison page against Mindbody says "Flat 2.9% + $0.30 processing rate" and "No hidden fees" (Arketa vs Mindbody). The pricing page says 3% on top of Stripe. Both can be true at once if the Studio tiers drop the 3% and the Individual tier keeps it, which is the most likely reading. But the only place you find out which applies to you is the demo, and the compare page does not say so.

The 3% matters more than the subscription. On $10,000 a month of packs and memberships it is $300 a month, six times the $49 plan it sits under. Stacked with Stripe's 2.9% plus 30 cents, a $30 drop-in on the Individual plan loses about $2.07 to processing before Arketa's monthly bill. Vibefam works the same math at $40,000 a month and gets $1,200 in surcharge alone (Vibefam review). A studio with real class volume should be pricing the Studio tiers, and should get the transaction fee for its tier in writing.

What owners report since the raise

Capterra has Arketa at 4.3 of 5 across 111 reviews, and most are positive: onboarding described as top notch, live chat that is prompt, a product that is easy to brand (Capterra). The negative reviews cluster after mid-2025, and they are specific. An owner of two years reported payouts held for two to three weeks and a yearly plan raised without notice (May 2026). A founder reported two days' notice that email overages would be charged on a plan sold as unlimited (August 2026). One owner wrote that issues "repeat themselves over and over" and that customers are "the test subjects in a live environment" (September 2025). Two are about leaving: a $3,000 charge after a confirmed cancellation that took a month to partly refund (May 2024), and members still able to book on Arketa four months after the studio had moved to Momence (October 2024). The operator-side app sits at 3.1 of 5 across 35 App Store ratings as of June 2026, per Vibefam.

None of this is unusual for a company that doubled its money in a year and is shipping monthly. It means the questions to ask are about money movement and exit, not about features.

Spot booking, if you run reformers

Arketa has spot booking. Vibefam describes it as a generic resource model, one kind of spot, not reformer-aware. We could not verify that directly, and the honest test is the same as for any vendor: ask them to show a member booking Reformer 4 on your own floor plan, from a phone, in the demo. If it is a list of numbers rather than your room, you will hear about it from members in the first week.

Three questions for the demo

1. Which Studio tier removes the 3% transaction fee, and what is my all-in monthly at my class volume, in writing?
2. What is the payout schedule, what can put a payout on hold, and who do I call when it happens on a Saturday?
3. The day I leave, what happens to my members' logins, their recurring billing and my export, and how long until the old booking page stops taking bookings?

For the record, Frontmat is $99 a month with no platform fee, processing at Stripe’s published rate paid to Stripe, month to month, and a data export from your own settings page at any time. We do not have an on-demand video library. If selling video is part of your revenue, Arketa's library is real and we do not have one, and you should weigh that before the fee math.

Sources: Arketa's pricing and comparison pages, Athletech News on the 2025 raise and the Powered studio, Capterra reviews, and Vibefam's pricing guide and review (a competitor's, read with that in mind), all read September 2026. Tell us if a number has changed and we will fix it.