Recess vs Martialytics
Martialytics builds for martial arts schools and refuses every other market, it prints its price on a public page, and it takes no cut of what you earn. The honest argument is not about their price. It is about whose name is on the app your students carry, whether you can reach a parent who never installed it, and how much of a school's week the subscription was built to cover.
Every Martialytics claim on this page was read on Martialytics' own website and help center on 30 August 2026, and is listed at the foot of the page.
Recess has no monthly software fee, no add-ons and no setup cost. It earns roughly 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered by Recess out of that fee rather than billed to the school.
Recess is not built for networks past about a hundred locations. Past that point a franchise needs central tooling we do not have, and we would say so on the first call rather than after you signed.
Who each one suits, plainly. If your building holds mat classes and nothing else, and you would rather carry a fixed monthly bill yourself than have a fee appear at your members' checkout, Martialytics is a straight answer and their price is printed for you to check. If the same building also runs a summer camp, an afterschool pickup, private lessons and a payroll for six instructors, that is the part their subscription was never built to reach.
The parts that actually decide it.
Martialytics changes its pricing and its features without notice. Every figure in their column is published on their own site or written in their own help center, and dated in the sources at the foot of this page. Check anything that will decide your answer.
Martialytics has turned down every market except martial arts and says so out loud: no yoga studios, no boxes, no dance schools, so every feature on the roadmap was asked for by somebody standing on a mat. Grading eligibility runs as a traffic light against the curriculum you built, and their own line for what that buys you is a support team that understands belt progressions rather than membership tiers. They are spread across Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the founders answer support themselves.
If mat classes are the whole business and you want a vendor whose next feature request comes from a school exactly like yours, stay where you are. Nothing further down this page outweighs that.
The app belongs to them, and it is also the only way a parent can reply. Martialytics ships a real native app on both stores and we are not going to pretend otherwise: bookings, study, payments, news and one to one chat all live in it. It is one app shared by every school. Their own help article tells students to search Martialytics to find it, and what a school sets is its logo, its color scheme and one of their background images inside it. Two more of their articles close the circle: chat only reaches students who have the app installed, and bulk texts are one way only, bought as credits and sent from MARTIALARTS or a number out of a shared pool. On Recess the app carries your school's name and icon in both stores, and two way text and email reach a parent on your own domain whether or not anybody downloaded anything.
And the half of a school that is not a mat class. Their focus is real, and it is also a boundary. Their help center runs to fifteen sections and sixty six articles. Not one covers a time clock, a pay rate, a shift or a payroll run. None covers a term, a semester, a camp, an afterschool pickup or a private lesson. A family is several student profiles sharing one email address and one password rather than one account with one balance. That is a statement about what they publish and not about what their software could be made to do, so ask them directly. Recess runs all of it inside the same product, for nothing a month.
One bill, published, and they are right about the trade.
Start with the credit, because they earned it. Martialytics prints its price on a public page instead of making you book a call: $69 a month up to 50 active students, $99 to 100, $129 to 200 and $199 above that, in US dollars. Leads and inactive students do not count towards the band. Locations are unlimited, staff users are unlimited, emails are unlimited, and every plan carries every feature, so there is no tier waiting to catch you when you grow. The thirty day trial takes no card and there is no lock in contract.
Does a second bill stack underneath that one? Not one of theirs. The whole argument on their pricing page is that they take no percentage of what you earn and add no markup to card processing, and their own help articles back it up: you connect your own Stripe account, or GoCardless for direct debit, and pay those rates direct. Martialytics publishes no card rate because it is not theirs to publish. The school still pays it, and it goes to Stripe rather than to them. One thing does sit outside the subscription, and it is small: text messages are bought as credits, while email is unlimited.
That is their figure, published by them, and it is accurate as far as it goes. What it leaves out is Stripe's own cut, which the school pays separately and which they are clear is not theirs. Assume Stripe's standard 2.9% and that same school hands over roughly another $247, taking what actually leaves the school to about $376 in the month. That 2.9% is our assumption and not a Martialytics rate.
Their pricing page argues that a percentage fee costs a school more, and on the arithmetic they have a point worth answering rather than dodging. On the same $8,500 month, Recess takes nothing from the school and the members pay about $425 between them at checkout. So more money moves in total on Recess, and none of it moves out of the school. The school's outgoing is $376 on one and $0 on the other.
That is the trade, said plainly. On Recess there is no software bill, no processing account and no charge that exists in a month where you sold nothing. On Martialytics you carry a predictable fixed cost yourself and your members never see a fee. Neither of those is obviously the right answer, and we would rather say so than have you work it out afterwards. Do the sum on your own volume before you believe anybody, us included.
Your students, their published bands.
The student slider picks their published band exactly as their own pricing page does. The processing line is an assumption and is marked as one at every point of use: Martialytics publishes no card rate because you pay Stripe direct. It also leaves out the cents per transaction, so the real figure is a little higher than the one shown here, never lower.
The subscription line is their own published price. The processing line is not: they publish no rate, and 2.9% is our assumption of Stripe's standard card rate, applied without the cents per transaction so the figure understates rather than overstates. On Recess your members pay a service fee of about 5% at checkout, which is how the software is free for the school. On $20,000 a month that is roughly $12,000 across a year, paid by members rather than by you. Both halves are on this page on purpose.
The things owners push back on.
You will lose their version of it. Recess carries belts and stripes, skills and levels, testing, promotion history, printed certificates, badge artwork and a progress view inside your own app, plus enrollment gating so the next class is not bookable until a student is ready for it. Being straight with you, progression is the newest part of Recess and it is still rolling out, while grading has been the whole subject at Martialytics since they started. Ask us to build your own rank structure live during the demo rather than taking a web page's word for it.
Not about the arithmetic. More money moves in total on Recess than under a flat subscription, and we would rather write that here than have you find it later. What their comparison does not separate is whose money it is. Their subscription and Stripe's cut leave the school every month whether you sold anything or not. The Recess fee is about 5%, it is paid by the member at checkout, it only exists when a sale does, and the school's outgoing is zero. Which of those you would rather carry is a real decision, not an obvious one.
On Recess, yes. A native app for your school on the Apple App Store and Google Play, listed under your own name and icon, included rather than sold as an add on. Martialytics has a genuine native app on both stores too, and it is one app shared by every school on the platform. Their own help article tells students to search Martialytics to find it, and what a school customizes is its logo, its color scheme and one of their background images inside it.
On Recess, yes, both ways, by text or email, sent on your own domain. On Martialytics their own help center says chat only reaches students who have the app installed, and that bulk texts are one way only, so a parent who replies gets an undelivered message back. Texts are also bought as credits and arrive from MARTIALARTS or a number out of a shared pool rather than from your school. Email on their plans is unlimited.
The software does not, because there is nothing to pay and no tier to be moved into. Their subscription does, openly and by design: $69 a month up to 50 active students, then $99, then $129, then $199 above 200. The Recess fee moves with what your members spend rather than with how many of them there are, which is a different curve and not automatically a kinder one. Both are worth a spreadsheet before you decide.
It is most of the answer. Recess runs terms and seasons, camps with day by day rosters, afterschool with pickup lists, private lessons and appointments, tournaments as events with registration and divisions, waitlists and make up credits, and it bills a household with three children on three different ladders from one account. The published Martialytics guides cover recurring classes, one off events and an online curriculum library, and carry no article on the rest of that list. That is what they document rather than a claim about what they could do for you, so put the question to them directly before you decide.
Every Martialytics claim on this page was read on Martialytics' own website and help center on 30 August 2026, not on review sites, roundups or summaries. Martialytics changes its pricing and its features without notice. Verify anything here that will decide your answer.
1. Pricing page: the four bands at $69, $99, $129 and $199 a month by active student count, "Prices are in USD", "Every plan has access to every feature", unlimited locations, unlimited emails, unlimited users, a free student app, leads and inactive students stored free, the thirty day trial with no credit card, and their stated position of no revenue percentage and no payment processing markup at "Standard Stripe Rates". martialytics.com/pricing
2. Why Choose Us page: martial arts only rather than broader markets, a dedicated roadmap, and support that "understands belt progressions, not just membership tiers". martialytics.com/why-choose-us
3. Benefits page: the student app, push notifications and mass messaging, attendance insights and absence follow up, bookings and events, lead generation with One Touch Sign Ups, and equipment sales with a point of sale, stock management and in app and website purchases. martialytics.com/benefits
4. Help center home, the full section list: Getting Started, Dashboard, Students and Members, Attendance, Grading and Belt Management, Calendar and Bookings, Member Billing, Waivers, Send, Point of Sale, Student Portal, Student App, Study, Leads and Prospects, and Data Privacy. Fifteen sections, sixty six articles, and the description of "our unique Traffic Light system for tracking students grading eligibility". intercom.help/martialytics/en
5. Help center, How To: Download the Martialytics Student App, written 30 April 2022: the app is on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, and students are told to search "Martialytics" to find it, with links to the "Martialytics Students" listing on both stores.
6. Help center, How To: Customise the Student App, written 21 April 2022: the school chooses its color scheme, uploads its logo and picks one of their predefined background images, and multiple family members sharing one Portal or App must use the same email address and the same password to be grouped.
7. Help center, How To: Use Messages and Chat, written 9 September 2022: the chat interface, snoozing, priority and closing a conversation, and the note that "you're only able to message students that have the App installed".
8. Help center, How To: Use Send Bulk SMS, written 4 May 2023: credits purchased to cover the cost of sending, the sender shown as MARTIALARTS where supported and otherwise a toll free or long code number "from a large pool of numbers we have available", and the answer to what happens on a reply: "The messages are one-way only."
9. Help center, How To: Set up a Student Portal login for families, and How To: Clone Student Profiles: one invitation per student, the same password entered on each, then choosing a profile when booking or viewing Study, and profile cloning for signing up family members.
10. Help center, Calendar and Bookings section, including How To: Create a Recurring Class or One-Off Events, How To: Manage Bookings and the bookings widget guides for WordPress, Wix and Squarespace, plus the Study section for the online curriculum library sectioned by rank.
11. Help center, How To: Use One Touch Sign-Ups, written 6 January 2025: a QR code and a secure link generated per form, contact details, style, location, billing and multiple waivers in one pass, branded from the Student App settings, with per form reporting and a download.
12. Help center, How To: Connect to Stripe and How To: Use GoCardless, plus How To: Set up Currency and Tax, and the export articles for active students, inactive students, leads and the attendance report.
Two notes on what this page does not know. The only assumption on the Martialytics side is the 2.9% card rate used in the calculator and in the worked example. It is Stripe's standard published card rate, not a Martialytics rate, because Martialytics publishes none and says you pay Stripe direct. It is labeled as an assumption at every point it is used, and it is applied without the cents per transaction so it understates rather than overstates. Their four subscription bands are published figures, not estimates.
Where this page says something is not covered by their guides, that is a statement about what Martialytics documents in public and not a claim about what their software can be made to do. Ask them, and ask us, and take both answers in writing. Claims about Recess describe Recess's own product; progression is the newest part of it and this page says so where it matters rather than only here.