Trajecta vs · Kolly
Kolly and Trajecta both stage an AI admissions committee, and both think watching readers disagree beats getting a single score. The difference is what gets a seat in the room. Kolly ($39 a month or a $149 season pass) centers the committee on your essays, with item-by-item reviews for the rest. Trajecta ($24.99 a month or $249.99 a year) puts the entire application in the room at once, after years of profile work before it. This page compares them straight.
01 · Area by area
Kolly descriptions below are their own product wording from kolly.ai, retrieved on the date under the last panel. Where the products overlap, the comparison is about mechanism, not quality claims.
01
With Kolly
Kolly is $39 a month, or a $149 season pass covering six months with no auto-renewal, which is student-friendly pricing done right. The free tier includes a school list, deadlines, a scholarship finder, a summer program finder, an accepted-essay library, and one full essay review. The product is shaped for application season.
With Trajecta
Trajecta Pro is $24.99 a month or $249.99 a year, with a free tier for profile building, the direction compass, missions, and college list organization. Month to month it is cheaper than Kolly. The product is shaped for the whole runway: it wants to meet a student in ninth or tenth grade, help build the record, and then rehearse the finished application at the end.
02
With Kolly
Kolly stages four AI admissions readers who argue over your essay, with a mock admissions committee offered per school and a Final Read before you submit. Activities, honors, and recommendation letters get their own reviews item by item. It is a real version of the committee idea, centered on the essay.
With Trajecta
Trajecta’s Committee Review deliberates the entire application at once. A specialist essay reader files a report first, then four officers read the whole file, academics, narrative, impact, and context, react to each other in writing, and a chair resolves the recorded split into a decision with next steps. The essays are one input in the room, weighed against everything else, which is how it catches an essay that contradicts the activity list.
Watch a full run on a real application →03
With Kolly
Kolly scores essays across six dimensions with percentile comparisons against admitted students, offers AI rewrites that keep the student’s voice, and includes a library of 800+ accepted essays to read side by side. The library alone is a genuinely useful thing to give students.
With Trajecta
Trajecta gives inline feedback on every draft, tied to the student’s full profile rather than scored against other people’s essays. A brainstorm workspace comes before drafting. The aim is different: not how this essay ranks, but what this essay does to this application.
04
With Kolly
Kolly’s free tier covers the planning basics: school list, deadlines, scholarship and summer program finders. The paid product concentrates on the season itself, essays, strategy, and the final read.
With Trajecta
The years before the season are most of the product. A direction compass computed from the record, with evidence. Missions that turn goals into weekly steps across six profile-strength categories. An AI coach read and rewrite on every activity and award entry, and an evaluator that scores any new idea for fit before a summer gets committed to it.
05
With Kolly
Kolly benchmarks essays against its admitted-essay corpus and offers school-by-school strategy. Percentiles against admitted students are an understandable, concrete yardstick.
With Trajecta
The committee reads against each school’s own Common Data Set: enrolled-freshman GPA, test bands, and the admission factors the school itself files. The same public data drives the college list, and every school links to a data page the family can check.
Browse the college data →Kolly pricing and feature descriptions verified against kolly.ai. Retrieved July 19, 2026. Trajecta pricing current as of the same date.
02 · Side by side
| Kolly | Trajecta | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | $39/month, or $149 for a six-month season pass. Free tier included. | $24.99/month or $249.99 a year for Pro. Free tier included. |
| The committee | Four AI readers argue over your essay, per school, plus a Final Read. | Essay specialist, four officers, and a chair deliberate the entire application, with a recorded split and a decision. |
| What is in the room | The essay at the center, with item-by-item reviews for activities, honors, and rec letters. | The whole file at once: essays weighed against activities, courses, and context. |
| Benchmarked against | Six-dimension scores and percentiles vs admitted students, plus an 800+ accepted-essay library. | Each school's published Common Data Set. |
| Product shape | Application season: essays, strategy, final read. | Ninth grade onward: direction, missions, coaching, list, then the committee. |
| Honest limits | Centered on the essay. The rest of the file gets reviews, not a seat in the room. | No accepted-essay library and no percentile scores. A simulation is not a prediction, ours included. |
Both columns are honest. The limits row applies to us too.
03 · Credit where due
Kolly is the closest product to ours in this space, which makes this section easy to write honestly: several of their calls are just good.
The essay library
Reading 800+ real accepted essays side by side with your own is one of the most instructive things a student can do, and Kolly ships it even on the free tier alongside one full review. That is generous and genuinely useful.
Fair, student-shaped pricing
A $149 season pass that covers six months and does not auto-renew respects how students actually use these tools. Plenty of companies would have made that a subscription trap. Kolly did not.
The committee idea, taken seriously
Kolly’s four readers genuinely argue, and staging disagreement instead of issuing one verdict is the right instinct. We obviously think so too. The difference between the products is what gets a seat in the room, not whether the room is worth building.
04 · FAQ
Kolly (kolly.ai) is an AI college application tool built around essays: four AI admissions readers that argue over your essay, a mock admissions committee per school, six-dimension essay scoring with percentiles against admitted students, a library of 800+ accepted essays, and a Final Read before submission. It costs $39 a month or $149 for a six-month season pass, with a free tier. Verified against kolly.ai in July 2026.
The scope of the room. Kolly’s committee is staged around the essay, with activities, honors, and recommendation letters reviewed item by item. Trajecta’s Committee Review deliberates the entire application at once: a specialist essay reader files first, four officers read the whole file through different lenses and disagree in writing, and a chair resolves it into a decision with next steps, anchored to the school’s own Common Data Set. Neither is a predictor, and you should distrust any tool that claims to be.
Month to month, Trajecta: $24.99 against Kolly’s $39. Across a six-month application season they land in the same place, Kolly’s $149 pass against about $150 of Trajecta months. Over a longer runway, the $249.99 Trajecta year is the better deal. The shape matters more than the few dollars: Kolly is priced for a season, Trajecta for the years before it plus the season.
Nothing stops you. Kolly’s accepted-essay library and percentile scores are useful references, and Trajecta’s profile-aware feedback and full-file committee do a different job. If the budget only covers one, pick by where you are: deep in essay season, or still building the record.
No. Trajecta reads your essay against the rest of your own application and gives inline feedback: what it adds, what it repeats, what it contradicts. The committee then weighs it as one input among your activities, courses, and context. Other people’s essays are not the yardstick.
Yes. The free tier includes profile building, the direction compass, mission planning, and college list organization, no credit card required. Pro at $249.99 a year adds essay feedback, activity coaching, and Committee Review.
Build your profile free and see the committee read a real application end to end before you decide anything.