How Much Does It Cost to Build an App Like Teachable?
An online course platform sells access to lessons and remembers where every student stopped. Here is what an MVP of an app like Teachable needs, what each part costs on our price list, and what video costs once students start watching.
Test version: $6,000, 30 days or less: course pages, video uploads and Stripe checkout. Lean web MVP: $8,250, 35 to 40 days: adds memberships, automated emails and a video host such as Mux or Vimeo. Version 1 for instructor teams: $11,250, about 45 days: adds team roles and student analytics.
All three are fixed prices from our published price list. For the lean scope, a typical agency quote runs $63,000 to $176,000 or more by our estimate (see the MVP development cost guide). If you only want to sell your own course, Teachable itself starts at $29 a month billed annually, which beats any custom build.
So who should build one? Founders for whom the platform is the product: training for one industry, courses sold to companies with their own rules, learning inside an existing software product, or a school with features the big platforms lack. That is what this page prices, from our fixed price list. Other app types are in our app cost breakdowns.
What an MVP of an App Like Teachable Actually Needs
The core loop: an instructor uploads lessons and sets a price. A student pays, gets access, watches the lessons in order and picks up where they stopped. The instructor sees who enrolled and gets paid. Version one needs six things:
- Course builder. Courses split into sections and lessons, each with a video, text or a download.
- Video upload and playback. Videos that start quickly and play on a phone over a weak connection.
- Checkout and access. A one-off purchase in the test version; memberships or payment plans in the lean MVP. Only paying students reach the lessons.
- Progress. Mark lessons complete, resume where you stopped, and see the percentage done.
- Emails. Enrollment confirmation, a welcome sequence, and reminders for students who stall.
- Admin. Students, purchases and refunds in one view.
What Teachable has that version one does not need
From Teachable's own pricing page:
- Auto-graded quizzes and certificates. Useful for compliance training. For a first course, a PDF certificate sent by hand works.
- Coaching, community, memberships and digital downloads. Separate products; your first test is whether the core course sells.
- An affiliate program, upsells and cart recovery. Growth tools for when you have traffic to optimize.
- iOS and Android student apps. Teachable includes them on all plans, but a mobile web player covers version one.
- AI course creation, subtitles and translations. Add AI features later, at +$2,500 on our price list, if instructors want them.
- Zapier, webhooks and a public API. Build integrations when customers ask for a specific one.
How Teachable Started
Teachable began as a side project called Fedora. Its founder, Ankur Nagpal, wrote that in the fall of 2013 he was teaching courses on Udemy with his partner Conrad, and "built an incredibly rudimentary website to sell my mobile marketing course directly to people." A few days later he convinced Conrad to use the tool for his agency, which became the first paying customer.
By fall 2015, Nagpal wrote, the platform had helped "5,000+ teachers launch 12K+ courses, teach 700K students and make over $3.5 million," and Fedora was renamed Teachable. The first version sold one course for one teacher. Yours can start the same way: one instructor, one course, real payments.
Price Breakdown: Three Versions, Line by Line
Every line is a fixed price from our published price list; build days are working days. The calculator adds a range and a calendar timeline, and a call turns the range into one fixed quote.
1. Test version: $6,000, 30 days or less
| Item | What it covers | Price | Build days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base MVP | Sign-up and login, course and lesson pages, access after payment, lesson progress, database, Stripe checkout, basic admin view, landing page, deployment, 30 days of support | $5,000 | 20 |
| File processing | Video and file uploads for lessons, with previews | +$1,000 | 1 |
| Total | $6,000 | 21 |
Calculator estimate: $6,000 to $6,500, 30 days or less. Open this build in the calculator
What you do by hand in this version. One instructor, often you, and one course. Videos are stored as uploaded files and play in the browser's own video player, with no streaming service yet. You send welcome emails and nudges yourself, issue refunds from the Stripe dashboard, and answer questions by email or in a community tool you already use. Certificates, if anyone asks, are PDFs you send. This test answers one question: will people pay for this course, or this kind of school? Quizzes and communities do not change that answer.
2. Lean web MVP: $8,250, 35 to 40 days
| Item | What it covers | Price | Build days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base MVP | As in the test version | $5,000 | 20 |
| Subscription billing | Memberships or payment plans, a trial, upgrades and a billing portal | +$1,000 | 2 |
| File processing | Lesson uploads, downloads and previews | +$1,000 | 1 |
| Email automation | Enrollment and welcome emails, plus reminders for students who stall | +$500 | 1 |
| Video hosting integration (Mux or Vimeo) | Lessons streamed through a video host instead of served as raw files | +$750 | 1 |
| Total | $8,250 | 25 |
Calculator estimate: $8,500 to $9,000, 35 to 40 days. Open this build in the calculator
This is the version for a public launch: memberships bring recurring revenue, and the video host keeps playback smooth and the bandwidth bill sane, as the next section shows.
3. Version 1 for instructor teams: $11,250, about 45 days
| Item | What it covers | Price | Build days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everything in the lean MVP | Version 2 above | $8,250 | 25 |
| Teams and roles | Several instructors and assistants per school, with permission levels | +$1,500 | 2 |
| Analytics dashboard | Enrollments, completion rates, where students drop off, and revenue, with exports | +$1,500 | 2 |
| Total | $11,250 | 29 |
Calculator estimate: $11,500 to $13,000, about 45 days. Open this build in the calculator
This is the version for schools and companies, where several people run the courses and someone needs to know which lessons lose students.
Running Costs: Video Is the Line That Grows
Uploading a course is cheap; watching it is what costs money, because video hosts charge for every minute streamed. Mux's pricing page lists free encoding at basic quality; storage from $0.0024 per minute per month ($0.003 at 1080p); the first 100,000 delivery minutes each month free, then from $0.0008 per minute ($0.001 at 1080p); and a $20 monthly usage credit on pay-as-you-go accounts.
Assumptions: 20 hours of lessons (1,200 minutes) at 1080p; 2,000 active students each watching 3 hours (180 minutes) a month; 200 sales a month of a $99 course; about 8 emails per student a month. Prices checked November 2026.
| Item | Arithmetic | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Mux storage | 1,200 minutes × $0.003 | $3.60 |
| Mux delivery | 2,000 × 180 = 360,000 minutes; (360,000 − 100,000 free) × $0.001 | $260 |
| Mux usage credit | Pay-as-you-go | −$20 |
| Stripe card fees | $99 × 2.9% = $2.871, + $0.30 = $3.171 per sale; × 200 | $634.20 |
| Email (Resend Pro) | 2,000 × 8 = 16,000 emails, inside 50,000 | $20 |
| Database and sign-in (Supabase Pro) | From $25 | $25 |
| Hosting (Vercel Pro) | $20 per developer seat | $20 |
| Total | $942.80 |
Revenue in this example: 200 × $99 = $19,800 a month. Video comes to $3.60 + $260 − $20 = $243.60.
Why the lean MVP adds a video host. Mux's own estimate puts 1080p at about 25 minutes per GB, so 360,000 minutes is about 14,400 GB. Served as raw files from Supabase Pro, which includes 250 GB of egress (data sent out) and then charges $0.09 per GB, that is (14,400 − 250) × $0.09 = $1,273.50 a month, against $243.60 on Mux.
Vimeo is the flat-fee alternative: its Standard plan is sold monthly or yearly with 4TB of storage and lets you sell videos through Vimeo on Demand. Its help page lists no price, so check Vimeo's pricing page. Selling across borders can also mean collecting sales tax or VAT; Stripe Tax costs 0.5% per transaction where you are registered (no-code), or $0.50 per transaction through its API. Ask an accountant which rules apply to you.
Timeline: The Lean MVP Week by Week
The lean MVP is 25 build days, which the calculator shows as 35 to 40 days:
- Week 1: scope and course structure agreed, screens designed, skeleton deployed, and the video host account opened in your company's name.
- Week 2: the course builder, lesson pages, uploads to the video host and playback.
- Week 3: checkout and memberships in Stripe, access control and progress tracking.
- Week 4: welcome and reminder emails, the admin view and the landing page.
- Weeks 5 and 6: testing on phones and slow connections, launch, handover of the source code and documentation, and 30 days of support.
How a standard build fits into 30 days is in our MVP timeline guide.
What Makes a Course Platform Hard
- Video cost follows viewing. Delivery minutes are the bill that grows, so pick a sensible default resolution and do not autoplay the next lesson. Test playback on a cheap phone on mobile data.
- Protecting paid lessons. Video links must expire and work only for enrolled students, or one shared URL gives the course away. Nothing stops screen recording, so do not spend version one's budget on heavy copy protection.
- Progress that is right. Resume at the right second on another device, count a lesson complete only when most of it was watched, and send reminders in the student's own time zone.
- Money across borders. Refunds, payment plans that fail halfway, and tax on digital products, which differs by country. Keep version one simple and take advice before selling widely.
When We Are Not the Right Choice
If you are a creator selling your own courses, use Teachable or a similar platform. Its plans run from $29 to $139 a month billed annually; our lean build is $8,250 before running costs. Build only when the platform itself is your product. Our guide to no-code vs custom MVPs covers that choice.
If instructors sell on your platform and you pay them out, it is a marketplace, priced differently: the Marketplace product type is +$3,000 and 3 days on our list, plus payouts. The Upwork-style marketplace breakdown shows how held payouts change the scope. If you need an accredited learning system with formal standards or certification from day one, a specialist vendor fits better than our fixed-scope MVP, and gamified learning that is really a mobile game is outside what we build. After launch, quizzes, certificates and community features suit our Growth Partner retainer.
Get a Fixed Price for Your Teachable-Style App
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Book a Free Call →Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to build an app like Teachable?
At minidev.pro, a lean web MVP of a course platform like Teachable costs $8,250 fixed: the $5,000 base, memberships, video and file uploads, automated emails and a video hosting integration such as Mux or Vimeo. A test version is $6,000, and a version with instructor teams and student analytics is $11,250. By our estimate, a typical agency quote for the lean scope is $63,000 to $176,000 or more.
How long does it take to build an app like Teachable?
35 to 40 days for the lean MVP, which is 25 working days of build time. The test version takes 30 days or less, and the version with instructor teams and analytics takes about 45 days. The last week goes on testing playback on phones and slow connections, then launch.
How much does video hosting cost for an online course platform?
About $244 a month in our example with Mux: 2,000 students each watching 3 hours of 1080p video a month, a 20-hour course library and Mux's $20 monthly credit. Mux charges nothing for basic-quality encoding and gives 100,000 delivery minutes free each month, then charges from $0.001 a minute at 1080p. Serving the same viewing as raw files would cost about $1,274.
Should I build my own course platform or use Teachable?
Use Teachable or a similar platform if you are selling your own courses: its plans run from $29 to $139 a month billed annually. Build your own when the platform is the product you sell, for example training for one industry, courses sold to companies with their own rules, or learning inside an existing software product.
Do I need a mobile app for an online course platform?
Not for version one. A mobile web player lets students watch on their phones without app store review or fees. Teachable offers iOS and Android student apps on all its plans, so add native apps once your students ask for them. On our price list, iOS and Android apps add $6,000 and 15 build days.
Sources
All outside pages checked November 2026. Video and payment prices change, so check each provider's page before you budget.
- Ankur Nagpal, "Fedora is now Teachable: How a Side Project Grew Up to Become a Company", The Startup on Medium (fall 2013 start while teaching on Udemy; a rudimentary website to sell one course; the first paying customer; fall 2015 figures; the rename to Teachable): medium.com/swlh/how-a-side-project-grew-up-to-become-a-company-66df8634c787
- Teachable, Pricing (Starter at $39 monthly or $29 annually with a 7.5% transaction fee; Builder at $89 or $69 and Growth at $189 or $139, 0% on Teachable Payments; features by plan): teachable.com/pricing
- Mux, Pricing (free basic-quality encoding; storage from $0.0024 per minute per month, $0.003 at 1080p; 100,000 free delivery minutes a month, then from $0.0008 per minute, $0.001 at 1080p; $20 monthly usage credit): mux.com/pricing
- Mux Docs, Estimating your Mux Video costs (free basic-quality input; 100,000 free delivery minutes; $20 monthly credit; about 25 minutes per GB at 1080p): mux.com/docs/pricing/estimating-video-costs
- Vimeo Help Center, About the Vimeo Standard plan (monthly or yearly subscription; 4TB storage; selling videos): help.vimeo.com/hc/en-us/articles/12425416126353-About-the-Vimeo-Standard-plan
- Stripe, Pricing (2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card charge; Stripe Tax at 0.5% per transaction no-code or $0.50 through the API, where registered): stripe.com/pricing
- Supabase, Pricing (Pro from $25 a month; 250 GB egress, then $0.09 per GB): supabase.com/pricing
- Resend, Pricing (Pro at $20 a month for 50,000 emails): resend.com/pricing
- Vercel, Pricing (Pro at $20 a month per developer seat): vercel.com/pricing
- minidev.pro, MVP cost calculator price list: minidev.pro/mvp-cost-calculator