# Build Your Own Teachable Alternative - Tool: Build Your Own SaaS Alternative - Last updated: May 2026 ## TL;DR Teachable eliminated its free plan in June 2025 and charges a punitive 7.5% transaction fee on the Starter plan — a creator doing $5K/month in course sales pays $570/month in combined platform and transaction fees. Building a custom hosted course platform costs $40K-$120K with a 2-4 month timeline and breaks even within 6-12 months for creators earning $2,000+/month. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does it cost to build a Teachable alternative? A full-featured hosted course platform with course builder, Stripe payments, student CRM, quizzes, certificates, and custom domain support costs $40K-$120K through a development agency. A minimal MVP (course delivery + enrollment + payments) can be built for $20K-$40K. Monthly hosting costs for Supabase + Vercel + Bunny.net run $30-150/month depending on video storage and traffic. ### How long does it take to build a Teachable clone? A production-ready MVP takes 2-4 months with a team of 2-3 engineers. A solo developer building part-time should plan 4-6 months. The fastest path is starting with ClassroomIO (1.5K GitHub stars, AGPL-3.0) as a base and customizing — this can cut timeline by 4-6 weeks by reusing the course builder and student management foundation. ### Are there open-source Teachable alternatives? Yes. ClassroomIO (1.5K GitHub stars, AGPL-3.0) is an explicit Teachable replacement built on SvelteKit + Supabase. Moodle (7.1K stars, GPLv3) has 200M+ users globally but is designed for institutions rather than creator-commerce. Open edX (7.9K stars, AGPL-3.0) is the most feature-complete but requires significant DevOps expertise to deploy. ### Can RapidDev build a custom Teachable alternative? Yes — RapidDev has built 600+ apps including creator platforms, subscription billing systems, and video course portals. A Teachable-alternative MVP is one of our more straightforward builds at 2-4 months. Get a free quote at rapidevelopers.com/contact. ### Does my custom platform charge transaction fees like Teachable? No. With a custom build using Stripe directly, you pay only Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (or lower if you qualify for Stripe's custom rates above $80K/month volume). There is no platform transaction fee on top of this — that 7.5% goes away entirely. ### Can I migrate my existing Teachable courses and students? Partially. Teachable allows you to export your student list as a CSV. Video content must be re-downloaded from Teachable and re-uploaded to your new platform (Bunny.net or Mux). Quiz questions and course structure must be manually recreated or exported via Teachable's API. Completed certificates and student progress data can be exported from Teachable's admin panel. Plan for 1-2 days of migration work per 10 courses. ### What about VAT and international tax compliance? Stripe Tax handles VAT/GST calculation automatically for 50+ countries. Enable it on your Stripe account, pass the customer's billing country to Stripe, and tax is calculated and collected automatically. Stripe also generates tax reports for filing. This covers the same compliance that Teachable:pay handles — at no additional platform cost beyond Stripe's standard rates. ### Is Teachable's transaction fee structure worth paying vs building? For creators earning under $1,000/month, Teachable Builder ($89/month, 0% transaction fee) is probably the right answer — a $50K build doesn't make financial sense. For creators earning $5,000+/month who want full control, white-labeling, and no student caps, a $40K-$60K custom build breaks even within 2 years of savings versus the recurring platform cost plus the opportunity cost of the student caps. --- Source: https://www.rapidevelopers.com/clone/teachable © RapidDev — https://www.rapidevelopers.com/clone/teachable