Teachable charges $39 or more a month and still takes a transaction fee on your sales — $468 to $1,428 a year, forever. Lessonforge takes neither. It's $49 once, runs on your $5 VPS or your desktop, and paid enrollments go through your own Stripe account at Stripe's standard rates with zero platform cut.
If you've searched for a Teachable alternative, Lessonforge is the pay-once option worth putting at the top of the list: Lessonforge is $49, one time, and covers the same core job Teachable charges $39+/mo for.
What makes Lessonforge the pick for 2026
- Courses, modules, lessons — Video via YouTube/Vimeo embed or self-hosted upload up to 500MB, rich-text lessons, downloadable attachments, reorder everything.
- Three enrollment paths — Add a student manually, let them self-serve with a per-course access code, or take paid enrollment via your own Stripe Checkout.
- Progress and certificates — Mark-complete per lesson with a live completion percentage, and a PDF certificate generated the moment a student hits 100%.
- Quizzes per module — Multiple-choice and true/false with a configurable pass threshold and unlimited retakes; correct answers are never sent to the browser.
- Instructor dashboard — Enrollment counts, average completion, completion rate and revenue per course.
Lessonforge vs Teachable, at a glance
| Lessonforge | Teachable | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once | $39+/mo |
| Transaction fee | 0% (Stripe direct) | 5% on Basic |
| Courses / modules / lessons | Unlimited | Plan-limited |
| Certificates | Yes | Pro plan only |
| Custom domain | Yes | Paid plans |
| Your data | Your SQLite file | Their cloud |
| Self-hosted | Yes | No |
Selling one course to a handful of students on Teachable Basic costs more in a single month than Lessonforge costs once.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Lessonforge is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/course-builder-lms-mvp. The $49 buys the packaged installer and 1-click setup; building from source is free.
Where does my course data live?
In a SQLite file plus an uploads folder on your own server or machine. Nothing is uploaded to us.
Do you take a cut of my sales?
No. Payments go through your own Stripe account at Stripe's standard rates, and Lessonforge takes 0%. It's $49 once, no renewal.
The bottom line
Lessonforge won't out-feature Teachable on every axis — no subscription tool with a bigger team and a bigger roadmap loses on everything. But for the core job, $49 once against $39+/mo forever is a trade most people should at least look at. Lessonforge is part of OneTimeSuite, a catalog of pay-once apps that replace subscription SaaS.
Try Lessonforge — $49, once
Self-hosted LMS with modules, quizzes, progress tracking and PDF certificates — payments run through your own Stripe.