OneTimeThe course platform you own forever — no monthly fee, no cut of your sales.
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.
Lessonforge in 60 seconds
Everything in the box
Self-hosted LMS with modules, quizzes, progress tracking and PDF certificates — payments run through your own Stripe.
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.
Two separate auth realms
Instructor password from env plus student email/password accounts with scrypt-hashed passwords and fully separate sessions.
Lessonforge vs Teachable
Teachable charges $39+/mo. Here's what actually differs.
| 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.
Pick how you pay
Subscriptions if you want them — but the whole point is the lifetime tier.
Up and running in three steps
Buy once on Whop
One payment of $49 gets you the packaged Windows installer, or clone the MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/course-builder-lms-mvp and run it yourself for free.
Deploy or run desktop
docker compose up onto a $5 VPS to go public, or npm run desktop for an Electron window auto-logged-in as instructor.
Add your Stripe key and sell
Set ADMIN_PASSWORD, optionally add STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, and paid enrollments land in your own Stripe account.
Fair 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.
Related tools
More pay-once apps from the OneTimeSuite catalog.
More about Lessonforge
Every page we publish about this app — comparisons, personas, platforms and the problems it solves.
Stop renting. Own Lessonforge.
Self-hosted LMS with modules, quizzes, progress tracking and PDF certificates — payments run through your own Stripe.
Get Lessonforge — $129 forever