How Much Does It Cost to Create an Online Course?

Creating an online course costs under three hundred dollars at the do-it-yourself production tier, and under one hundred if you already own earbuds. Hosting runs from zero dollars a month on a percentage-fee checkout to one hundred seventy-nine a month on a premium platform, with card processing at about 2.9% plus thirty cents on every sale. The dangerous line is advertising, where operators report paying one to two dollars per lead early and one operator described a business bragging a million dollars while spending nine hundred seventy-five thousand of it on ads.

We may earn a commission from some links at no cost to you.

Every figure below comes from the free course-business course, where each number carries its source. The course's capital band is under a thousand dollars, and production is not what threatens it.

Production costs, by tier

| Tier | What it is | Cost | |---|---|---| | Phone pocket | Phone or webcam, earbuds mic clipped close, free screen recorder, window light | $0 to $60 | | Quiet room | USB microphone in the $55 to $100 class, clip light, closed curtains | $100 to $200 | | Hired camera | Local videographer, two cameras, half a day | $500 to $3,000 |

The only gear worth buying early is audio. Viewers forgive plain video and abandon murky audio within seconds, and a microphone in the fifty-to-one-hundred-dollar class, down to about fifty for an Editors' Choice USB model, beats every built-in laptop mic. Light is free: face a window. A free window beats an unused eighty-dollar ring light, which describes most ring lights ever sold. The recording lesson holds the session checklist, and slides-plus-audio is a complete, legitimate format, so the camera tier waits until the course already earns.

The hidden production cost is editing time: several hours of edit for every finished hour as a first-timer. That is a calendar cost, not a cash cost, but it is the real price of the production phase.

Platform costs

Two shelves, two cost structures. On your own storefront, processing runs 2.9% plus thirty cents per online charge, about four dollars sixty-five on a hundred-fifty-dollar sale, and the platform fee is where they differ:

| Platform | Entry monthly fee | Transaction fee | You keep on $150 | |---|---|---|---| | Gumroad, checkout only | $0 | 10% + 50¢, all-in | $134.50 | | Teachable Starter | $39 | 7.5% | $134.10 | | Podia Mover | $49 | 5% | $137.85 | | Thinkific Basic | $54 ($40 billed annually) | 0% | $145.35 | | Kajabi Basic | $179 ($143 billed annually) | 0% | $145.35 |

The decision rule from the platform lesson: selling two courses a month on a fifty-dollar platform is a charitable donation to a software company, and the crossover to zero-fee platforms arrives at roughly ten to fifteen sales a month. Presell on a zero-monthly checkout, graduate when volume justifies it. One offset matters at the start: Gumroad acts as merchant of record and handles sales-tax collection and remittance worldwide as part of its fee. On a Stripe-powered platform, sales tax is your problem, small in year one but real.

The marketplace shelf is different in kind. Udemy charges nothing monthly but takes thirty-seven percent of organic sales and caps list prices at $199.99, with promotions commonly selling courses at twelve to twenty dollars. You keep about fifty-five fifty of a nominal hundred-fifty-dollar sale, and you never receive the buyer's email address.

Email and launch costs

Email platforms have free tiers that cover a first launch; the course cites one platform free to ten thousand subscribers and another free to one thousand. A presale needs one sales page and one working checkout, so the launch stack can start at zero monthly cost.

The launch itself costs time: a widely used first-launch playbook runs about an eleven-day cart window with five to seven emails, and most sales arrive in the final day. Budget the writing hours, not software.

Advertising: the line that eats businesses

Ads are optional and dangerous at the start. A founder who built and sold a course company for six million dollars described paying one to two dollars per lead early, rising to five to seven as competition grew, and operators describe losing money on ads for the first weeks of any campaign. The one-million-revenue-minus-nine-hundred-seventy-five-thousand-in-ad-spend story is an operator anecdote the course carries with exactly that caveat, but the shape is the warning: judge by margin, never by top-line revenue.

The other deductions

Refunds come out of your pocket; operators who deliver what they promise tend to see rates under five percent, an operator claim the course passes along with its hedge. Set aside roughly a quarter to a third of profit for tax. And note the legal exposure that costs nothing when you know it: the FTC's 2024 rule on consumer reviews carries civil penalties, and the 2023 endorsement-guides update requires generally-expected-results disclosure rather than "results not typical" fine print.

FAQ

What is the cheapest way to create an online course?

Phone or webcam, earbuds clipped close, a free screen recorder, and window light: zero to sixty dollars, hosted on a zero-monthly checkout at ten percent plus fifty cents per sale. That stack sells a legitimate course; murky audio is the only production mistake that reliably kills one.

How much does a course platform cost per month?

From zero (Gumroad, percentage-only) through thirty-nine and forty-nine dollars (Teachable, Podia) to fifty-four (Thinkific) and one hundred seventy-nine (Kajabi), with annual billing discounts on the top two. Below roughly ten to fifteen sales a month, the percentage checkout wins.

How much does Udemy cost the instructor?

No monthly fee, but thirty-seven percent of organic sales to you, meaning you keep about fifty-five fifty of a hundred-fifty-dollar sale, and promotions commonly reprice courses to twelve or twenty dollars. Sales through your own coupon or referral links pay ninety-seven percent.

Do I need to spend money on ads to launch a course?

No. The course's method is a presale to a hand-built list of forty to eighty warm names plus one free live workshop, which costs time and nothing else. Ads belong later, with margin data in hand, and even then budget one to two dollars per lead at best.

The distilled budget

Cash to produce: under three hundred dollars. Monthly to run: zero to one hundred seventy-nine depending on the shelf. The expensive part is attention, and no purchase substitutes for it. The full course with the money worksheet is free at the course-business page. The business quiz matches your skills and timeline to the right course in two minutes. Our full how-to guide walks the presale method step by step.