If you are budgeting your first training project, the first thing you want to know is simple: how much does e-learning cost? The honest answer is that it depends on what you are actually building, a single 20-minute module is a very different animal from a full company academy. But "it depends" is not a useful budget line, so this article gives you concrete starting prices, explains exactly what drives the number up or down, and shows you where cheap quotes quietly cut corners.
At Le Artist I build custom e-learning in Articulate Storyline, and my pricing starts at €1,400 for a pilot module. Below I break down what you get at each level and which variables move the price, so you can scope a project that fits both your learners and your budget.
How much does e-learning cost in 2026?
Here are my canonical starting prices. Each tier is a real package, not a placeholder, and the final number is fixed after a short intro consultation.
- Pilot module, €1,400. A short module (about 10 minutes) on one topic with SCORM export, so you can test it in your own LMS with your own people; 50% of the pilot price is credited to a follow-up course.
- Learning module, €2,400. One topic, a test set, roughly 15-30 minutes of content. Ideal when you need to teach a single subject well: a product feature, a safety procedure, a policy refresher.
- Course of 3-5 modules, €5,600. A complete topic, onboarding flow, or compliance course. More screens, more interactivity, a fuller assessment.
- Academy (8+ modules), from €9,600, invoiced monthly. A full onboarding journey or a company academy made of several connected courses.
So the entry point is €1,400 for a pilot module, the per-module price drops with volume (€1,120-1,870 per module in a course), and the gap between tiers is not arbitrary, it reflects scope, length, and how much custom work goes into each project. The rest of this article explains the levers that decide where you land.
You will see much lower numbers advertised elsewhere, template marketplaces and quick "AI-generated course" tools can spit something out for a fraction of that. Those have a place for throwaway internal notes. But a course your team is required to complete, that represents your brand, and that has to hold up to an audit is a different product. The price difference is the work that template tools skip.
What actually drives the price
When you compare quotes, you are really comparing six variables. Understanding them lets you push the price down deliberately, by cutting scope, not quality.
Scope and length
This is the biggest lever. A 20-minute module and a 90-minute course are not in the same budget bracket, because every extra minute of finished learning needs structure, screens, and review. More importantly, length usually correlates with number of screens and assessment depth, a module with one test set is cheaper to produce than a course with branching scenarios and a graded final exam. If budget is tight, the smartest move is almost always to narrow the topic rather than rush a broad one.
Interactivity
A slideshow you click through costs far less than a course where learners drag, sort, make decisions, and get tailored feedback. Real interactivity, branching scenarios, simulations, clickable hotspots, scenario-based questions, is where Storyline earns its keep and where learning actually sticks. It is also genuine production work: each interaction has to be designed, built, and tested. If you want to control cost, decide which moments truly need interaction and let the rest be clean, well-written screens.
Scripting and content
Someone has to turn your raw material, PDFs, a subject expert's notes, a half-finished deck, into a learning script with a logical flow, clear objectives, and questions that test the right things. If you hand over polished, final copy, this part is light. If I am shaping the content from scattered sources, instructional design becomes a real line item. Either way it is worth doing well: weak content kills a course no matter how slick the build.
Voice-over
Narration changes both the feel and the cost. Adding professional voice-over means a script written for the ear, recording, editing, and syncing audio to on-screen events. It raises engagement and accessibility, but it also adds production time, and it multiplies with every language version. Many effective modules ship without narration; treat it as a deliberate choice, not a default.
SCORM / LMS integration
A course is only useful if your learning management system can host it and track completions. SCORM (or xAPI) packaging and LMS integration is the plumbing that records who passed, when, and with what score, essential for compliance and onboarding. Getting tracking, scoring rules, and completion criteria right takes setup and testing against your specific LMS. If you do not yet have an LMS, that is a separate decision worth making early.
Language versions
Every additional language is essentially a partial rebuild: translation, re-recording any voice-over, re-checking layout where longer text breaks the design, and repackaging for the LMS. Two languages are not double the work of one, but they are meaningfully more than one. If you operate across markets, plan language versions into the scope from the start rather than bolting them on later.
How to get the right quote, not just the cheapest
The cheapest quote and the right quote are rarely the same. A useful budgeting process looks like this:
- Define the learning goal and audience first. "Teach new hires our refund policy in 20 minutes" is a scopeable brief. "We need some training" is not.
- Decide your must-have interactions. Pick the two or three moments where a learner genuinely needs to practice, and accept clean content elsewhere.
- Confirm your LMS and tracking needs early, so SCORM work is scoped, not discovered halfway through.
- Be explicit about voice-over and languages, since both multiply across the project.
- Ask for a fixed price after a structure proposal, not a vague hourly open-ended estimate.
This is exactly how I work: after a short intro call I send a proposed structure, the interaction types, and a fixed price, so you are approving a known number, not a moving target.
Bottom line
E-learning in 2026 starts at €1,400 for a pilot module, €2,400 for a full single-topic learning module, €5,600 for a course of 3-5 modules and from €9,600 for a company academy invoiced monthly. Where you land depends on scope and length, interactivity, scripting, voice-over, LMS integration, and language versions, not on luck. Scope those six variables deliberately and you get a course that earns its budget instead of a cheap one that nobody finishes.
When you are ready to put real numbers against your project, see my e-learning development in Storyline page for the full package breakdown.
Keep reading
- Why companies choose Articulate for corporate e-learning, what Storyline-based courses do that generic tools cannot.
- How to teach your team to use AI, a practical training topic that fits neatly into a single module or a wider program.