Underlayer vs Trainn
Trainn and Underlayer both train your customers, but they start from opposite ends. Trainn turns screen recordings into product videos and guides and publishes them through a no-code academy and in-app widgets. Underlayer is a developer platform: interactive courses built over an API, embedded in your product with the learner's identity, and reported back through webhooks.
The short version
Side by side
| Feature | Underlayer | Trainn |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An API and embeddable player for interactive courses | An AI product video and guide platform with a customer LMS[1][3] |
| Main content | Courses of 39 block types: text, media, quizzes, interactions | Videos and step-by-step guides made from screen recordings[5] |
| Entry price | Build: $149/mo, 25,000 course views | Creator: $19/mo for one creator; the LMS starts on Scale, from $10,000/yr[2] |
| What you pay for | Course views | Creator seats and video/guide count; learners as monthly active users[2] |
| Learner accounts | None — your user id, signed by your backend | Learners who log in or sign up count as MAUs; SSO on Enterprise[2] |
| In-app delivery | One signed iframe; embeddable course builder | No-code in-app tutorials and a knowledge-base widget[4] |
| Public API | Full REST API and signed webhooks, documented | API access mentioned; no public reference found[3] |
| SCORM | Export 1.2 and 2004; import | Import of SCORM content; export not published[3] |
| MCP server | Yes | None published |
Different jobs
Trainn is built around recording: its AI agent takes a screen recording or a webinar, writes a script and adds an AI voice, and turns the result into videos, interactive demos and step-by-step guides.[5] Those are published through an academy, a knowledge base and widgets you place in your product without a developer.[4] If most of your training is “here is how to use this screen”, that is a fast route to a lot of content.
Underlayer is built around the course as structured data: screens of text, media, questions, branching and practice, scored and resumable, authored in a dashboard, over the API or by an AI client. It is aimed at teams who want training to behave like part of their product — the learner is the user already signed in, the result lands in your database, and a customer who runs their own LMS gets a SCORM package.
How each one charges
Trainn prices by the people who create content and the number of videos and guides, and counts learners as monthly active users when they log in or sign up. Its LMS is included from the Scale plan, listed from $10,000 a year with 100 monthly active learners; Scale and Enterprise are sold through their sales team.[2]
Underlayer has no per-creator or per-learner charge: paid plans include unlimited learners and people building, and you pay for course views — 25,000 a month on Build at $149, $9 per thousand after that. The pricing page lists every limit.
For developers
- Every Underlayer endpoint is documented with its request and response in the API reference, and webhooks are signed and retried.
- Learner identity is an HMAC your backend makes, so there is no second login and nobody can open a course as someone else — see embedding.
- Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients can build and translate courses through the MCP server.
- Trainn mentions API access for custom integrations and connects to Salesforce and HubSpot, but we could not find a public API reference to compare against.[3]
Which one should you pick?
The two can even sit side by side: product videos in Trainn, and scored courses and certification inside your app on Underlayer. If you have to pick one, pick by who will build the training. A customer education team recording walkthroughs will move faster in Trainn. An engineering team that wants training inside the product, under its own control, will be happier with Underlayer — the free sandbox is the quickest way to find out.
Sources
Read from each product's own site on 26 September 2026. Pricing and features change; if something here is out of date, tell us at the address in the footer and we'll correct it.
- Trainn homepage — https://trainn.co/
- Trainn pricing — https://trainn.co/pricing/
- Trainn SaaS LMS — https://trainn.co/saas-lms/
- Trainn in-app tutorials — https://trainn.co/in-app-tutorials/
- Trainn AI video agent — https://trainn.co/ai-video-agent/