Getting Started with the Teachable API: A Beginner’s Guide (With a Step-By-Step Google Sheets Example)

Want to automate student tracking in your Teachable school? The Teachable API makes it possible!

In this beginner-friendly guide, we’ll break down what an API is, how the Teachable API works, and provide a step-by-step tutorial to log student enrollments into Google Sheets automatically—without any manual data entry.

What is an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is like a bridge that allows two applications to communicate with each other. Think of it like a waiter in a restaurant:

You (the user) tell the waiter (API) what you want.
The waiter (API) goes to the kitchen (the application) to get the data.
The waiter (API) brings back what you requested.

With the Teachable API, you can ask Teachable for information (like student enrollments), send new data (like registering a student), or perform automated tasks without needing to log into your dashboard. To learn more about the Teachable API, visit their API documentation site at https://docs.teachable.com.

What Can You Do With the Teachable API?

The Teachable API allows you to:

✅ Get a list of students in your school.
✅ Retrieve student information (name, email, enrollment data).
✅ Add or update student enrollments automatically.
✅ Pull course data (like completion percentages).
✅ Generate reporting data for progress tracking. ✅ and more…

For our example, we’ll set up a simple way to automatically record all your student in Google Sheets.

Step-By-Step: Logging Student Enrollments to Google Sheets

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have these ready:

A Teachable account (with API access available on Pro plan and above).
A Google Sheet where you want to log enrollments.
Your Teachable API Key (found in your Teachable admin panel under “Settings” -> “API Keys”).

Step 1: Create a Google Sheet & Enable Google Apps Script

Open Google Sheets.
Create a new spreadsheet and name it something like Teachable Enrollments.
In row 1, add these column names:

Student ID
Student Name
Email

Click Extensions > Apps Script. This opens a new scripting editor where we’ll write a simple script to connect Teachable to Google Sheets.

Step 2: Write the Script to Fetch Enrollments

Replace the default code (Code.gs) in the Apps Script editor with the following:

function logTeachableEnrollments() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
  const apiKey = "YOUR_TEACHABLE_API_KEY";
  let baseUrl = "https://developers.teachable.com/v1/users";  // Teachable API endpoint  

  let page = 1;
  let perPage = 50; // Adjust based on API limits or requirements
  let morePages = true; // Flag to indicate if more records exist

  while (morePages) {
    let url = `${baseUrl}?page=${page}&per=${perPage}`;

    let options = {
      "method": "GET",
      "headers": {
        "accept": "application/json",
        "apiKey": apiKey
      }
    };

    // Fetch data from API
    const response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url, options);
    const data = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

    if (data.users && data.users.length > 0) {
      data.users.forEach(user => {
        sheet.appendRow([user.id, user.name, user.email]);
      });

      page++; // Move to next page
    } else {
      morePages = false; // Stop when no users exist in the response
    }
  }

  Logger.log("All records have been fetched and logged.");
}

Don’t forget to save the script, by clicking the save (disc) icon.

🚀 What This Script Does:

Connects to Teachable’s API using your API key.
Fetches a list of students (users).
Adds a new row to your Google Sheet for each student that is found.
Handles pagination

💡 Why Do We Handle Pagination?

Teachable’s API returns results in pages (e.g., 50 students per request). If you have more students than the per-page limit, you need to make additional requests to fetch all students.

Our script automatically loops through pages until there are no more students left to retrieve.

Step 3: Test Your Script

🔴 Google’s Security Warning: When you run the script for the first time, Google might show a security warning:

⚠️ “This app isn’t verified”

This happens because the script hasn’t been reviewed by Google, but since you wrote it yourself, it’s completely safe.

To proceed:

Click Advanced
Select Go to Untitled project (unsafe)
Grant permission for the script to access your Google Sheets

🛠 Tip: If you name your Apps Script project, the warning will display your project name instead of “Untitled project.”

Click the Run ▶️ button in Apps Script to manually trigger it.
Check your Google Sheet — if everything is working, your students will start to appear row-by-row

Final Thoughts

🚀 The Teachable API can save you hours of manual tracking! With just a few lines of code, you can automate student enrollments, making it effortless to manage your school.

Next Steps: