Currently, a work breakdown structure (WBS) approach is used as the most common cost estimation approach for online course production projects. To improve the practice of cost estimation, this paper proposes a novel framework to estimate the cost for online course production projects using a case‐based reasoning (CBR) technique and a WBS. A prototype was developed to illustrate the effectiveness of the framework. Preliminary results suggest that the combined approach of using CBR and WBS is preferred and enables project managers to generate reasonable estimates for online course production projects more efficiently.