Canvas LMS vs Moodle comparison

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Canvas LMS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Moodle and Canvas LMS are competing in the learning management system market, offering distinct advantages. Canvas LMS appears to have the edge due to its user-friendly interface and innovative tools.

Features: Moodle offers extensive customization, open-source adaptability, and powerful analytics. Canvas LMS features a user-friendly interface, seamless third-party integrations, and mobile accessibility.

Room for Improvement: Moodle could improve in user interface design, real-time support, and integration challenges. Canvas LMS has room to enhance customization options, offline access, and analytics depth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Moodle's open-source nature requires technical expertise for deployment, with community-based support which might be limited. Canvas LMS offers a cloud-based deployment model, simplifying implementation and providing comprehensive customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Moodle often has lower upfront costs due to its open-source model but may incur higher total costs due to maintenance. Canvas LMS uses a subscription-based model with higher initial costs and potentially greater ROI due to operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Canvas LMS vs. Moodle Report (Updated: February 2026).

Canvas LMS vs. Moodle

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Canvas LMS

Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)

6th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Moodle

Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Learning Management Systems (LMS) category, the mindshare of Canvas LMS is 3.3%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Moodle is 3.9%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Moodle	3.9%
Canvas LMS	3.3%
Other	92.8%

Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Featured Reviews

Lance Levin

Learning Magic Solutions | Managing Director at CTI

Comprehensive learning system transforms education with innovative features

The integration capability of Canvas LMS with other educational tools is probably the best for integration. They have thousands of apps that are already integrated with Canvas LMS. It uses a very simple API LTI method where you just have to input a number and then it's integrated. When assessing the analytics features and reporting features of Canvas LMS, they have comprehensive capabilities. They have reporting, attendance registers, and the back-end SIS system. The reporting is very easy and analytics is excellent. Regarding its mobile compatibility feature, Canvas LMS is probably the easiest to use. It's user-friendly and operates with simple copy and paste functionality. It operates similarly to Word, with no difficulty at all. It's extremely user-friendly. When speaking about scalability and flexibility, Canvas LMS is very scalable. Everything's on the AWS cloud, so content is not a problem offline. It's scalable because the largest universities in the world use it.

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Agnes Mindila

Director School of Computing and Information Technology at JKUAT

Offers customized features that allow us to see whether students visited the platform and watched the provided videos

An improvement would be to have it support physically challenged students, who we think should be able to participate in some of our courses. If the learning management system could support blind students or students with learning disabilities, it would expand the reach of education by providing tools that support challenged learners. In future releases, I'd like to see more features that support challenged students, as I just mentioned above. This is because of the university's goal to make education accessible to all groups without discrimination. If we can have more tools that support students who are challenged, that would be very good. If AI could help, that would be nice. We want to support learners who are remote and provide learning to disadvantaged learners or certain groups of people. AI would come in very handy if Moodle had such capabilities.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Canvas LMS is the best solution because they have enabled scalability and cutting-edge technology transfer through Thomas Bravo, a multi-billion dollar company and will soon have the financial backing and support of KKR at close to $5 Billion."

"We have been using Canvas LMS, and overall, it has served our needs well for managing courses and general settings."

"The integration with Zoom is a notable feature. It allows for seamless access to live class sessions directly from Canvas after authentication, enabling quick entry into Zoom calls. You can also schedule Zoom calls or private recordings directly within Canvas, making it convenient, especially for situations like self-recording exams. Additionally, Canvas excels in collaboration and discussion capabilities. Users can engage in discussions on various topics, and there's the option to create custom groups for more focused interactions. These groups provide a level of privacy and isolation from the broader class, which is a significant advantage."

"It's easy to follow. It flows well, and it's easy to use."

"Its easy adaptability to whatever form or methodology you are using to teach is valuable. It tends to be seamless, and it is very much a self-intuitive product. It requires almost no instruction, and you can be fully up to speed and ready to run on it. You can bring someone in who has never worked with any online learning or LMS system, and in a week's timeframe, they would almost be fully functional because Canvas is so simple to use."

"They have a more extensive support base in terms of infrastructure."

"Canvas LMS is user-friendly. Its assessment tools help to find the weaknesses and strengths of students."

"The product's flexibility is exceptional."

More Canvas LMS pros

"One of the most valuable aspects is the ability to input data into the model."

"Moodle is useful for several things, and you can customize it."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"Cost-effective and intuitive."

"The solution is stable."

"The valuable features of Moodle include its open-source nature, which makes it free to use, and the supportive community that assists with any issues."

"The monitoring aspect is important for students."

"The customization features of Moodle significantly enhance the learning experience for our users."

More Moodle pros

Cons

"It would be good to be able to do teleconferencing within the LMS."

"In our working, we are encountering many challenges with Canvas LMS. One of the major area is their business model which is having a very different pricing structure. The structure is made in such a way that the license fee is needed to be paid for the complete year even if the student has been enrolled for a programme of short duration. This structure is not conducive with our needs and hence, in the past few years, been increasing our costs manifold. Along with this, Canva LMS also lacks many functionalities such as notifications and adaptive learning. There is a specific issue with the licensing model that affects us in continuous education. The inability to reuse a license for the same course in different terms hinders our cost efficiency. For instance, if a program runs from January to April, we are required to pay for the license twice within the same academic year. This contrasts with other platforms like Hyper, where reusing a license is possible, allowing us to use the same license multiple times in different terms. Along with the use, we are exploring the integration of artificial intelligence into our processes, and Canvas LMS falls short in this regard. While some platforms allow connections with external AI services, Canvas does not currently offer built-in artificial intelligence capabilities, a feature we find valuable for enhancing the learning experience."

"There are a couple of areas that could be improved. Firstly, the discussion feature is not very interactive and can be slow to respond, making it less intuitive at the moment. This is an aspect that needs substantial improvement. Another point to consider is related to the cost of the LMS system. It's perceived as relatively expensive, which has led to discussions about transitioning away from Canvas, potentially to a more cost-effective alternative. This cost-related aspect is a significant factor to consider when implementing such a system."

"The high-tech interactivity with other software, like ArcGIS or RSA Archer, can be better. It is not as easily compatible with them. You can put apps in it that the students can then access, but the routing of apps through the Canvas system slows down functionality on the other types of products."

"The product could be integrated with a talent management system."

"It would be nice to be able to do more real-time comprehensive reporting with Canvas LMS."

"Integrating more AI capabilities for the product could enhance its functionality, particularly in automating repetitive tasks and personalizing learning experiences."

"The learning curve is not steep, but it is intermediate."

More Canvas LMS cons

"The biggest area for improvement is the UI. They should also make the navigation simpler to understand. They've recently introduced a new way of having navigation work in Moodle, but they all look very similar."

"Moodle is missing a subscription-based system where learners can subscribe to available courses and make the payment for those courses."

"The multi-tenancy system within Moodle could be improved. IOMAD is what makes the multi-tenancy possible but this comes with many issues."

"The solution should have more student-centric details in the modules."

"The ability to input modified, individual, independent grades in a grade center component is not just hard. It almost always requires you to get tech involved. When you're dealing with a learning system where you have people in an open enrollment with all different levels of learning modes or methodologies, and as well as a worldwide student body, you end up with situations where you have to absolutely exempt somebody from a grade or an assignment and enter a new, different kind of assignment because of their skillset or lack thereof. You can't do that in Moodle. It is virtually impossible to do that in Moodle without having a tech do it for you, and when you have to have that level of tech support, it becomes problematic. They need to fix the grade book center. It is the part where you do evaluations. They need to fix it so that the individual professors can make changes directly without having to get a hold of tech support to do it for them."

"It would be good to have a feature that would ensure that students are the ones performing the given assessment."

"For a first time user, especially someone who is non-technical, Moodle is difficult for them to understand and they often need assistance."

"One aspect that I found a bit confusing was the dual editing system, where you could edit the layout of the course separately from editing the content."

More Moodle cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Canvas is satisfactory for my university. We have negotiated a good price, especially considering that we are a large university with twenty-six campuses across the country. Canvas offers a favorable pricing model for academic institutions, and the cost is reasonable. However, in continuous education, the challenge lies not in the price itself but in the business model. The requirement to pay for the entire year when our students may only use the license for a shorter duration creates challenges. The inability to adjust the licensing based on actual usage is a significant drawback for us, making the effective cost higher compared to other platforms like Hyper Learning"

"Canvas LMS is low-priced compared to other vendors."

"The platform can be expensive for smaller organizations with fewer students."

"Canvas LMS is an affordable solution."

"Moodle is free. It should probably stay free. There isn't really any support for Moodle unless you pay an astronomical amount, which is weird."

"It is open source, and it has a lot of free documentation. It can be by far the least expensive option, but it depends on how one decides to use it. It can be free if you download it and host it on-prem, and you don't count your time as being worth anything. So, it can be almost free, or it can be very expensive just depending on if you get a package with a provider and if it is a huge solution."

"This solution offers a free-to-use version which can be deployed only on-premises and is what we are using. Moodle also offer support based and cloud based subscriptions. Organizations can select the appropriate package based on their needs. Moodle offer reasonable pricing for the use of their solution."

"This particular organization is a relatively small academic institution. It is a single campus, not very big, with 4,500 to 5,000 total students. It is not a big faculty. There are no hard sciences other than undergraduate-level hard sciences. So, Moodle is functional, and it is relatively simple because it is open-source software. It has sub advantages, and it is inexpensive. Small schools with small enrollment numbers just can't afford the more expensive ones."

"Moodle is a free open-sourced solution. This is one of the best aspects of Moodle."

"It is a free-of-cost solution."

"Moodle is a free solution."

"Moodle is an open-source solution that is free of cost."

More Moodle pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

21%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

14%

University

11%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Canvas LMS?

There are some disadvantages with Canvas LMS and always improvements to be made. That comes with technology. As technology improves, the product will improve. Regarding features that Canvas LMS cou...

What advice do you have for others considering Canvas LMS?

Canvas LMS is the best solution because they have enabled scaleability and cutting edge technology transfer through Thomas Bravo, a multi-billion dollar company and will soon have the financial the...

What is your primary use case for Canvas LMS?

As a learning management system, Canvas LMS is used for online education. As a reseller of Canvas LMS, I can say that it's a comprehensive learning system that's automated. It has gamification, AI,...

What do you like most about Moodle?

The customization features of Moodle significantly enhance the learning experience for our users.

What needs improvement with Moodle?

The customization of the interface could be improved. Although we can load and change themes, it still always looks like Moodle. We have not found a way to significantly alter its appearance.

What is your primary use case for Moodle?

We use Moodle to manage our students' information, the classes, and the course catalog, which are mainly related to education. It serves as a learning management system for teaching in class.

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Product Reports

Canvas LMS

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Overview

Canvas LMS is a comprehensive learning management system that enhances the educational experience. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows educators to create and manage courses, assignments, and assessments. Canvas enables seamless communication and collaboration between students and teachers. It supports various multimedia formats, making it easy to incorporate engaging content into lessons. Canvas also provides a mobile app, ensuring accessibility on the go. Its built-in analytics and reporting allow educators to track student progress and identify areas for improvement. Canvas LMS can integrate with other educational tools and platforms, enhancing its functionality. Canvas LMS is a powerful and versatile platform that empowers educators to deliver effective and engaging online learning experiences.

Instructure

Moodle provides open-source flexibility, plugin support, and integration capabilities for educational and organizational use, enhancing efficiency through features like course management and automatic grading.

Moodle is an adaptable platform for education and training purposes, offering extensive plugins, LTI tool compatibility, and integration options. Its course management, random exam question generation, and collaborative features make it popular among educational institutions. Modular design and activity modules strengthen user interaction, while accessibility measures support a diverse user base. Security and usability are key focuses, but improvements are needed in interface design and navigation. Scalability, customization, and documentation require attention for optimal performance and user satisfaction. Flexible integration with services like Google Suite and enhancements in reporting can further streamline its effectiveness.

What are Moodle's Key Features?

Open-source Flexibility: Easily customizable to meet user needs.
Extensive Plugin Support: Offers numerous plugins for expanded functionality.
LTI Tool Compatibility: Integrates seamlessly with external learning tools.
Automatic Grading: Streamlines assessment evaluation.
Accessibility Features: Ensures wide-ranging user inclusion.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Look For?

Efficiency: Reduces time with automated processes.
Security: Protects data and maintains integrity.
Community: Global collaboration and support available.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with current systems and tools.
Flexibility: Adapts to educational and corporate training scenarios.

In education, Moodle is commonly used for exam scheduling, course hosting, and assignment management. Corporations leverage it for training and certification needs, while educators use it for planning, quizzes, and interaction facilitation. Its ERP integration and plagiarism detection capabilities are utilized widely. Companies find its plugin and cloud support critical for customized training implementations.

Sample Customers

Pragmatic Group, MRWED Training and Assessment, RedHill Education

Acacia University, Alliant International University, American University of Health Sciences, Anaheim University Online, Aspen University, Cal State University San Bernardino, California State University Los Angeles, Chattanooga Fire Training, City of Humble Fire Department, George Washington University, Georgia Institute of Emergency Medical Services, Michigan Online Classroom, Virginia Beach Sheriffs Office, Washington Post

Canvas LMS vs. Moodle