LMS · ranked shortlist
Best LMS software for Small Businesses in 2026
20 approved lms listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.
- Tools ranked
- 20
- Entry price range
- $19.99-$200
- Publish a $0 plan
- 7 of 20
How this ranking is derived
The sort key
Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.
Where the ratings come from
No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.
What the pool is
Approved lms listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the lms category page.
The ranking
Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.
- #1
Chamilo
Highest rated hereOpen source learning management system with no licence fee and a Latin American and francophone user base
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- Open source, no licence fee
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- Open Source, lms, e-learning, Scorm
- #2
Claroline
Open source French-language learning platform, now developed as Claroline Connect
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- Open source, no licence fee
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- lms, Open Source, French, Symfony
- #3
CYPHER Learning
One learning platform codebase serving schools, universities and businesses with built-in AI course generation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- lms, k12, higher-education, corporate-training
- #4
Degreed
Learning experience platform that indexes skills and third-party content rather than hosting courses
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- lxp, skills, learning, Talent Development
- #5
Docebo
AI-powered learning platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- enterprise-lms, AI-Powered, social-learning, scalable
- #6
Echo360
Lecture capture, video management, polling and exam authoring for universities
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- Lecture Capture, higher-education, video platform, accessibility
- #7
LearnDash
WordPress plugin that turns a site you already own into a course platform with no revenue share
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $199 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $799.
- Billing
- Per site per year
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- wordpress, course-creation, Self-Hosted, lms
- #8
LearnUpon
Multi-portal learning management for training employees, customers and partners from one instance
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- lms, corporate-training, Partner Training, Customer Education
- #9
LinkedIn Learning
Develop skills with expert-led courses
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $19.99 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $29.99 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- professional, business, tech-skills, linkedin
- #10
Moodle
Open-source LMS designed by educators for educators
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $200 a month.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- lms, Open Source, Education, Free
- #11
Nearpod
Interactive lessons that engage every student
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $159 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $397.
- Billing
- Model not published
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- interactive, assessment, engagement, vr
- #12
Sakai
Open source learning management system governed by the Apereo Foundation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- Open source, no licence fee
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- lms, Open Source, higher-education, Apereo
- #13
Sana
AI-native learning and knowledge assistant, acquired by Workday in 2025
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- learning, Enterprise Search, Ai Assistant, knowledge management
- #14
Schoox
Mobile-first learning and talent development for hourly and frontline workforces
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Frontline Training, hospitality, retail, Deskless Workforce
- #15
Skilljar
Customer education platform that treats training completion as a commercial signal in the CRM
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Customer Education, onboarding, Certification, SaaS
- #16
Thought Industries
External learning platform for companies that sell training to customers and partners as a product
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Customer Education, External Training, Monetisation, Certification
- #17
Totara
Open source learning, performance and collaboration platform derived from Moodle and sold through partners
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- lms, Open Source, Compliance Training, Performance Management
- #18
Tovuti LMS
Learning management with interactive content authoring built in rather than bought separately
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- lms, Authoring, Associations, corporate-training
- #19
Weet
Asynchronous training video with AI avatars, quizzes and a searchable knowledge library
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $24 a month.
- Billing
- Per creator per month
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- Async Video, training, knowledge-base, Ai Avatar
- #20
Whatfix
In-application guidance and walkthroughs layered over enterprise software you did not build
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Digital Adoption, onboarding, enterprise software, training
What lms software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $19.99LinkedIn Learning
- Median entry price
- $159across 5 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $200Moodle
- Publish a $0 plan
- 7of 20
Paid lms plans in this set start anywhere from $19.99 a month for LinkedIn Learning to $200 for Moodle. The median entry price across the 5 tools that publish one is $159, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is LearnDash's at $799 a month, 4× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
7 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and 4 of those charge nothing at all. 2 tools have no free tier of any kind.
16 of 20 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 20 lms listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 11
- Open source, no licence fee
- 3
- subscription
- 2
- Per creator per month
- 1
- Per site per year
- 1
Separately, 16 of 20 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 20 lms tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Annual contracts , 3 of 20
- Full source on GitHub , 2 of 20
- No published rate card , 2 of 20
Named by fewer
Nothing else is named by more than one vendor, beyond the list on the left, no two of these tools describe their tiers the same way.
Named by exactly one vendor: Admin tools, Annual contracts with implementation fee, Editing tools, Institution-wide licence, quoted, Personalized recommendations, Social learning. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “LMS” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 20 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- lms12
- Open Source5
- corporate-training4
- Certification3
- Customer Education3
- higher-education3
- training3
- assessment2
- Enterprise2
- k122
- learning2
- onboarding2
Carried by a single tool: accessibility, Async Video, course-creation, Enterprise Search, Frontline Training, Lecture Capture, professional, skills. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
7 of 20 lms tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with annual contracts, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$19.99 to $200 is a $180.01 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $200 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
5 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, annual contracts, full source on github, no published rate card, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 5 billing models: quote on 11 listings, Open source, no licence fee on 3, and 3 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare lms tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Chamilo vs Claroline
- Claroline vs CYPHER Learning
- CYPHER Learning vs Degreed
- Degreed vs Docebo
- Docebo vs Echo360
- Echo360 vs LearnDash
- LearnDash vs LearnUpon
- LearnUpon vs LinkedIn Learning
Go straight to the numbers
- Chamilopricingalternatives
- Clarolinepricingalternatives
- CYPHER Learningpricingalternatives
- Degreedpricingalternatives
- Docebopricingalternatives
- Echo360pricingalternatives
Questions people ask about lms software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How is this lms ranking decided?
- Mechanically. The 20 approved lms listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
- Is this list re-ordered for small businesses?
- No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the small businesses framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Small businesses are usually replacing spreadsheets rather than another tool, so the deciding factor is how much of the job one purchase covers. Watch for capabilities that only appear in the upper tiers.
- How much does lms software cost?
- Across the 20 lms tools listed here, paid plans start between $19.99 and $200 a month, with a median entry price of $159. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $799 a month (LearnDash). 7 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest lms software?
- 4 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, LinkedIn Learning has the lowest published entry price at $19.99 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free lms software?
- Yes, 7 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 4 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should lms software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are annual contracts (3 of 20 tools that publish plan detail), full source on github (2) and no published rate card (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as admin tools or annual contracts with implementation fee, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is lms software usually billed?
- quote (11), Open source, no licence fee (3), subscription (2), Per creator per month (1), plus 1 less common arrangements, counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 16 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does lms software actually cover?
- The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are lms (12), open source (5), corporate-training (4), certification (3), customer education (3). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under lms may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do lms tools offer?
- 20 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 5 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many lms tools are listed on Softwr?
- 20 approved lms listings appear on this page, including Chamilo, Claroline, CYPHER Learning, Degreed. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/lms, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.