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LMS · head to head

LearnDash vs Sana

LearnDash logo

LearnDash

LMS

WordPress plugin that turns a site you already own into a course platform with no revenue share

From
$199/year
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sana logo

Sana

LMS

AI-native learning and knowledge assistant, acquired by Workday in 2025

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: LearnDash the flat licence excludes everything around it. Hosting, backups, security patching, video hosting and email deliverability are now your cost and your responsibility, and they are not small once traffic grows.; Sana workday completed its acquisition on 4 November 2025, so Sana is now an HCM vendor's capability; if you do not run Workday, the roadmap will be shaped around a platform you do not use and standalone availability is not guaranteed long term.
  • They diverge on capability: LearnDash covers Course builder, Sana covers Sana Agents.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which LearnDash and Sana actually diverge.

Attributes where LearnDash and Sana differ
AttributeLearnDashSana
Starting price$199/yearOn request
Pricing modelPer site per yearquote
PlatformsWeb, WordPressWeb, iOS, Android

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (LMS).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in LearnDash

  • Course builder
  • Quiz engine
  • Certificates
  • Groups and group leaders
  • Commerce integration
  • Ownership of data

Only in Sana

  • Sana Agents
  • Sana Learn
  • Enterprise search
  • Live collaborative sessions
  • Content generation
  • Permission-aware retrieval
  • Analytics
  • Workday integration

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

LearnDash

  • A creator whose course revenue has grown to the point where a percentage based platform costs more than a developer wouldnot Sana
  • Organisations that already run WordPress and want courses on their own domain and brandnot Sana
  • Training businesses that need learner data in a database they control rather than in a vendor accountnot Sana
  • Agencies building course sites for multiple clients under one unlimited site licencenot Sana

Sana

  • An organisation whose employees repeatedly ask the same policy and process questions in Slack and where the answer already exists in a document nobody findsnot LearnDash
  • A Workday customer wanting learning and an internal assistant on the same employee record rather than a separate LMS contractnot LearnDash
  • Onboarding at a fast-growing company where content goes stale faster than the training team can rewrite coursesnot LearnDash
  • Sales enablement where reps need an answer about a product or a contract term during a call, not a course to complete next weeknot LearnDash

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

LearnDash

  • The flat licence excludes everything around it. Hosting, backups, security patching, video hosting and email deliverability are now your cost and your responsibility, and they are not small once traffic grows.
  • WordPress plugin conflicts are a live risk. A core or theme update can break checkout or course progression at a moment you did not choose, and there is no vendor operations team standing behind uptime.
  • Performance under load needs deliberate hosting work. Shared hosting handles a small course and fails visibly during a launch, and fixing that is a hosting migration rather than a setting.
  • Selling requires assembling several plugins for payments, memberships and email, so the true stack is four or five vendors with independent update cycles rather than one product.
  • Support covers the plugin, not your site. When the fault sits in the interaction between your theme, your host and another plugin, resolving it is your problem and often a contractor invoice.

Sana

  • Workday completed its acquisition on 4 November 2025, so Sana is now an HCM vendor's capability; if you do not run Workday, the roadmap will be shaped around a platform you do not use and standalone availability is not guaranteed long term.
  • Answer quality depends entirely on the state of your internal content, so an organisation with contradictory or outdated documents gets a confident assistant citing the wrong version, which is worse than not having one.
  • Permission-aware retrieval across many source systems is difficult to get exactly right, and a misconfigured connector can surface content to employees who should not see it, which makes the security review substantial.
  • Compliance-heavy training needs, such as certification tracking, regulator-mandated evidence and SCORM-based external content, are handled less thoroughly than in traditional learning management systems built for that purpose.
  • Pricing is unpublished and now negotiated in the context of a Workday relationship, which reduces a non-Workday buyer's leverage and makes a like-for-like comparison against a standalone LMS difficult.

Pricing, plan by plan

LearnDash

$199/year
  • LearnDash LMS, 1 site$199/year
    • Single site licence
    • All course, quiz and certificate features
    • No share taken of course revenue
  • LearnDash LMS Plus, 10 sites$399/year
    • Up to ten sites
    • Same feature set
    • Suits agencies and multi brand operators
  • LearnDash LMS Pro, unlimited sites$799/year
    • Unlimited sites
    • Same feature set
    • Priced for agencies building for clients

Sana

On request
  • Sana$undefined/year
    • Per-employee annual subscription
    • Agents and Learn licensed together or separately depending on the agreement
    • Connector scope affects pricing

Which should you pick?

Choose LearnDash if

  • You need course builder.
  • You work on Web, WordPress.
  • You also want quiz engine.
LearnDash review

Choose Sana if

  • You need sana agents.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want sana learn.
Sana review

Questions people ask

Is LearnDash or Sana better?
Neither clearly leads. LearnDash starts at $199/year and Sana at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, LearnDash or Sana?
LearnDash starts at $199/year and Sana at On request.
Does LearnDash or Sana run on more platforms?
LearnDash runs on Web, WordPress. Sana runs on Web, iOS, Android.
What is LearnDash best used for?
LearnDash is most often used for a creator whose course revenue has grown to the point where a percentage based platform costs more than a developer would, organisations that already run wordpress and want courses on their own domain and brand, training businesses that need learner data in a database they control rather than in a vendor account, agencies building course sites for multiple clients under one unlimited site licence. Of those, a creator whose course revenue has grown to the point where a percentage based platform costs more than a developer would and organisations that already run wordpress and want courses on their own domain and brand are not what Sana is typically brought in for.
What can LearnDash do that Sana cannot?
LearnDash covers Course builder, Quiz engine, Certificates, Groups and group leaders. Sana covers Sana Agents, Sana Learn, Enterprise search, Live collaborative sessions.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

LearnDash: Does LearnDash take a percentage of my course sales?

No. It is a flat annual licence per site and you keep all revenue. That is the main financial argument against percentage based hosted platforms once sales volume is meaningful.

Sana: Is Sana still an independent company?

No. Workday completed its acquisition on 4 November 2025 for approximately $1.1bn; the integrated experience begins rolling out in 2026.

LearnDash: What is the real total cost?

The licence plus hosting capable of handling your traffic, plus video hosting, plus an email service, plus whatever developer time keeps the stack working. Budget for the stack, not the plugin.

Sana: Is it an LMS or a search tool?

Both, but the emphasis is on answering questions from your existing content. Traditional course delivery and completion tracking are secondary.

LearnDash: Should I use LearnDash Cloud instead?

If you want the plugin without administering WordPress, yes. You give up some of the cost advantage and some control in exchange for not being responsible for the server.

Sana: Does it work if we are not a Workday customer?

Currently yes, but the product direction now serves Workday's platform strategy, so weigh that in a multi-year commitment.

Sana: How is it priced?

Per employee per year, unpublished, and increasingly negotiated as part of a Workday agreement.

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