LMS · head to head
Sana vs Totara
Sana
LMS
AI-native learning and knowledge assistant, acquired by Workday in 2025
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
Totara
LMS
Open source learning, performance and collaboration platform derived from Moodle and sold through partners
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Each has a real cost: 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.; Totara you cannot buy from the vendor. Every purchase runs through a partner who sets its own hosting, services and support pricing, so identical platforms are quoted at materially different totals and buyers must run a partner comparison as well as a product comparison.
- They diverge on capability: Sana covers Sana Agents, Totara covers Organisational hierarchies.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Sana and Totara actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), 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 Sana
- Sana Agents
- Sana Learn
- Enterprise search
- Live collaborative sessions
- Content generation
- Permission-aware retrieval
- Analytics
- Workday integration
Only in Totara
- Organisational hierarchies
- Compliance and certification
- Totara Perform
- Totara Engage
- Self-hosting
- Programs and learning plans
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
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 Totara
- A Workday customer wanting learning and an internal assistant on the same employee record rather than a separate LMS contractnot Totara
- Onboarding at a fast-growing company where content goes stale faster than the training team can rewrite coursesnot Totara
- Sales enablement where reps need an answer about a product or a contract term during a call, not a course to complete next weeknot Totara
Totara
- Health services and government bodies that must evidence mandatory training by job role across a large hierarchynot Sana
- Organisations with data residency rules that require the platform to run on their own infrastructurenot Sana
- Moodle users who need appraisal, competency and compliance features the academic product does not carrynot Sana
- Buyers who want exit rights over the platform code rather than dependence on a single hosted vendornot Sana
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
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.
Totara
- You cannot buy from the vendor. Every purchase runs through a partner who sets its own hosting, services and support pricing, so identical platforms are quoted at materially different totals and buyers must run a partner comparison as well as a product comparison.
- Open source does not mean cheap. Subscription plus partner hosting plus implementation and version upgrade services commonly lands near commercial system cost, and the saving is in control and exit rights rather than in the invoice.
- The administrative interface carries its Moodle lineage and is dense, so administrator training is a real project cost rather than an afterthought.
- Major version upgrades are projects, especially where a partner has customised the deployment, and organisations that customise heavily find upgrades slower and dearer over time.
- The learner facing experience is functional rather than engaging, and organisations wanting a consumer grade learning experience usually front it with something else.
Pricing, plan by plan
Sana
On request- Sana$undefined/year
- Per-employee annual subscription
- Agents and Learn licensed together or separately depending on the agreement
- Connector scope affects pricing
Totara
On request- Totara subscription via partner$undefined/year
- Sold only through distribution partners
- Partner sets hosting, implementation and support pricing
- Source available under the GPL, but subscription required for supported releases
Which should you pick?
Choose Sana if
- You need sana agents.
- You work on Web, iOS, Android.
- You also want sana learn.
Choose Totara if
- You need organisational hierarchies.
- You work on Web, iOS, Android, Linux.
- You also want compliance and certification.
Questions people ask
- Is Sana or Totara better?
- Neither clearly leads. Sana starts at On request and Totara at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Sana or Totara?
- Sana starts at On request and Totara at On request.
- Does Sana or Totara run on more platforms?
- Sana runs on Web, iOS, Android. Totara runs on Web, iOS, Android, Linux.
- What is Sana best used for?
- Sana is most often used for an organisation whose employees repeatedly ask the same policy and process questions in slack and where the answer already exists in a document nobody finds, a workday customer wanting learning and an internal assistant on the same employee record rather than a separate lms contract, onboarding at a fast-growing company where content goes stale faster than the training team can rewrite courses, sales enablement where reps need an answer about a product or a contract term during a call, not a course to complete next week. Of those, an organisation whose employees repeatedly ask the same policy and process questions in slack and where the answer already exists in a document nobody finds and a workday customer wanting learning and an internal assistant on the same employee record rather than a separate lms contract are not what Totara is typically brought in for.
- What can Sana do that Totara cannot?
- Sana covers Sana Agents, Sana Learn, Enterprise search, Live collaborative sessions. Totara covers Organisational hierarchies, Compliance and certification, Totara Perform, Totara Engage.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
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.
Totara: Is Totara free because it is open source?
No. The source is available under the GPL, but supported releases require a subscription, and it is sold through partners who add hosting, implementation and support costs.
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.
Totara: How is it different from Moodle?
Moodle is built around courses and academic delivery. Totara adds organisational hierarchies, role based automatic assignment, recurring certification and appraisal, which is what workplace compliance reporting needs.
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.
Totara: Can we host it ourselves?
Yes. Self hosting is a genuine option and is one of the main reasons regulated and public sector buyers choose it over a hosted only competitor.
Sana: How is it priced?
Per employee per year, unpublished, and increasingly negotiated as part of a Workday agreement.
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