The Canvas alternative for learning that does not stop at the end of term.
Your cohorts start when a client signs a contract, not in September. Your compliance training never finishes. Each client company wants its own brand at its own address, and one report has to cover all of them. Canvas is built around the academic term and the course roster, and it is very good at that job. This page is for the institutions with a different one.
Should you move from Canvas to Lurno?
Move from Canvas to Lurno when your learning does not run on an academic calendar — commercial training sold to client companies, partner and customer academies, continuous staff training, or a group of schools that each need their own brand and their own address. Lurno is multi-tenant to the root: organisations nest inside organisations, a role granted at a branch of the internal tree cascades down it, and each organisation carries its own branding, its own custom domain with automatic TLS and its own reporting, while one team administers all of them. Stay on Canvas if you are a university or a school district whose faculty training, SIS integrations and term workflows are already built around it — Canvas is designed for the academic term and the course roster, and that is the right design for that job. Lurno is not a student information system: it holds the learning, not the registrar's record. And if SCORM, xAPI or LTI 1.3 conformance gates your rollout, those are in development here rather than shipped.
- Multi-tenancy
- One running platform holding many organisations at once, each with its own members, roles, content, branding, domain and data — isolated from the others, administered from one place. In Lurno they nest: a parent creates sub-organisations, and a sub-organisation can create its own. Separation is enforced underneath the platform, not by a screen remembering to filter. A separate installation per client is not multi-tenancy; it is copies you have to keep in step.
The dimensions that decide this one
| Capability | Lurno | Canvas LMS |
|---|---|---|
| Designed around | Organisations, programmes, and enrolment that starts when you say | The academic term and the course roster |
| Running training for client companies | A supported shape: one tenant, many client organisations | Possible, but against the grain of a product built for one institution |
| Nested sub-organisations | Five on Growth, unlimited on Scale — and a sub-organisation can create its own | Designed for one institution's internal structure |
| White-labelling | Logo, palette, email sender, and a custom domain per organisation with automatic TLS | Theming |
| AI in authoring, tutoring and grading | Native, grounded in documents you uploaded, cited by document, version and page | Added through integrations |
| Assessment and credentialing | 19 question types, 7 assessment types, rubric grading, peer review, portfolios, adaptive IRT/CAT | Built for coursework and grading inside a term |
| Reporting across many organisationsReporting is enabled per organisation. | Certified metrics over the whole tree, plus plain-language questions | Course- and term-shaped |
| Published pricing | Yes — tiers from $119 a month, institution tier by quote | None — quote-based for institutions |
| Licence and hosting | Commercial, hosted and operated by us | Open-source core; self-hosting is possible but uncommon |
| SCORM, xAPI and LTI 1.3 | In development — modelled in the product, runtime being built | Long established in the academic ecosystem |
| Student information system | Not one. Lurno holds the learning, not the registrar's record | Not one either; SIS integration is one of its strengths |
Canvas facts checked on 24 August 2026 against instructure.com/canvas. Lurno's figures are published on the pricing page.
Three things that change in practice
One tenant, many organisations — not many copies of one
Canvas gives you an institution. Lurno gives you a tree. Each client company, campus or school becomes a sub-organisation with its own administrators, branding and address, and one team still runs all of them from one place. A corporate academy runs training for 15 client companies from one tenant. A K-12 publisher runs 114 schools on a single platform.
- Roles are granted on the internal branch tree and cascade down it: a regional manager sees their region and nothing outside it.
- Custom roles are assembled from a permission catalogue rather than picked from a fixed list of five.
- Partner sign-on (silent SSO) hands a learner from a client's own portal into their academy without a second password.
The question stops being "how did the course go?"
Reporting runs on certified metrics — each defined once, then reused — so the completion figure in a board pack and the one on a dashboard are the same figure. Ask in plain language and the copilot emits a validated query against those metrics, read-only, under your permissions. Competency frameworks record the evidence behind a mastery decision, and every certificate carries a public verification page a client's HR team can check without ringing you.
- Reporting and plain-language questions are enabled per organisation.
- Psychometrics with adaptive IRT/CAT for the assessments that have to defend a score.
AI stops being an integration
Authoring drafts lessons and assessment items from documents your organisation uploaded, quoting the document, version and page it used. A tutor takes a stuck learner through escalating modes, behind a check on our side that will not let it give the answer away. Grading suggests per-criterion rubric scores over an anonymised submission. All of it arrives as a draft someone accepts or rejects; nothing the model writes reaches a live programme on its own.
- Attach documents at programme level and every generation inside it inherits them.
- OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all supported, chosen per organisation, and an organisation can connect its own key.
Where Canvas is the better choice.
Canvas is the better choice for universities and school districts whose workflows, SIS integrations and faculty training are already built around it. That is not a small thing. An LMS in a university is load-bearing for records, timetabling and the working habits of several hundred academics, and the cost of moving is paid in retraining, not in licence fees. If your learning genuinely is a term-shaped course with a roster, an academic LMS is the right shape, and replacing it with a multi-tenant platform buys you very little.
Two more cases where we would tell you to stay. If you need the academic tooling ecosystem today — an LTI 1.3 tool your faculty depend on, a SCORM library nobody is going to rebuild — Canvas is long established there and our runtime for those standards is still being built. And if the appeal is running the code yourself, the Canvas core is open source; Lurno is hosted, so Moodle or LearnHouse is the better conversation.
It bears repeating that Lurno is not a student information system. It does not hold admissions, timetabling or the registrar's record, and we will not imply otherwise on a page trying to win your business. What it holds is the learning: programmes, assessment, competencies, credentials and the evidence behind them, across as many organisations as you run.
Built for the institution, not only for the course
An organisation tree, not an account list
Sub-organisations nest as deep as your structure goes. Inside each, an internal branch tree where a role granted at a branch cascades down it, plus groups for the cohorts that cut across.
Your brand, your address, your sign-on
Per-organisation branding, custom domains with automatic TLS, notification email from your own domain, and partner sign-on (silent SSO) for handing learners over from a client's portal.
Assessment an accreditor can follow
19 question types across 7 assessment types; rubric grading in analytic, holistic and single-point form; peer review; portfolios; one grading queue; competency frameworks that keep the evidence.
AI that always stops for a person
Grounded authoring with citations, an in-course tutor that will not hand over the answer, grading drafts over anonymised submissions, and a copilot that reads certified metrics under your permissions.
The evidence a security review asks for
separation enforced underneath the platform, an audit log that cannot be quietly edited, access reviews, GDPR consent, DSAR and erasure with a two-person rule, a DPA and a FERPA addendum, and WCAG 2.1 AA checked by axe in CI. Aligned to ISO 27001 practices.
SCORM, xAPI and LTI 1.3
In developmentModelled in the product; the runtime is being built. Talk to us if standards conformance gates your rollout and we will be specific about timing.
Before you put us on the shortlist
See your own structure in it.
Bring the shape of your organisation — the client companies, the campuses, the roles that must stay separate — and we will build it in a tenant while you watch.