The TalentLMS alternative for the whole institution.
You bought a handful of licences for staff training and it worked. Now there are thousands of learners, client organisations to keep apart, and somebody asking how a competency was evidenced. That is where per-user pricing stops being the right shape.
Who should switch, and who should not
Lurno is a multi-tenant learning platform for institutions: one tenant holds nested sub-organisations, each with its own branding, its own custom domain and its own roles. Teams outgrow TalentLMS for three reasons — per-user pricing that climbs as learner counts move into the thousands, assessment and competency work outside a deliberately simple product, and sub-account separation lighter than a multi-tenant model with per-tenant domains. Switch to Lurno if you run training for several client companies, campuses or schools from one place, if you need rubric grading, competency frameworks with evidence or verifiable certificates, or if you want the bill to follow plan tiers rather than headcount. Stay on TalentLMS if you are a small team running straightforward internal training and want to be live this week: it publishes its pricing, it has a free plan for up to 5 users, and there is no sales call in the way.
- Multi-tenancy
- One platform holding many organisations whose data never mixes. In Lurno an organisation contains sub-organisations, each with its own branding, custom domain and roles, while a central team keeps one view across all of them. Separation is enforced underneath the platform. A sub-account separates audiences inside one brand; multi-tenancy gives each audience its own front door.
The dimensions that decide this one
TalentLMS publishes its prices, which most of this market does not. Both entry figures are the vendors' own.
| Capability | Lurno | TalentLMS |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Four tiers from $119 / month, member cap printed on each | Free for up to 5 users, paid from $119 / month for up to 40 users |
| Free planSelf-serve signup and trials are in development at Lurno. | No — accounts are created by invitation | Yes, up to 5 users |
| How cost behaves as learners grow | Plan tiers: 1,000 / 5,000 / 20,000 members, then custom | Per user — the model gets expensive as learner counts move into the thousands |
| Nested sub-organisations | Yes | Sub-accounts, with lighter separation than a multi-tenant model |
| Internal branch tree with cascading roles | A role granted at a branch cascades down it | Scoped for small and mid-sized teams |
| Per-tenant custom domain with automatic TLS | Yes | Branding is lighter than per-tenant custom domains |
| Question and assessment depth | 19 question types, 7 assessment types, 53 resource types | Deliberately simple — assessment depth is outside its scope |
| Rubric grading, peer review, portfolios | Analytic, holistic and single-point rubrics; one grading queue | Outside its scope |
| Competency frameworks and accreditation evidence | Evidence attaches to a framework; mastery is earned, not ticked | Accreditation workflows are outside its scope |
| Adaptive psychometrics (IRT/CAT) | Yes | Psychometrics are outside its scope |
| Guardian portal for parents | Scoped by data category | Designed for corporate teams rather than schools |
| Time to a first working course | Onboarding with your team, on your own material | Sign up and be live this week |
TalentLMS figures from talentlms.com/pricing, checked 24 August 2026 — prices move, so verify before you sign. Lurno's tiers are on pricing.
What actually changes
The bill stops tracking your headcount
Paid TalentLMS plans start at $119 a month for up to 40 users. That is an honest number for a team of 40 and a different conversation at 4,000. Lurno prices by plan tier: the same $119 a month carries up to 1,000 members, $299 carries 5,000 with five sub-organisations, and $599 carries 20,000 with sub-organisations uncapped.
- Adding a cohort does not move the invoice until you cross a tier; annual billing takes 15% off. Every cap is printed next to its price, so finance can model year three.
Every organisation gets its own front door
A Lurno tenant is a tree. A corporate academy runs training for 15 client companies from one tenant; a K-12 publisher runs 114 schools on a single platform. Each sub-organisation carries its own logo, palette and terminology, its own custom domain with automatic TLS, and sends email from its own domain.
- Inside an organisation, a branch tree does the same job for departments and campuses: a role granted at a branch cascades down it.
- Partner sign-on (silent SSO) lets a client's own portal drop a learner straight into their academy. SAML and OIDC are on the roadmap.
Marking turns into evidence
Lurno ships 19 question types, 7 assessment types and 53 resource types, with analytic, holistic and single-point rubrics, peer review, portfolios and one grading queue across the institution. Results attach to a competency framework as evidence, and a competency reaches mastery when the evidence says so rather than when somebody ticks a box.
- Adaptive psychometrics (IRT/CAT) shorten a test without losing precision at the ends of the scale.
- Certificates carry a public verification page an employer or a regulator can check without writing to your registrar.
Where TalentLMS is the better choice.
If you are a small team running straightforward staff training and you want to be live this week, TalentLMS is the better choice, and it is better to know that now than an hour into a call. The product is simple on purpose. That simplicity is what you are buying, not a gap in it: a short setup, an interface people work out unaided, and a free plan for up to 5 users so you can test the idea before anyone approves a budget.
It is also the more honest starting point while the numbers are small. Paid plans begin at $119 a month for up to 40 users, published on their own site, so you can cost the first year without speaking to anyone. Lurno's structure — nested organisations, a branch tree, a permission catalogue, competency frameworks — takes work to set up, and with one audience and one domain you would be paying that cost for nothing.
Stay where you are if training is a supporting task rather than something you sell, if nobody is auditing how your assessments are designed, and if your learner count is in the dozens. Come back when a client asks for their own branded portal, when an accreditation body asks how a competency was evidenced, or when the per-user line on the invoice starts to read like a headcount plan.
The parts a growing institution asks for
SCORM, xAPI and LTI 1.3
In developmentModelled in the product; the runtime is being built. Tell us early if standards conformance gates your rollout.
The rest of the shortlist
Most evaluations that reach us carry three or four names.
Before you move anything
Bring the org chart, not only the course list.
Thirty minutes. We build your organisation tree in a live tenant, put one client academy behind its own domain, and show you an assessment built to survive an auditor.