Moodle vs Canvas: The Honest Comparison.
Canvas is a polished product with a polished price tag that renews every year. Moodle is free software you host and own. This page compares them without the brochure talk — including where Canvas genuinely wins — and lays out the real cost of switching. When you are ready: Canvas to Moodle migration, fixed $300.
Feature Comparison
Core teaching features, compared fairly.
| Canvas LMS | Moodle | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence cost | Per-user subscription, quote-based | Free & open source |
| Grading | SpeedGrader — genuinely excellent | Grader report & marking guides, rubric support |
| Course structure | Modules | Sections / topics with restrict-access rules |
| Question banks | New Quizzes question banks | Shared question bank with categories & randomisation |
| Integrations | LTI 1.3, rich app centre | LTI 1.3 provider & consumer, 1,600+ plugins |
| Data ownership | Hosted on vendor cloud | Your server, your database, full export |
| Customisation | Themes & vendor-approved apps | Full source access, custom plugins |
Feature availability verified against vendor documentation, October 2026. Canvas pricing is quote-based (per-user, institution size); Moodle costs are hosting plus any services you choose.
Where Each One Wins
If Canvas wins your use case, we will tell you to stay.
Where Canvas wins
SpeedGrader's marking flow is the best in the business, the default UI needs almost no training, and your institution's IT team does zero server work. For a well-funded institution, that convenience is real value.
Where Moodle wins
Cost at scale (no per-student fees), data sovereignty, customisation depth, and permanence — a Moodle site cannot be sunsetted, repriced or acquired out from under you.
The switching question
It is rarely about features. It is about a renewal quote that grew again, a data-residency requirement, or a budget that needs the per-user line deleted. That is when the $300 fixed migration pays for itself immediately.
What Moving Actually Involves
The short version — the full manual is linked below.
1. Export
Courses leave Canvas as Common Cartridge (.imscc) packages; question banks travel as QTI. Enrolments and grade history are exported separately.
2. Convert
We convert packages into Moodle backups, remap gradebook categories and scales, and rebuild enrolments — rehearsed on a copy of your real courses first.
3. Verify
Spot-checks with your instructors on restored quizzes, rubrics and files before the old contract ends. Nothing is discovered broken after the point of no return.
Moodle vs Canvas Questions
Is Moodle really free compared to Canvas?
The software is free and open source. Your costs are hosting (commonly tens of dollars a month for a school, more for a university at scale) plus any services you buy. Canvas charges per user per year under contract, which is why large enrolments feel the difference most.
What do we lose leaving Canvas?
Honestly: SpeedGrader's exact workflow and Canvas's zero-maintenance hosting. Marking in Moodle is capable but different, and someone must own updates — which is what our support plans from $79/month exist for.
Can our Canvas quizzes move to Moodle?
Yes. Quizzes export as QTI and import into Moodle question banks, including categories and feedback. A small number of question types have no Moodle equivalent and are flagged to you during rehearsal, before cutover.
How much does the migration cost?
A fixed $300 per standard migration after a free audit, plus $200 if you want us to deploy and configure the new Moodle as well. Large multi-faculty moves are quoted in writing after the audit — never mid-job.
How long does a Canvas to Moodle switch take?
A single academy or department typically completes in days. Institution-wide moves are phased by faculty across a term break. The rehearsal-first method means your live teaching is never the test environment.
Run Your Own Numbers.
Send us your student count and current Canvas renewal figure. We reply with the honest three-year comparison and the fixed migration quote.
Scope a Canvas ExitReady when you are: Canvas to Moodle migration · The step-by-step manual