Best Free LMS for WordPress: 5 Options Compared for 2026

With that said, there are other free LMS options that have particular strengths and lend themselves well to specific use cases. In the remainder of this post, I’m going to break down five of the best free choices available in 2026, so you can pick the one that suits you.

Best free LMS plugins tested and compared 🧑🏼‍🏫

Let’s start with a high-level overview of the top choices:

1. Masteriyo

There is a well-known saying that asserts, “It takes money to make money.” The free version of the Masteriyo plugin challenges that assertion in a very strong way. If you’re trying to build and monetize an e-learning business without spending money on a learning management platform (at least initially), then Masteriyo has all the features you need to execute your vision.

Compared to most free LMS options for WordPress that primarily serve as vehicles for upselling, Masteriyo’s Pro version is truly optional and can be purchased once you start generating some profit, rather than investing before your idea has been validated.

Free plan features ⚙️

• Drag-and-drop course, lesson, and quiz builder with unlimited courses, sections, and lessons.
• Built-in ecommerce suite (not reliant on WooCommerce) with cart, checkout, basic coupons, and order management.
• Native one-time payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Surecart, Lemon Squeezy, and Mollie.
• Certificate builder with online QR-verification.
• SCORM-compliant course import.
• AI-assisted course creation via OpenAI ChatGPT.
• Sequential content drip.
• One-click LMS migration tool that imports from LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS, MasterStudy, LearnPress.
• Quiz builder with true/false, multiple/single choice, randomized questions, time limits, and custom grading.
• Frontend dashboards, course Q&A, course reviews, lesson preview, and Coming Soon mode for courses.
• Page builder compatibility, including Gutenberg, Divi, Bricks, and Beaver.
• Automatic GDPR consent message (toggle on or keep off).
• Free optional WooCommerce integration.

When to skip the free version ⏭️

Anything involving multi-instructor administration, cohorts, prerequisites, gradebooks, or live-session integrations is available only with a Pro license. If those are non-negotiable for you, then you’ll need to upgrade. For free multi-instructor course administration specifically, you can look at Academy LMS or Fox LMS, both of which do not paywall that particular feature.

User experience 👨‍💻

When I tested Masteriyo, I found that the dashboard was somehow able to strike a balance between being feature-rich, yet easy to navigate. Those two qualities don’t usually go together because anything that goes this deep into features ends up sacrificing a lot in the way of navigation. Masteriyo makes it work with a clearly labeled top row menu and equally distinct submenus that make it easy to find what you need.

I was able to quickly connect a Stripe account as well as my OpenAI (ChatGPT) account and creating a version 1.0 of a sample course only took me about 30 minutes. If you’re interested, I filmed a detailed walkthrough of how to use ChatGPT with Masteriyo to speed up course creation. It shows the exact steps, what buttons to push, etc that you need to know to do it yourself.

Features if you upgrade to Pro 🛑

• Multi-instructor support with revenue sharing across multiple teachers per course.
• Advanced content drip (set courses to open for enrollment after X days or on specific dates) and course prerequisites.
• Assignments with submission tracking, plus a detailed gradebook.
• Advanced certificate templates and per-course certificate assignment.
• Cohort-based learning and multi-group/tiered group pricing for B2B sales.
• White label.
• Advanced quiz question types (Match the Following, Sortable, Fill-in-the-Blanks, Text Answer) with AI generation.
• PDF and audio lessons, Zoom as a native lesson type, course attachments, 2FA, and HubSpot integration.

2. LearnPress

With more than a decade of successfully helping individuals and organizations to launch their online courses, LearnPress has a stronger track record to lean on compared to other free WordPress LMS solutions. Schools, academies, and nonprofits that want a no-cost path to publishing courses with light monetization will find it to be a strong fit.

Compared to some other free LMS options, LearnPress does not force you to choose between a “Video Lesson” or a “Text Lesson.” Instead, it uses a standard content editor (similar to a WordPress post) for every lesson. This lets you embed video, audio, text, and images all together inside the same lesson.

Free plan features ⚙️

• Course builder with unlimited courses and lessons supporting video, audio, text, and image in a single multimedia lesson.
• OpenAI integration to leverage the power of ChatGPT and speed up course creation.
• Reusable lesson bank and reusable question bank.
• Quizzes supporting multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank, with timed quizzes.
• Built-in instant checkout with PayPal and offline payment, plus manual order management.
• External checkout redirects to your own sales funnel.
• Course access control, content restriction, and “let students peek inside” lesson previews.
• Open-access (no-signup) courses for top-of-funnel marketing.
• SEO-optimized course URLs.
• Free add-ons: Coming Soon, Student List, Prerequisite Courses, Course Review, Course Wishlist, bbPress, and BuddyPress integrations.

When to skip the free version ⏭️

LearnPress’s free version is suitable for its intended purpose, but the trade-off is that monetization falls short of being fully functional, as only PayPal and offline payment options are included in the free version. Plus, most other capabilities, from certificates to assignments to content drip, are sold as a separate paid add-on. When you reach the point of needing those, you’ll either want the Pro Bundle or consider Masteriyo, which includes Stripe, PayPal, certificates, and SCORM, all for free.

User experience 👨‍💻

Overall, I found LearnPress to be enjoyable and easy to use. My only minor gripe was with the initial disconnect between the main LearnPress dashboard inside the wp-admin (WordPress dashboard) and the more modern LearnPress course builder. The main dashboard is slightly outdated and gives off WordPress classic editor vibes. It’s also not immediately clear that there’s a separate, modern course builder.

It doesn’t take long to stumble into it if you just keep clicking around, but the path to access it could be made clearer, especially given that there’s a setup wizard when you first install the plugin. Once the course builder is accessed, though, it offers a great user experience. Integrating OpenAI takes only a minute or two, and the overall navigation is very beginner-friendly.

Features if you upgrade to Pro 🛑

• Certificates add-on with a drag-and-drop builder.
• Assignments and gradebook add-ons.
• Content drip add-on for scheduled lesson release.
• Live course add-on for Zoom and Google Meet integration.
• Stripe, Razorpay, Verifone, Authorize.net, and Instamojo payment gateway add-ons.
• WooCommerce integration add-on and WPML add-on.
• Co-instructors and commission add-ons (multi-instructor revenue sharing).
• Integration add-ons for Paid Memberships Pro, H5P, and myCRED.

3. Academy LMS

If you’re building a course marketplace or instructor-driven academy on a budget, Academy LMS’s free version is uniquely valuable. It’s the rare free LMS where multi-instructor revenue sharing, instructor earnings/withdrawal management, and WooCommerce integration are all bundled together without an upsell. It’s particularly well-aligned with anyone running a multi-instructor site where commission management is the central concern.

Another unique highlight is the Academy Player. This feature unifies the look of your videos, wrapping YouTube or Vimeo content in a custom skin so it matches your self-hosted content, providing a cleaner learning experience.

Free plan features ⚙️

• React-based admin SPA interface with built-in LMS analytics/report.
• Frontend course builder, frontend student/instructor dashboards, frontend lesson editing.
• Video lessons from multiple sources (self-hosted, YouTube, Vimeo, embedded, external server) plus course intro video.
• Multi-instructor functionality with revenue sharing, earning management, and withdrawal management.
• WooCommerce integration for paid course selling and StoreEngine integration for native payments.
• Course reviews and ratings, Q&A, course wishlist, course preview, and global announcements.
• Certificates (basic), instructor public profiles, and content security.
• Quiz builder (basic) with multiple question types, and lessons import/export from CSV.
• Built-in form builder, migration tool, webhooks, RTL support, lesson notes, and auto-enroll after registration.

When to skip the free version ⏭️

The free Academy LMS is attractive for its use case (i.e., building an Udemy-style course marketplace), and the features it includes genuinely support that. However, there is a flip side: it paywalls many other features that you’ll find elsewhere for free. Among them are content drip, email notifications, course prerequisites, gradebook, SCORM, assignments, and Google reCAPTCHA. These are all locked behind the Pro version of the plugin.

If you don’t need the multi-instructor support, but you do need some of those other features, consider Masteriyo, which includes both SCORM and a certificate builder for free. Alternatively, if you specifically need the prerequisites feature, then LearnPress has a free prerequisite courses add-on which covers that need.

User experience 👨‍💻

Academy LMS is very thorough, but compared to the other free LMS plugins I tested, it also has the slowest on-ramp. This is mainly due to the fact that you have to navigate two plugins to make everything work. There is the Academy LMS plugin itself, but then there is the separate StoreEngine plugin that is used for collecting payments.

Both plugins have a setup wizard, which helps reduce setup time to a certain degree, but it’s still rather time-consuming to figure out how the two plugins communicate with each other and to put everything together to make it work.

With that said, if you are willing to set aside that time, you’ll be rewarded with the opportunity to launch an impressive e-learning business that gives you lots of granular control. I genuinely enjoyed using it, but it does require more patience than the others.

Features if you upgrade to Pro 🛑

• Advanced quiz builder: image answer, short answer, fill-in-the-blanks, matching, and negative marking.
• Email notifications and on-site push notifications.
• Content drip, course prerequisites, and manual enrollment.
• Zoom integration, Google Meet integration, Google Classroom integration, and Tutor booking.
• Assignments, gradebook, and course bundle.
• White label, SCORM, WPML integration, and Group Plus for team training.
• Integration for: Paid Memberships Pro, MemberPress, SureCart, SureMembers, FluentCRM, and MailChimp.
• Social login, Google reCAPTCHA, two-step email verification, and device login restriction.
• AI integration via ChatGPT for generating courses, lessons, and quiz questions.
• Bulk enroll from CSV.

4. TutorLMS

TutorLMS is an interesting free LMS option because it unlocks many features that most users would consider optional (e.g., coupons, optimized checkout, tax management), while simultaneously restricting more of the “standard” features (e.g., course completion certificates, course reviews) to its Pro version. Overall, it’s still a solid free choice that handles the foundation well, but compared to some of the others on this list, you’ll probably outgrow it faster.

Free plan features ⚙️

• Course builder with unlimited courses, students, and instructors.
• Accept course payments via PayPal or install WooCommerce and turn your courses into WooCommerce products.
• Coupon management, tax management, and full order management with refunds.
• Quiz builder.
• Separate dashboards personalized for students and instructors.
• Q&A and lesson comments.
• Video lessons from multiple sources: YouTube, Vimeo, and embedded.
• Page builder compatibility with Droip, Elementor, and Divi.
• Migration plugin to transfer courses from another WordPress LMS.

When to skip the free version ⏭️

TutorLMS’s free plan offers sufficient features to launch an e-learning marketplace and even monetize. At the same time, it does tightly straddle the line between a useful free LMS and an effective upsell mechanism. The reason is straightforward: far too many of its features are paywalled, including the certificate builder, content drip, assignments, gradebook, subscriptions, live classes, and course bundles.

If you want to stick with a free LMS and have a specific need for some of those features, consider either LearnPress or Masteriyo. The former includes a free prerequisite courses add-on, while the latter offers certificates, content drip, and a full range of payment gateways. Both offer AI-assisted course creation.

User experience 👨‍💻

The TutorLMS setup wizard gave me great hope that the user experience was going to be exceptional. As far as setup wizards go, it was arguably the cleanest and seemingly most helpful one I used, but that feeling did not persist once I reached the actual user dashboard. Even though building a course is straightforward and that particular aspect of the plugin is well designed, the other features weren’t well thought out.

For example, during the setup wizard, I chose to build a marketplace with multiple instructors (rather than an individual instructor platform). Then, as I continued, I was given the option to turn on revenue sharing, which seemed like a logical feature to include for a marketplace.

Unfortunately, despite the selections I made during the setup wizard, TutorLMS did not make it easy to manually add or invite new instructors. It was only after some digging that I realized I had to use the regular WordPress dashboard to add new instructors by effectively adding them as users of my website with their user role set to “Tutor Instructor.” Overall, the course builder was great, but TutorLMS could improve the other dashboard elements to make it easier to navigate.

Features if you upgrade to Pro 🛑

• Live classes via Google Meet or Zoom.
• Content drip.
• Course preview, course attachments, course prerequisites, and course import/export.
• Multi-instructor support and course messaging between students and instructors.
• Drag and drop certificate builder and unlimited custom-branded certificates.
• Quiz import/export and detailed quiz reports.
• Site-wide membership (versus just signing up for one course).
• Numerous payment gateways, such as Stripe, Authorize.net, Verifone, Mollie, Klarna, Razorpay, Paystack, Alipay, and Paddle.
• A vast amount of integrations, including with OpenAI for AI-powered course creation.
• Push notifications, site-wide notifications, customizable event-triggered emails, pre-built email templates, and a frontend event calendar.

5. Fox LMS

Fox LMS is the youngest plugin on this list, but it earns its place for several reasons. First and foremost, it covers the basic features you need to start and monetize an e-learning business, which is a baseline that not all LMS plugins meet. This includes some of the more established learning management systems that were not included on this list for precisely that reason. Fox LMS also supports multi-instructor courses, though revenue sharing is a Pro feature.

Beyond that, its free version includes several optional, but nice-to-have features that are often paywalled by competitors, for example, coupons and custom branding. Since it’s still so new, it doesn’t have a lot of active installations yet, but the team behind it has been developing WordPress plugins for over ten years now and has a solid track record.

Free plan features ⚙️

• Unlimited courses, lessons, students, and instructors.
• Drag and drop course builder.
• Text and video lessons.
• Sequential lesson drip within a specific course.
• User-specific dashboards for instructors and users (students).
• Unlimited quizzes.
• Q&A sections and course announcements.
• Accept payments via PayPal.
• Compatible with Elementor, Gutenberg, and even the WordPress Classic Editor.
• Custom course permalinks.
• Coupons system and individual course discounts.

When to skip the free version ⏭️

If you want instructors to be able to issue course completion certificates to students or to allow students to leave reviews on courses, then the free Fox LMS plugin isn’t going to let you do that. The same goes for releasing content on a drip schedule. Also, like all the other free LMS plugins, with the notable exception of Masteriyo, your monetization options on Fox LMS will be limited. To unlock anything beyond PayPal, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro.

User experience 👨‍💻

In some ways, Fox LMS is almost the inverse of Academy LMS. It’s the least granular option on the list, but consequently, it’s also the easiest to navigate for total beginners. Fewer options mean fewer opportunities to get lost in the weeds and more time to focus on the things that will get your e-learning business up and running.

On top of that, if by chance you do ever get stuck, the dashboard is filled with links to related YouTube tutorials and docs pages. There are even mini setup wizards for specific functions that guide you from start to finish. You can see all these helpful features in action when trying to build your first quiz.

In the end, I wouldn’t personally use Fox LMS because I like having more granular control over my setup. I also don’t mind spending extra time playing with ancillary features. However, I would absolutely recommend Fox LMS for someone who wants to launch an e-learning site as quickly as possible or someone who doesn’t have much experience with building websites and needs more handholding.

Features if you upgrade to Pro 🛑

• Certificate builder and AI lesson builder.
• Content drip.
• Revenue sharing.
• Stripe and WooCommerce integration.
• Course reviews and ratings.
• Advanced quizzes.
• Course wishlist, course attachments, course bundles, and the ability to import/export courses.
• Email and dashboard notifications.
• Gamification (via GamiPress).

Is a free LMS plugin enough? 🤔

A free LMS plugin can be enough, but as with any other tool-making decision, it comes down to what you’re going to be building. Here’s a brief recap to help you decide:

The one consideration you have to make with all five options is tradeoffs. Even Masteriyo, which has the least amount of trade-offs, still has certain features paywalled that are available for free elsewhere.

A good way to narrow down your decision is to take stock of the features you’ll absolutely need and then choose the LMS that has all or most of them. If you need help doing that, feel free to jump back to the comparison table at the top of the page. It doesn’t cover every single feature, but it does cover the most important ones.

If you’re still not sure which free LMS to use for your situation, drop a question in the comments below and either myself or someone else on the team will do our best to help you.