Totara Learn
Moodle-derived enterprise LMS, GPL-licensed but distributed only through a paid subscription
The facts
- Licence
- GPL-3.0
- Pricing
- Price on request Price source for Totara Learn, opens in a new tab
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Platforms
- Web
- Vendor
- Totara Learning Solutions
- Headquarters
- New Zealand
- Website
- totara.com — opens in a new tab
- Documentation
- totara.help — opens in a new tab
Standards support
Every line says where the claim came from. We do not test conformance ourselves and we issue no badge of our own.
| Standard | Supported | Provenance | Checked | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCORM 1.2 | Yes | vendor-stated— source, opens in a new tab | Totara's own documentation says it "fully supports the AICC and SCORM 1.2 specifications". | |
| SCORM 2004 | Yes | vendor-stated— source, opens in a new tab | The same page qualifies 2004 heavily: support excludes "Content Aggregation Model, The Run-Time Environment, Sequencing and Navigation" extensions. Read that as basic 2004 playback without sequencing — test any 2004 package with sequencing rules before committing to it. | |
| xAPI | No | vendor-stated— source, opens in a new tab | Totara documents an xAPI setup but states that it "currently requires third-party plugins to work, and is not supported by Totara". The plugins are the community Moodle logstore_xapi ones, and an external LRS is required. We record this as unsupported because the vendor does. | |
| cmi5 | Not stated | — | — | — |
| AICC | Yes | vendor-stated— source, opens in a new tab | — | |
| LTIVersions 1.1, 1.3 | Yes | vendor-stated— source, opens in a new tab | Documented as consumer only — "Using Totara as a provider, i.e. exporting content to other sites, is not supported." LTI Advantage services are listed for 1.3. |
- Claimed
- — the vendor states it. We have not confirmed it.
- Checked
- — an editor confirmed it on the date shown.
- Verified
- — an official registry lists it, and we link to the entry.
Editor's notes
Totara Learn is the LMS component of Totara's platform, forked from Moodle in 2010 and shaped ever since around corporate and public-sector training rather than academic teaching: hierarchies and audiences, positions and organisations, certifications with recertification windows, competency frameworks, and the compliance reporting that follows from all of it. Those are the parts Moodle handles awkwardly, and they are the reason organisations pay for a Moodle derivative rather than running Moodle.
The licensing arrangement is the thing most buyers misread. The code is GPLv3 and subscribers can modify and host it themselves, which is a real difference from a closed SaaS LMS — but there is no public download. You subscribe, usually via a Totara partner, and receive source and updates for the term. Verified on 24 August 2026: the totara GitHub organisation contains vendored libraries and developer tooling only, no product core.
On standards, read the documentation closely rather than the marketing. SCORM 1.2 and AICC are stated as fully supported; SCORM 2004 is stated with exclusions broad enough that packages relying on sequencing should be tested before purchase; and xAPI is explicitly not supported by Totara, only by community plugins pointed at an external LRS. For a compliance-heavy SCORM 1.2 estate this is a mature, well-documented platform. For an xAPI-first programme it is the wrong starting point.
Alternatives to Totara Learn
Chosen by hand because they solve the same problem, not because they share a keyword.
Listed on scorm-tools.com
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