Canvas LMS vs OpenOLAT

Both are self-hosted learning and courses projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

Canvas LMS and OpenOLAT are closely matched on maintenance health (66 vs 67). Neither is the safer bet on activity alone, so choose on features, licence and the stack you already run.
Canvas LMSOpenOLAT
Health score 66/100 67/100
Commits (11 mo) 5178 3116
Commits (last 3 mo) 0 980
Stars 6.8k 444
Latest release none tagged none tagged
Licence AGPL-3.0 Apache-2.0
Built with Ruby Java
Typical RAM 1 GB 2 GB

Canvas LMS

Learning management system (LMS) that is revolutionizing the way we educate.

66/100
Steady

Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.

Maintenance 39/40
Releases 13/25
Community 14/20
Momentum 0/15

Commit activity more than 97% of tracked projects; popularity more than 72%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 762 commits 2025-11: 627 commits 2025-12: 483 commits 2026-01: 790 commits 2026-02: 832 commits 2026-03: 954 commits 2026-04: 730 commits 2026-05: 0 commits 2026-06: 0 commits 2026-07: 0 commits 2026-08: 0 commits

OpenOLAT

Learning management system for teaching, education, assessment and communication.

67/100
Steady

Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.

Maintenance 38/40
Releases 13/25
Community 4/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 94% of tracked projects; popularity more than 22%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 267 commits 2025-11: 245 commits 2025-12: 183 commits 2026-01: 272 commits 2026-02: 213 commits 2026-03: 421 commits 2026-04: 283 commits 2026-05: 252 commits 2026-06: 295 commits 2026-07: 310 commits 2026-08: 375 commits

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted learning and courses.