Everything Tutor LMS does. Plus AI on every plan.
Masteriyo’s free version on WordPress.org includes AI course outlines, lesson drafts, and quiz generation. Tutor LMS gates AI Studio behind Pro at $199/year. Build a full course before you spend a dollar.
Why make the move
Three reasons creators leave Tutor LMS for Masteriyo.
Tutor LMS is a serious WordPress LMS with a strong free tier. But most creators we meet are bumping into the same three walls. Here’s what a move to Masteriyo fixes.
AI in every plan, including Free.
Masteriyo’s AI course outline, lesson drafts, and quiz generation work on every plan including the WordPress.org free version. Tutor LMS gates AI Studio behind Pro. Plug in your own OpenAI key and you’re building courses by the end of the afternoon.
One-click migration from Tutor LMS.
Tutor LMS doesn’t have a migration tool. Masteriyo imports your courses, lessons, quizzes, students, and order history in a single click. The LMS Migration Tool ships in every Masteriyo plan, including the free version on WordPress.org — zero downtime and nothing deleted on the Tutor side.
One plugin, not a toolkit.
Masteriyo lives in a single codebase. Payments, subscriptions, multi-currency, certificates, gradebook, multi-instructor revenue sharing, and the migration tool all ship together. No add-ons to wire up, no dependency conflicts on update day.
The comparison
Masteriyo vs Tutor LMS, feature by feature.
Each row shows the lowest plan that includes the feature on each side.
1. Pricing & access
Masteriyo prices shown above are introductory; renewal is $199 / $299 / $799, same as the strikethrough.
2. Course creation & content
3. AI features
4. Selling & payments
5. Student experience
6. Reporting & admin
7. Marketing & integrations
8. Migration & support
Prices and feature inclusions verified April 2026 against tutorlms.com and masteriyo.com. Tutor LMS Pro is licensed by site count: Individual ($199, 1 site), Business ($399, 10 sites), Agency ($799, 50 sites). Lifetime variants exist at $499 / $999 / $1,999.
Run the numbers
What a switch saves you over 3 years.
Tutor LMS Pro bundles most premium features into a single license, so the math is plan-vs-plan rather than stack-vs-stack. The numbers favor Masteriyo on the entry tier and on lifetime; Tutor’s Agency license covers more sites at the top end.
Plugin licence over 3 years
Comparable site-count tiers, both sides.
Masteriyo prices factor in year 1 introductory pricing plus 2 years at renewal. Tutor LMS doesn’t use intro pricing.
Lifetime license — both sides offer it
One-time payment, no annual renewal. Tutor offers three lifetime tiers; Masteriyo offers one.
Look closer
What a move to Masteriyo actually changes.
The table tells you the “what.” Here’s the “why it matters.”
AI works on the free plan.
Tutor LMS introduced AI Studio in 2024 and gated it behind Pro. Masteriyo built AI into every tier from day one, including the free version on WordPress.org. The mechanism is the same on both sides: you supply your OpenAI API key, the plugin uses it. The difference is access. If you’re launching a course business, the AI features matter most when you’re still validating ideas and don’t want to pay $199 to find out whether your “yoga for beginners” outline lands. With Masteriyo Free, you can build the syllabus, draft three lessons, and generate a quiz before you decide to upgrade.
One-click migration that doesn’t make you start over.
Tutor LMS doesn’t ship a migration tool. The DIY path is a CSV export, a manual remap, and re-uploading every video. Masteriyo’s one-click LMS Migration Tool imports your courses, sections, lessons, quizzes, students, enrollments, and order history — included in every plan, including the free version on WordPress.org. Your Tutor install stays put during the import, so you can verify everything before flipping the switch.
A modern admin without the frontend builder.
Tutor LMS’s frontend course builder lets instructors build courses from the live site instead of wp-admin. It’s a clever pattern for marketplaces with non-technical contributors. For solo creators and small teams, it’s heavier than it needs to be: more clicks to publish, slower to navigate, and the whole experience lives behind a separate UI from the rest of WordPress. Masteriyo’s setup wizard runs in under a minute and the course builder lives natively in the WordPress admin. You stay in the same Gutenberg-flavored UI you use for posts and pages. Less context-switching, fewer screens to learn, faster from idea to published.
Honest comparison
Tutor LMS is a serious product. Here’s where it still wins.
Themeum has built Tutor into one of the most established WordPress LMS plugins for a reason. There are specific cases where Tutor is genuinely the better fit, and we’d rather tell you upfront.
If you run a marketplace with many third-party instructors.
Tutor LMS’s frontend course builder lets instructors build entirely from the live site without ever entering wp-admin. For a marketplace where you don’t want to give 50 contributors WordPress admin access, this is a real edge. Masteriyo supports multi-instructor with revenue sharing on Pro, but the course-building UI lives in wp-admin.
If you depend on the Themeum theme ecosystem.
Tutor LMS pairs natively with Themeum themes (Tutor Starter, Hyper, EduMall) for a polished out-of-box look without much customization work. Masteriyo is theme-agnostic and works with any well-built WordPress theme, but if you’re already bought into Themeum’s ecosystem, that integration is one less thing to wire up.
If your team prefers a frontend-first course builder.
Tutor’s frontend course builder is its signature feature, and a different mental model from Masteriyo’s wp-admin Gutenberg flow. Instructors create and edit courses from a live front-end UI that mirrors the published page, with no WordPress admin in sight. Some teams genuinely prefer this — it feels closer to a SaaS platform than to WordPress. If that workflow is non-negotiable, Tutor still owns it.
Make the move
Keep your courses. Keep your students. Keep your orders.
The reason most creators hesitate to switch isn’t price; it’s the fear of rebuilding six months of work. That’s what the LMS Migration Tool solves — one click and your courses, students, quizzes, and orders are in Masteriyo, with nothing deleted on the Tutor LMS side.
Migrate in one click.
The LMS Migration Tool ships in every Masteriyo plan, including the free version on WordPress.org. Install Masteriyo alongside Tutor LMS, hit Migrate, and the tool handles the rest in batches so large catalogs don’t time out.
Read the migration guideWhat we import from Tutor LMS
Courses & curriculum
Courses with sections, lessons, and quizzes. Full structure preserved.
Quiz questions
All Tutor LMS question types, including fill-in-the-blank and open-ended.
Students & roles
Every learner, every enrollment. Tutor instructor and student roles re-mapped to Masteriyo equivalents.
Course metadata
Price, duration, difficulty, requirements, and target audience all carry over.
Attachments & video
Lesson attachments and video sources from YouTube, Vimeo, and external URLs.
Engagement data
Course announcements, reviews, ratings, and Q&A discussions.
Orders
Past sales data from your WooCommerce or EDD integration, with customer records preserved.
Nothing deleted
Your Tutor LMS install stays put during the import. Test on staging first if you want.
Creator voices
Creators made the switch and didn’t look back.
Real public reviews from WordPress.org and G2. No bought testimonials, no paid creators. 4.8★ average across 165+ reviews.
“I am a former customer of Tutor LMS. But that plugin is extremely bloated and heavy. Masteriyo with its free version already offers almost the same as the Pro version of Tutor LMS. It’s fast, looks good and easy to use.”
“My previous LMS provider was Tutor LMS. It was great at first but after using it for 1 year it is somehow not that user friendly. The account UI is not that modern unlike with Masteriyo, and all the developers and supports are very very friendly.”
“I really appreciate that Masteriyo LMS is free, efficient, and reliable. What I like most is that its templates can be customized, and I’m extremely impressed by the customer service, which is prompt, polite, and pragmatic. The initial setup was very intuitive.”
FAQ
The questions switchers actually ask.
Will my Tutor LMS courses really come over intact?
Yes. Run the LMS Migration Tool in one click and your courses, lessons, quizzes (including fill-in-the-blank and open-ended types), students, announcements, reviews, Q&A discussions, and order history come into Masteriyo. The tool is in every Masteriyo plan, including the free version on WordPress.org. Your Tutor LMS install stays in place during the import, so you can test on staging first.
What about the Tutor LMS frontend course builder?
Masteriyo doesn’t have a frontend builder; the course builder lives in wp-admin. For solo creators and small teams that’s usually a non-issue (and many find it faster). If you run a marketplace with dozens of third-party instructors who shouldn’t have wp-admin access, that’s a fair reason to stay on Tutor LMS for now.
Is Masteriyo really feature-comparable to Tutor LMS Pro?
For what 95% of creators use a WordPress LMS for (course building, quizzes, certificates, drip content, assignments, payments, subscriptions, multi-instructor) yes, on Masteriyo Pro at $149/year intro. In some areas, AI access on the free plan, native multi-currency, Razorpay, the migration tool, Masteriyo does more out of the box.
How much will I actually save?
The savings depend on the tier. Year one: $99 vs $199 saves $100. Over 3 years on the entry tier, Masteriyo Basic ($497) vs Tutor LMS Pro Individual ($597) saves $100. At lifetime, both are $499, the same price. The real value is in what’s included on the free tier and the AI access without an upgrade.
What if I want to come back to Tutor LMS?
We don’t lock you in. Your courses, students, and data live in your WordPress database; you own them, the same as with Tutor LMS. You can export and move to another plugin whenever you want.
Is there a free version?
Yes. Masteriyo has a free version on WordPress.org with unlimited courses, students, AI course creation (you supply the OpenAI key), native Stripe and PayPal, multi-currency, the LMS Migration Tool, and core features. Tutor LMS also has a free version, but the AI and native payments are gated behind Pro.
Everything Tutor LMS does. Plus AI on every plan.
Join 4,000+ creators who run their course business on Masteriyo. One-click migration from Tutor LMS.