Affordable LMS for SMBs

Most learning platforms price for enterprises and bill you per seat. OpenSkills is $9.99/month flat for up to 15 employees — 192 ready-to-assign courses, an AI coach, and no L&D team required.

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Per-seat pricing punishes small teams

If you have 18 people, you're an awkward size. You're too big for a free tier and too small to matter to a platform that quotes in 500-seat blocks. So you either overpay for capacity you'll never use, or you skip training entirely and hope people figure the tools out.

Flat pricing fixes the math. You pay one price for the whole team, and adding your 12th person costs the same as your 11th: nothing.

What an LMS actually costs a 15-person team

List prices as published on each vendor's own pricing page, verified 2026-07-24. Annual-billing rates where the vendor lists them.

OpenSkills Growth TalentLMS Core GoSkills Courses
Price $9.99/mo flat $119/mo $13.91 per license/mo
Cost for 15 people $9.99/mo $119/mo $208.65/mo
Per person $0.67 $7.93 $13.91
Billing model Flat, whole team Flat up to 40 users Per license, 5 minimum
Free trial 14 days, full access, no card Free plan: 5 users, 10 courses Free plan: 5 licenses, 10 lessons/course

And for a 25-person team

OpenSkills Scale TalentLMS Core GoSkills Courses
Price $29.99/mo flat $119/mo $13.91 per license/mo
Cost for 25 people $29.99/mo $119/mo $347.75/mo
Per person $1.20 $4.76 $13.91
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Where the other two are the better buy

We'd rather you pick the right tool than churn in month two.

  • You need SCORM or xAPI course imports. GoSkills supports both. We don't.
  • You need SSO, an API, or multi-branch separation for franchises or clients. TalentLMS Core includes all three. We don't.
  • Your team is over 25 people. Our flat tiers stop at 25. Past that, TalentLMS Core covers up to 40 users for $119/mo and is genuinely the cheaper option.
  • You want a white-labelled, fully branded portal. GoSkills Platinum ($15.28 per license/mo) does that. We don't.

If none of those are dealbreakers, keep reading.

Built for teams without an L&D department

You don't have anyone to build courses

192 courses are already in the catalog across 6 industries — tech, retail, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and e-commerce. You assign, you don't author. Collaborative platforms like 360Learning assume you have someone whose job is making content. You don't.

You're under 25 people and every subscription gets audited

$9.99/month is below the threshold where you need to justify a purchase to anyone. That's deliberate.

Someone just bought the team ChatGPT or Copilot and nobody's using it

Buying access isn't training. Assign a role-specific path, let the AI coach handle the follow-up questions, and check the analytics to see who's actually moved.

You need to show a compliance record

Every assignment, completion, and certificate is logged. Scale adds audit-trail CSV export for when someone asks for evidence.

What you get for $9.99

  • 192 ready-to-assign courses across 6 industries
  • AI coaching — 750 interactions/month on Growth, 2,000 on Scale
  • Role-based learning paths and skill assessments
  • Interactive AI scenario cards
  • Certificates for completed modules
  • Advanced analytics and compliance tracking
  • Up to 10 internal courses you build yourself (unlimited on Scale)
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FAQ

What's the cheapest LMS for a small business?
For teams under 25 people, flat pricing beats per-seat almost every time. OpenSkills is $9.99/month for up to 15 employees and $29.99/month for up to 25 — that's the whole bill, not a per-user rate. GoSkills starts at $9.71 per license per month with a 5-license minimum, and TalentLMS starts at $119/month for its cheapest paid plan.
Is there a free LMS for small business?
There are free tiers, and they're all capped. TalentLMS's free plan covers 5 users and 10 courses. GoSkills' Basic plan is free for 5 licenses with 10 lessons per course. We don't have a permanent free tier — we have a 14-day trial with full access and no credit card, because a capped free tier usually can't tell you whether the platform works for your team.
Do I need an L&D person to run this?
No. The catalog ships with 192 courses. Setup is inviting your team and assigning a path.
What happens when we grow past 25 employees?
Talk to us before you hit the limit. If your needs have outgrown flat pricing, we'll say so — see the section above on where TalentLMS is the better buy.

Try it with your actual team

Assign one course to three people this week and see whether they finish it. That's the only benchmark that matters.

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14 days · Full access · No credit card