The read · 12 Oct 2026
Tutor LMS and LearnPress own the top, add-ons included
Two ecosystems run this category. Tutor LMS sits at 100K+ installs and holds 29% of the category on its own, with LearnPress next at 70K+. Their add-ons fill out the top of the table too. Tutor's Elementor add-on has 30K+ installs, and the LearnPress course review and wishlist extensions sit at 20K+ and 10K+. When a third of the top ten are add-ons for the top two, most site owners have picked a platform before they look any further.
Both leaders are shipping. Tutor released six days ago and LearnPress three days ago. That matters, because a leader that keeps releasing gives rivals far less to exploit than a stale one would.
The mid-market is busy and well kept
Below the two giants, LifterLMS, MasterStudy, Sensei and Masteriyo all sit at around 10K installs or below, and every one of them has released in the last two weeks. Masteriyo is the only plugin near the top that grew this window, moving from 5K to 6K installs. It's a small step, but it's the one sign of a challenger gaining ground. FluentCommunity sells community and courses together. It's at 8K+ with a release 24 days ago, and that bundle could prove the more interesting bet to watch.
The weak spot is Design Upgrade for LearnDash. It still holds 7K+ installs even though its last release was more than four years ago, the clearest case here of a plugin running on past goodwill. LearnPress Prerequisites Courses slipped from 6K to 5K, a small leak in the LearnPress add-on family with no visible cause yet.
Falling demand turns this into a moat
Category downloads fell 48.9% over the last 90 days, to about 1,777 downloads per plugin per month. The data doesn't explain the drop. It could be seasonal, tied to the school calendar, but that's a guess. Whatever the cause, newcomers have less fresh traffic to compete for.
The climbers show how hard it is to get in. The biggest movers were certificate tools and small LearnDash and Tutor add-ons climbing from a few dozen installs to under a hundred. Creator LMS, the one new full LMS gaining ground, only went from 90+ to 100+. WordPress.org closed Bohudur Payments For Tutor LMS on 2026-09-27 at the author's request.
The leader holds under a third of installs, so on share alone the category looks open. Put that next to well-maintained incumbents and falling demand, though, and it's a moat. A newcomer's realistic way in is a niche add-on for one of the big platforms.
