Google Classroom vs Moodle comparison

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Google Classroom

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Moodle and Google Classroom compete in the educational technology category. Based on feature richness and flexibility, Moodle seems to have the upper hand, while Google Classroom excels in simplicity and ease of integration.

Features: Moodle offers customizable features including a vast library of plugins, the ability to randomize exam questions to prevent cheating, and comprehensive course management with integration capabilities like H5P. Google Classroom highlights its simplicity, easy integration with Google Suite products, and streamlined assignment distribution, making it ideal for quick setup and use, especially for those already within the Google ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Moodle could improve its user interface and provide a more intuitive experience for new users. Addressing the absence of seamless multi-tenancy and better documentation for complex setups would be beneficial. Google Classroom faces critiques for having limited organizational features and grading functionalities. Enhancing integration capabilities with non-Google services and improving offline accessibility would address user concerns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Moodle may require technical expertise for deployment, especially in self-hosted environments, and its community-driven support can vary in responsiveness. Google Classroom benefits from straightforward deployment through public cloud services with strong community forums, although the direct support from Google might not meet all user needs consistently.

Pricing and ROI: Moodle, as an open-source platform, offers a cost-effective solution with no licensing fees, leading to potential high ROI, though hardware and third-party support costs might be incurred. Google Classroom's free version is valuable for educational purposes, with affordable paid upgrades available. However, integration with Google Workspace could add additional costs, yet the return on investment remains favorable in educational contexts.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Classroom vs. Moodle Report (Updated: June 2025).

Google Classroom vs. Moodle

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Google Classroom

Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Moodle

Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Learning Management Systems (LMS) category, the mindshare of Google Classroom is 3.6%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Moodle is 9.7%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Featured Reviews

Wafaa Salah

Professor at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

User-Friendly Platform with Valuable Features but Needs Improvement in Pool of Questions and Statistics

The integration with Google Workspace is great because we have many tools such as Google Meet, Google Sheets, and Google Drive. However, the space is very limited. We purchased extra space until it reached 100 gigabytes. I have been using Google since having a Gmail account in 2001 when I was a student. Google Classroom allows me to make quizzes and assignments for students with random ordering, but I would appreciate having a pool of questions feature. For example, having 1000 questions and extracting 20 for each student would allow every student to have a different version. Currently, while using quizzes, every question appears to every student, though the order might differ. Adding the pool of questions would be beneficial. Having statistics while students take their exams would be helpful - showing how many students submitted, how many are in progress, and how many have not started the quiz. Having a log file to track students who opened documents would be valuable. In Moodle, I can see which students opened files, downloaded them, or watched videos. This feature is not available in Google Classroom, which is why I prefer other applications with more powerful statistics to trace student performance.

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Agnes Mindila

Director School of Computing and Information Technology at JKUAT

Offers customized features that allow us to see whether students visited the platform and watched the provided videos

An improvement would be to have it support physically challenged students, who we think should be able to participate in some of our courses. If the learning management system could support blind students or students with learning disabilities, it would expand the reach of education by providing tools that support challenged learners. In future releases, I'd like to see more features that support challenged students, as I just mentioned above. This is because of the university's goal to make education accessible to all groups without discrimination. If we can have more tools that support students who are challenged, that would be very good. If AI could help, that would be nice. We want to support learners who are remote and provide learning to disadvantaged learners or certain groups of people. AI would come in very handy if Moodle had such capabilities.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"This solution integrates with all the other Google apps including Google Calendar and Google Docs. This makes it very easy to manage."

"I like that Google Classroom is free and integrates with the entire Google Suite, which includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, etc. I also like its flexibility, which makes it perfect for synchronous, asynchronous, and blended courses, and including live and archived webinars, as well as other kinds of content."

"The product is easy to use."

"I find Jamboard to be a great tool for supporting classroom activities."

"Google Classroom is easy to use and intuitive, and it's not difficult to set up."

"Company-wise, the most important feature is that it is a product of Google. It is a part of Google Suite. With Google Classroom, you can easily embed a Google Sheet, Google Doc, or Google Form. You can easily create a quiz in Google Form. It is integrated with Google Drive. So, everything is on Google Drive, and you can easily use it. With single sign-on, you can use it with Google Apps as well."

"The product's UI is good and user-friendly."

"The features I found most valuable in Google Classroom are live chatting, sending messages, notifications, and accessing documents, which is very easy, simple, and user-friendly."

More Google Classroom pros

"The ability to insert a variety of tools, create and organize course content, and share large volumes of materials, written, audio, or visual, is very valuable."

"One of the most valuable aspects is the ability to input data into the model."

"What I liked most about Moodle was that I could create nice online quizzes. It takes very little time to do. You don't have to even read the paper, it automatically evaluates the quizzes. It gives the student grades and provides a lot of useful statistics. For example, it indicates which question was the hardest, easiest, and where students made the most mistakes. Everything is available to you. You couldn't do this in regular paper test hard copies. This was my first use case."

"Since it's an open-source product, you can integrate it with many other things."

"Almost all the activity modules are available inside the courses, so that makes our training easier and more comfortable."

"It doesn't take long to learn how to use it and to set up basic courses and things like that."

"The most valuable features of Moodle are the ability to create assignments, divide them into teams, and the course delivery. In Cornerstone, I need to reach out to the team, and it is not as simple, a little more involved. Additionally, the solutions is easy to manage."

"Moodle has a vast array of features which are really useful for the work our company does. Moodle hosts the courses through online systems and also offers quizzes and badges which our customers frequently use."

More Moodle pros

Cons

"I like Google Classroom the way it is, but an area for improvement could be its dashboard."

"The stability could be improved."

"Initially, the product's initial setup phase may not seem user-friendly."

"The solution's GUI is an area of concern currently that can be considered for improvement in the future."

"The stability of the product is an area with certain flaws where improvements are required."

"I would like to see a better user experience, a more engaging interface, and more templates. Google should develop templates or at least encourage developers to share them. You'll only get a basic framework when you create a new course. You don't have different themes to choose from like you do in Moodle."

"Google Classroom could improve by having better integration with other platforms, such as Google Meet."

"I would like to see a master list of documents with folder names so that it is more convenient for students to know whether they have submitted a particular document. At present, you need to go to each classroom to check what you have submitted."

More Google Classroom cons

"The solution architecture could be improved."

"The solution should have more student-centric details in the modules."

"We have needed to complete many customizations for Moodle to use it in all of our relevant organizations. We have found many issues with the competencies as we cannot assign many sub competencies to competencies."

"Moodle's weakest point is the user interface."

"For a first time user, especially someone who is non-technical, Moodle is difficult for them to understand and they often need assistance."

"The biggest area for improvement is the UI. They should also make the navigation simpler to understand. They've recently introduced a new way of having navigation work in Moodle, but they all look very similar."

"Its interface design could be more user-friendly."

"Sometimes, discrepancies arise when the information is not updated or lacks precision, potentially leading to the model producing misleading or incorrect outputs based on its training."

More Moodle cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Google Classroom is free to use."

"My child's school made payments on a subscription-based model to use Google Classroom."

"We did not need a license to use Google Classroom."

"We are an educational institution, and it is free of charge for us. Normally, if you are a private company, you have to pay a lot of money to get this service, but they are giving it for free to schools."

"I use the free version of Google Classroom."

"The product offers a yearly based license."

"I'm using a free version of Google Classroom, so it's a product I don't pay for."

"For Google Classroom, you don't need to pay for its license because they offer free access to the platform."

More Google Classroom pricing and cost advice

"Moodle is a free solution."

"This particular organization is a relatively small academic institution. It is a single campus, not very big, with 4,500 to 5,000 total students. It is not a big faculty. There are no hard sciences other than undergraduate-level hard sciences. So, Moodle is functional, and it is relatively simple because it is open-source software. It has sub advantages, and it is inexpensive. Small schools with small enrollment numbers just can't afford the more expensive ones."

"Moodle have a very robust licensing system that is user friendly. It's not very expensive."

"Moodle is a free online learning platform, but it also offers a paid version of it."

"Moodle is a free open-sourced solution. This is one of the best aspects of Moodle."

"This solution offers a free-to-use version which can be deployed only on-premises and is what we are using. Moodle also offer support based and cloud based subscriptions. Organizations can select the appropriate package based on their needs. Moodle offer reasonable pricing for the use of their solution."

"In terms of cost, it is available at no charge."

"It is open source, and it has a lot of free documentation. It can be by far the least expensive option, but it depends on how one decides to use it. It can be free if you download it and host it on-prem, and you don't count your time as being worth anything. So, it can be almost free, or it can be very expensive just depending on if you get a package with a provider and if it is a huge solution."

More Moodle pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Educational Organization

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Classroom?

The product's UI is good and user-friendly.

What needs improvement with Google Classroom?

There is room for improvement in AI integration, specifically in the education sector. Google Classroom could benefit from tools that help correct coding errors for students, thereby enhancing lear...

What is your primary use case for Google Classroom?

We are using Google Classroom for assessments, homework, and providing resources to students. We also use it for tuition and online interaction, focusing on IT subjects such as computing and progra...

What do you like most about Moodle?

The customization features of Moodle significantly enhance the learning experience for our users.

What needs improvement with Moodle?

The customization of the interface could be improved. Although we can load and change themes, it still always looks like Moodle. We have not found a way to significantly alter its appearance.

What is your primary use case for Moodle?

We use Moodle to manage our students' information, the classes, and the course catalog, which are mainly related to education. It serves as a learning management system for teaching in class.

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Google Classroom

Download Google Classroom product report

Download Moodle product report

Overview

Google Classroom is an online learning platform that allows teachers to create and manage virtual classrooms. With Google Classroom, teachers can easily distribute assignments, communicate with students, and provide feedback. Students can access their assignments, submit their work, and collaborate with their peers all in one place. The platform integrates seamlessly with other Google tools like Google Drive and Google Docs, making it easy for students to create and share their work. Google Classroom also provides a streamlined workflow for teachers, allowing them to save time and stay organized. Google Classroom is a user-friendly and efficient tool that enhances the learning experience of teachers and students alike.

Google

Moodle is an open-source LMS offering course management, community plugins, and comprehensive integrations. Its modular design supports extensive customization, making it suitable for education sectors and corporate training.

Moodle provides a robust platform for creating and managing educational content. It integrates seamlessly with tools like Zoom and Teams, enhances cheat prevention with exam question shuffling, and supports advanced customization and accessibility. While its flexibility caters to diverse educational and corporate environments, Moodle faces challenges with login issues, improving mobile functionality, and a cumbersome setup process. Efforts to enhance documentation and ensure ease of navigation are ongoing. Its integration capabilities with ERP systems and support for LTI tools further position Moodle as a valuable resource for both educators and learners.

What are Moodle’s key features?

Course Management: Enables the creation and organization of courses, assignments, and exams.
Community Plugins: Offers extendable features through a variety of plugins supporting collaborative learning.
Integration with Tools: Supports platforms like Zoom, Teams, and Google Suite for enhanced communication and collaboration.
Security: Ensures robust protection of data with advanced security measures.
Accessibility Options: Provides tools to make learning accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
Document Import/Export: Easy management of course materials via import/export capabilities.
LTI Tool Integration: Seamless incorporation of Learning Tools Interoperability standards for broader resource access.

What benefits can users expect from Moodle?

Customization: Flexibility allows tailoring of the platform to specific requirements or objectives.
Ease of Use: Designed for efficient course administration and facilitation of learning.
Role-Based Access: Supports personalized user roles and permissions.
Cost-Effectiveness: Open-source nature ensures budget-friendly deployment and maintenance.
Wide Range of Plugins: Enhances capability through a supportive plugin ecosystem.

In educational and corporate industries, Moodle is implemented for exam scheduling, resource management, and online assessments. It facilitates instructor-student interactions and is adaptable for both on-premises and cloud deployments. Organizations leverage Moodle for customizing employee certifications and training programs, benefiting from its versatile access controls and management tools.

Sample Customers

Google Classroom is used in major urban school districts throughout the United States, including: * Los Angeles Unified School District * Chicago Public Schools * New York City Department of Education * Houston Independent School District * Miami-Dade County Public Schools * Dallas Independent School District * Broward County Public Schools * Clark County School District (Las Vegas) * Philadelphia School District

Acacia University, Alliant International University, American University of Health Sciences, Anaheim University Online, Aspen University, Cal State University San Bernardino, California State University Los Angeles, Chattanooga Fire Training, City of Humble Fire Department, George Washington University, Georgia Institute of Emergency Medical Services, Michigan Online Classroom, Virginia Beach Sheriffs Office, Washington Post

Google Classroom vs. Moodle