Question 1

Does Moodle already have AI built in?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but not for marking. Moodle 4.5 added an AI subsystem: an admin configures an AI provider (OpenAI and Azure AI in core, plus community providers such as Ollama and LocalAI for self-hosted models) and enables placements. The core placements are the text editor and course assist, and the core actions are generate text, generate image, summarise text and — from Moodle 5.0 — explain text. That is content help and reading support. There is no core action that marks a submission against a rubric, and no approval step or gradebook write-back attached to it, which is why a marking workflow still comes from a plugin or an LTI 1.3 tool.

Question 2

What is the best free AI tool for Moodle and Canvas?

Accepted Answer

On current free tiers, EduGears AI is the only one of these that lets you try the whole tool set plus LMS grade passback without paying: the free plan carries no instructor-seat limit, all 30 tools, 200 AI credits to evaluate them and LTI 1.3 grade passback, and learners are free and unlimited on every plan. Quillionz is freemium but only covers question generation. Moodle's own AI subsystem costs nothing to switch on, but you supply and pay for the model provider yourself and it does not grade. LearnWise is enterprise-priced with no published free tier.

Question 3

Which of these actually grade student work and post the score back?

Accepted Answer

Two: EduGears AI and LearnWise. EduGears AI scores each criterion of a rubric you wrote, and on Student Assessment and project assignments the AI score is held as a draft until an instructor approves it — only then does it travel to the gradebook over LTI 1.3 Assignment and Grade Services. Quillionz and Mindgrasp are generation tools and do not mark submissions. Moodle's built-in AI subsystem does not mark either. If AI grading is the whole reason you are shopping, our EduGears AI vs. Gradescope page compares the two grading approaches directly.

Question 4

Which of these AI tools has an AI agent?

Accepted Answer

Of the five, only EduGears AI publishes one. Its assistant, Cog, can answer an instructor's questions about the courses they teach — "who hasn't started Module 3?", "who is falling behind?" — by deciding which of the integration's own reports to open, applying the filters and reading the rows, then naming the report it used so you can check the answer. It is read-only: it has no tool that writes, edits, sends or deletes, and nothing it does reaches the gradebook. It runs as the person asking, so it sees exactly the courses they can already see, and class-data questions are for instructors only. LearnWise publishes a campus support assistant, a student tutor and a feedback grader that answer from course content, and Quillionz and Mindgrasp publish no agent capability. Moodle's core AI actions are generate text, generate image, summarise and explain; agent-style setups for Moodle come from third-party plugins and community projects built on its web services, not from core.

Question 5

Do I need to install a plugin, or is LTI 1.3 enough?

Accepted Answer

For most sites LTI 1.3 is enough. EduGears AI, LearnWise and Quillionz all connect as external tools, so a Moodle or Canvas admin registers the tool once and it appears in every course — roughly a three-minute job in Moodle via dynamic registration, or a Developer Key in Canvas. EduGears AI also publishes an optional Moodle plugin, which turns that registration into a single click on a reachable Moodle and, on one that sits behind a firewall or on an intranet hostname and cannot complete server-to-server registration, issues a code the admin pastes — with the site's public JWKS document — on a manual registration page instead. Moodle's native AI subsystem is the exception: it is configured in Site administration rather than installed as a tool.

Question 6

How was this list ranked?

Accepted Answer

By breadth of in-LMS instructor workflow: whether the tool installs over LTI 1.3 into both Moodle and Canvas, whether it generates questions, whether it marks work against a rubric and returns the grade, whether it offers an AI agent that can answer questions about your class from your own LMS data, and whether there is a usable free tier. EduGears AI is our own product, so treat rank 1 as a disclosure rather than a neutral verdict — the table is there so you can weigh the columns that matter to you and reach a different conclusion. Competitor cells reflect what each vendor publishes; where a vendor publishes nothing on a point, the cell says so rather than assuming absence.

#	Tool	Type	Pricing	Moodle	Canvas	Question Gen	AI Grading	AI Tutor	AI Agent
1	EduGears AI	LTI 1.3	Starts free + BYOK	✅	✅ Blueprint sync	✅ 9 types + True/False, QTI	✅ Rubric + AGS	✅ 4 modes	✅ Data Q&A (read-only)
2	LearnWise	LTI 1.3	Enterprise	✅	✅	Student practice only	✅	✅	Not published
3	Quillionz	Web + LTI (Canvas)	Freemium	Manual import	✅ LTI	✅ 5 types	❌	❌	Not published
4	Mindgrasp	Standalone + Partial LTI	Paid	Partial	Partial	✅ 4 types	❌	Limited	Not published
5	Moodle Native AI Subsystem	Built-in	BYOK (free + API costs)	✅ (4.5+)	—	Partial (via editor)	❌	❌	Not in core (3rd-party)

Best AI Tools for Moodle and Canvas in 2026 — Free and Paid

EduGears AI

LearnWise

Quillionz

Mindgrasp

Moodle Native AI Subsystem

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