Perusall review
A course-focused annotation platform combining discussion, assessment, analytics, and LMS sync.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Perusall is an online social learning and annotation platform for schools, colleges, universities, instructors, and students. It supports collaborative reading across ebooks, PDFs, documents, web pages, videos, podcasts, and other course content. Instructors can assign materials, while students highlight passages, post threaded comments, reply to classmates, take notes, and participate in groups. The platform supports face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses, with both private and shared notes and downloadable Microsoft Word notes.
The published plans show two institutional license options. The Basic institutional license provides full access for adopters of books or free course materials, with no additional access fees for covered courses. The Premium institutional license includes those access terms plus expedited customer support, faculty and staff training, a customized institutional interface, an administrative dashboard, and book clubs for Centers of Teaching and Learning. Perusall also has a free plan. Some unlicensed courses using free materials may use an instructor-selected student platform access fee, according to the stated pricing notes.
Perusall’s strongest fit is a course workflow that connects annotation with assessment and learning-management administration. Peer review assignments can use rubrics, while checkpoints, prompts, embedded quiz questions, student grouping, group discussions, engagement analytics, confusion reports, and AI-generated prompts and quizzes add instructional depth. Integrations include Canvas, Blackboard Learn, Moodle, Brightspace D2L, Sakai, LTI 1.3, LTI 1.0/1.1, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Choose Perusall when collaborative reading, structured feedback, and LMS synchronization are central requirements. Teams seeking a web QA-focused annotation tool or broader platform coverage should consider a narrower fit elsewhere.
Perusall pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Threaded text and figure annotation supports collaborative discussion
- Peer reviews, rubrics, quizzes, and analytics extend beyond highlighting
- LMS roster, group, and gradebook synchronization supports course workflows
- Where it doesn't
- Institutional licenses require contacting Perusall for pricing
- Web-only access limits platform options
- Its education focus is less suited to website QA workflows
Perusall fact sheet, pricing and score →
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