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A Canvas lockdown-browser alternative that doesn't watch your students.
Side by side
Four tools, two philosophies
Respondus, Proctorio, and Honorlock are vendor-hosted services built around their own clients or browser extensions. Safe Online Exam is a Canvas LTI 1.3 integration built around Safe Exam Browser — the free, open-source lockdown client maintained by ETH Zurich — that your institution can run itself.
| Safe Online Exam | Respondus LockDown Browser | Proctorio | Honorlock | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Locked-down exams with a guided, verified workflow — not surveillance | Proprietary lockdown browser; optional automated webcam proctoring (Monitor) | Automated AI monitoring of screen, webcam, and browser activity | Hybrid AI monitoring with live proctor pop-ins |
| Exam client | Safe Exam Browser — free, open source (Mozilla Public License, ETH Zurich) | Respondus's own browser, installed per device | Chrome + a required extension | Chrome + a required extension |
| Canvas quizzes | Classic and New Quizzes, managed from course navigation over LTI 1.3 | Classic and New Quizzes; documented New Quizzes limitations (settings lost on course copy; Monitor unavailable) | Canvas quiz integration | Canvas quiz integration |
| Webcam recording | None, by design — no student video is ever captured | Yes, with Monitor (included with institutional licenses from Spring 2026) | Yes — automated recording and analysis | Yes — recording plus live human review |
| Hosting & data | Self-host on your infrastructure (Cloud Run + Cloud SQL, or Docker Compose) or managed; state lives in PostgreSQL you control | Vendor-hosted cloud service | Vendor-hosted cloud service | Vendor-hosted cloud service |
| Pricing model | No per-seat pricing | Annual institutional license based on student FTE | Institutional quote | Institutional quote |
| Source availability | Source-available at release; SEB client fully open source | Proprietary | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Config integrity | Certificate-encrypted configs; access code released only after Config Key proof | Managed inside the Respondus client | Extension-enforced | Extension-enforced |
Competitor details reflect public vendor documentation and Canvas community reports as of July 2026. Verify current terms with each vendor — capabilities and licensing change.
The most common comparison
What actually changes when you replace Respondus LockDown Browser?
What Respondus does well
Respondus LockDown Browser is the incumbent for a reason: one annual institutional license (priced on student FTE), a polished install path for student-owned devices, and — from Spring 2026 — its Monitor webcam-proctoring add-on bundled in. If your model is remote students on personal laptops with recorded proctoring, it is a coherent package.
Where Safe Online Exam differs
- An open client, not a proprietary one. Exams run in Safe Exam Browser, the open-source client your institution can inspect, version-pin, and deploy through MDM.
- Your infrastructure, your data. Self-host the service and every setting, token, and session lives in a PostgreSQL database you operate — nothing routes through a vendor cloud.
- Proof before access. A stolen or stale config file is useless: configs are certificate-encrypted, and the Canvas access code is released only after SEB proves its Config Key against current settings.
- First-class New Quizzes. Classic and New Quizzes are both discovered and managed from course navigation — without the settings-loss-on-course-copy issue Canvas admins report with the Respondus New Quizzes integration.
- No student surveillance. No webcam feed, no recordings, no AI flags on nervous glances. Integrity comes from the locked environment and cryptographic proof, not from watching students.
Surveillance-first tools
Proctorio and Honorlock solve a different problem
Both are Chrome-extension-based proctoring platforms: Proctorio runs fully automated AI analysis of screen, webcam, and browser activity; Honorlock layers live proctor pop-ins on top of its AI monitoring. They exist to watch remote students. If your question is instead “how do we run locked-down, in-Canvas assessments on devices we manage, without recording anyone” — that is the problem Safe Online Exam is built for, and a Chrome extension cannot provide the kiosk-level lockdown that Safe Exam Browser does.
Honest scoping
When Safe Online Exam is not the right choice
You need recorded webcam proctoring
Safe Online Exam deliberately records nothing. If your assessment policy requires webcam video of remote students, Respondus Monitor or Honorlock cover that need — with the privacy trade-offs that come with it.
Your students test on fully unmanaged personal devices
The strongest Safe Online Exam guarantees come from certificate identities deployed through device management. On unmanaged BYOD fleets the certificate barrier weakens to what the device can prove.
You are not on Canvas
Safe Online Exam is built specifically for Canvas over LTI 1.3. For other LMSs, SEB Server or LMS-native SEB support are better starting points.
See the workflow before you shortlist anything.
The fastest way to evaluate the difference is to watch one assessment go from instructor setup to a verified SEB launch. Read how it works, review pricing, or request a demo tailored to your Canvas environment.
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