What is xAPI?

xAPI (Experience API, also called Tin Can API) is an e-learning standard that records learning activity as simple statements, such as 'Ana completed the forklift simulation', and stores them in a learning record store (LRS). It can track learning from almost any source, not only courses launched from a learning management system (LMS).

Reviewed by Clark Quinn, Chief Learning Strategist Updated October 28, 2026

Example

A manufacturing company trains forklift operators in three ways: an online safety course, a virtual reality driving simulation and a practical assessment on the warehouse floor, which a supervisor signs off on a tablet. Before xAPI, only the online course showed up in the LMS. The simulation kept its own logs and the floor assessments lived in a spreadsheet.

With xAPI, all three send statements to one learning record store. The L&D team can now see that an operator finished the course, failed the simulation’s loading-dock scenario twice, then passed the floor assessment a week later. When a near miss happens, they can check that operator’s full training history in one place.

How it works

xAPI was developed with sponsorship from Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), the US Department of Defense initiative behind SCORM. Its working name was Project Tin Can, which is why many people still call it the Tin Can API. The idea is simple: describe any learning experience as a short sentence, and send that sentence to a database built to store it.

Statements

Every xAPI record is a statement written in JSON, a common data format. A statement has three required parts and several optional ones:

• Actor: who did something, usually a learner identified by email address or a system account.
• Verb: what they did, such as attempted, completed, passed, failed or answered.
• Object: what they did it to, such as a course, a video, a simulation or a single question.
• Result: optional details such as a score, pass or fail, or time taken.
• Context: optional details such as the instructor, the team or the larger program the activity belongs to.

Put together, a statement reads like “Ana completed the forklift simulation with a score of 85”. Each verb and activity has a unique identifier written like a web address, so two systems that share the same vocabulary mean the same thing by “completed”.

The learning record store

Statements go to a learning record store (LRS), a database that receives, validates and stores them. An LRS can be a standalone product or built into an LMS or a learning experience platform. Reporting tools query the LRS for data, and one LRS can forward statements to another, for example from a vendor’s system to the company’s central LRS.

What can send statements

Anything that can send a web request to the LRS can report xAPI statements:

• Online courses and e-learning modules.
• Mobile apps, including ones that store statements while offline and send them later.
• Simulations, games and virtual reality training.
• Video players that report what a learner watched.
• Forms and checklists used for on-the-job observations and live events.

xAPI vs SCORM and cmi5

SCORM tracks one situation well: a course launched from an LMS, running in a browser, reporting a fixed set of fields such as completion, score and time. xAPI removes those limits. Activity can happen anywhere, and the data can describe whatever the designer chooses to record.

The trade-off is structure. On its own, xAPI does not say how an LMS should launch content, how content should log in to the LRS, or which statements mean a course is finished. cmi5 fills that gap. It is an xAPI profile, a set of extra rules that gives xAPI courses an LMS launch-and-track model like SCORM’s while keeping xAPI’s data format.

Before you adopt xAPI

xAPI gives you more data, but only if you plan for it.

• You need an LRS. Check whether your LMS has one built in, or budget for a standalone LRS.
• Decide what to track first. A statement for every click creates noise. Start from the questions you want to answer, such as whether practice in a simulation predicts performance on the job.
• Agree on verbs and activity names. If two vendors describe the same action differently, reports will not line up. Shared xAPI profiles help here.
• Check tool support. Many authoring tools publish xAPI, but not every LMS can launch xAPI content or report on it in detail.

Why it matters for L&D teams

• Learning outside the LMS counts. Simulations, apps, coaching sessions and on-the-job checks can be recorded alongside formal courses.
• Richer data. Statements can show which questions a learner missed, which choices they made in a scenario, or which part of a video they replayed.
• One learner record. Data from different tools and vendors lands in one LRS instead of separate systems.
• A path to measuring impact. Linking training activity to performance data is easier when both are stored as consistent statements.