Searching for an open-source alternative to Snipe-IT usually means one of two things. Either you want to avoid a subscription, or you want to keep asset data on infrastructure you control. Those are different problems, and they do not lead to the same answer.
This is an honest map of what actually exists, what each project is genuinely good at, and where the free-as-in-beer maths stops working. We sell a hosted product, so read the last section with appropriate suspicion - but the survey below is the one we would give a friend.
The short list
Snipe-IT
The default answer, and deservedly so. AGPL-licensed, PHP/Laravel, mature, with the concepts an IT team actually wants: assets checked out to people, licenses with seats, consumables, accessories, custom fields, a solid REST API. If you want open-source IT asset management and you have somewhere to run it, start here rather than looking for something cleverer.
Its weak spots are operational rather than functional: you own the upgrades, the backups, the database, the mail delivery and the security patches.
GLPI
GPL-licensed, and much broader than asset tracking - it is a full ITSM suite with a ticketing system, a CMDB and asset inventory together. Long-established, heavily used in Europe, and strong if you want assets and a service desk in one place.
The trade-off is weight. GLPI has a lot of surface area and an interface that rewards people who have committed to learning it. If all you need is "which laptop does Sam have", it is a large amount of software to stand up.
Ralph
Apache-licensed, Python and Django, originally built at Allegro for data centre and back-office asset management. Clean data model, appealing if your team is Python-shaped and comfortable extending an application rather than configuring one. Smaller community than Snipe-IT or GLPI, so expect to read source when documentation runs out.
OCS Inventory NG and FusionInventory
These solve a genuinely different problem: discovery. Agents report what hardware and software actually exist on the network. That is complementary to asset management, not a substitute for it - discovery tells you a machine exists, it does not tell you who signed for it, what it cost, or when the warranty ends. Teams often pair one of these with GLPI.
NetBox
Apache-licensed and excellent, but worth naming precisely so you do not go down the wrong path: NetBox is a source of truth for network and data centre infrastructure - racks, circuits, IP address management. It is not built for checking a MacBook out to a new starter. If your "assets" are switches and subnets it is a strong choice; if they are laptops and licences, it is not the tool.
i-doit community edition
A CMDB-first product with a free community edition and a paid pro version. Good if you think in configuration items and relationships. Note that the community edition is deliberately narrower than pro, so check the feature split before investing setup time.
What "free" actually costs
The licence fee is genuinely zero. The rest is not, and it is worth costing honestly before you commit:
- Hosting. A small VPS plus a database. Modest, but real and recurring.
- Upgrades. Point releases are usually painless; major versions occasionally are not. Someone has to own that, including reading changelogs before clicking.
- Backups you have actually restored. An untested backup is a belief, not a backup. Asset data is exactly the thing you notice missing during an audit.
- Security patching. A public-facing app holding your staff list and device inventory needs patching promptly, including the OS, the web server and the database beneath it.
- Email deliverability. Checkout notifications and reminders are useless in spam folders, and self-hosted mail is its own ongoing chore.
- Single sign-on. Sometimes present, sometimes an enterprise add-on, sometimes a plugin you maintain.
Add a few hours a month of someone's attention at a loaded hourly rate and the comparison stops being "free versus paid". It becomes "who does this work, and is that the best use of them". For a team with a sysadmin who enjoys this, self-hosting is a good deal. For a three-person IT team already behind on tickets, it is a second job.
When open source is clearly the right call
- You have a policy or contractual requirement that the data stay on your own infrastructure.
- You already run comparable services, so one more is marginal effort rather than a new capability.
- You need to modify the application itself, not just configure it.
- You have time but not budget - an accurate and common position, especially in education and non-profits.
When it is not
- Nobody owns the server after the person who set it up moves on. This is the most common way self-hosted asset trackers die: the instance is fine, then it is three versions behind, then nobody logs in.
- You need SSO, audit trails and a signed sub-processor list for a customer security questionnaire, and you need them this quarter.
- Your actual constraint is time, not money.
The honest pitch
SimpleAMS is not open source. If self-hosting is the requirement, use Snipe-IT - it is a good project and we would rather you ran it well than ran ours reluctantly.
What we sell is the operational half: hosting, patching, backups, SSO, MDM sync and support, so that asset tracking is not one more thing on the list of software your team maintains. We import Snipe-IT CSV exports directly, so leaving is not a rebuild - see the Snipe-IT migration guide or the side-by-side on SimpleAMS vs Snipe-IT.
If you are still surveying, the wider list of Snipe-IT alternatives covers the hosted options too, and our pricing is published rather than quote-based, so you can do the maths above without booking a call.