Two asset registers, both of which publish their prices, which already separates them from most of this category. One is free if you can run a server. The other is hosted and priced by how many assets you hold. The choice is almost entirely about who maintains the thing it runs on.
TL;DR
- Both publish pricing on their own sites. In a category where several well-known platforms require a demo first, that is worth something.
- One is open source with a free self-hosted edition and paid hosted tiers. The other is hosted only, priced by asset count.
- The widely cited 250-asset free tier is a 30-day trial on its own pricing page, not a permanent plan.
- Self-hosting is free of licence and not free of work: a server, updates and backups somebody has to own.
- Asset-count pricing is predictable until a refresh, when retired and replacement machines both sit in the register.
- Neither handles physical logistics. If devices ship direct to homes, no register will tell you where they are.
The one question that decides it
Is there somebody on your team who already runs a server and will notice when updates or backups stop?
If yes, the open-source route is a real saving and the product is the same one the vendor hosts. If that person does not exist, or would be doing it as a favour, the saving is borrowed against a risk nobody is tracking. An asset register that goes unpatched for a year is a liability sitting on your network, and it holds the serial numbers and assignment history of your whole fleet.
Everything else about this comparison is secondary. Both products hold the fields a fleet needs, both do check-in and check-out, both support custom fields and audits.
What each one publishes
| Snipe-IT, self-hosted | Free, open source | Complete register. Your server, your updates, your backups |
| Snipe-IT Basic, hosted | $39.99 monthly, $399.99 a year | Same product without the server |
| Snipe-IT Small Business | $99.99 monthly, $999.99 a year | The next tier up |
| AssetTiger, 500 assets | $20 monthly, $18 on annual billing | Unlimited users at every tier |
| AssetTiger, 2,500 assets | $40 monthly, $37 on annual billing | Priced by asset count, not by user |
| AssetTiger, 10,000 assets | $75 monthly, $69 on annual billing | Still cheaper than most per-user models |
Both sets of figures were read from each vendor’s own pricing page. Both offer a discount for annual billing, which is worth noting because a monthly rate and an annual-billing rate are routinely compared against each other in roundups as though they were the same thing.
The trial that reads as a free plan
AssetTiger appears in a lot of free asset management lists on the strength of a 250-asset tier. Its own pricing page describes that tier as a 30-day trial. It is a perfectly reasonable trial and it is not a permanent free plan, and the distinction matters to anybody choosing a tool on the basis that it will cost nothing.
The genuinely free option here is the open-source self-hosted edition, which is a full register rather than a restricted one. Free of licence is not free of cost, and the cost is attention rather than money: a small server, operating system patches, database backups and somebody who notices when any of those stop happening.
Where asset-count pricing bites
Pricing by asset count is predictable and easy to budget, with one exception that catches people during a refresh.
During a refresh the retiring machine and its replacement both exist in the register, because you want the history of the old one and the location of the new one. A fleet of 400 devices replacing a third of itself briefly carries over 530 records. If your tier boundary sits just above your fleet size, a refresh pushes you through it for a quarter, and so does an acquisition.
The fix is a retirement process rather than a bigger tier. Archive a record when the device has been wiped and disposed of, keeping the history, so the active count reflects the fleet rather than its entire history. Decide that before you pick a tier, not after the first invoice surprises somebody.
A worked example
A 120-person company chose the self-hosted route on cost grounds. One engineer set it up in an afternoon, imported 143 devices, and it worked well for about eight months.
Then the engineer changed teams. Nobody took the server over, because nobody had been named as its owner. When somebody finally looked, it was eleven months behind on updates and the last database backup was from the week it was installed. The register itself was fine and the thing it ran on was not.
They moved to a hosted tier, which cost less per year than the time spent reconstructing the situation. The lesson was not that self-hosting is wrong. It was that the decision had been made on licence cost and the real variable was whether the dependency had a name against it.
Choosing between them
Checklist:
- Name the person who will own the server before choosing self-hosted, and confirm they accept it.
- Write down what happens to that ownership when they change role, which is the failure above.
- Count your fleet, then add a third for refresh overlap, before picking an asset-count tier.
- Decide your retirement and archive rule first, so the active count tracks the fleet rather than its history.
- Compare monthly against monthly and annual against annual, since both vendors discount annual billing.
- Test the import with your real export, not a sample, because that is where field mapping problems appear.
Neither product handles physical logistics, and that limit is shared with every register. A tool that records where a device should be cannot tell you where it is when it was shipped straight to somebody’s flat and never passed through your hands. Registers and recovery are different problems, and the options for the second are compared in our IT asset management comparison.
Final thoughts
Both of these are good products at small-fleet scale and the feature comparison between them changes very little. One publishes an open-source edition and paid hosting; the other publishes hosted tiers by asset count with unlimited users. Either will hold your fleet accurately.
Decide on the dependency rather than the licence. If a named person will own a server and keep owning it through a role change, self-hosting is the better deal and it is genuinely free. If not, pay for hosting and spend the attention on the quarterly reconciliation instead, which is the work that actually determines whether the register is worth having.
Frequently asked questions
Is Snipe-IT really free?
The self-hosted edition is genuinely free and open source, and it is a complete asset register with check-in and check-out, custom fields, audits and label support rather than a restricted version. What it costs is attention: a small server, operating system patches, database backups and somebody who notices when any of those stop. Hosted tiers are published separately for teams that would rather not run it, with Basic at $39.99 monthly or $399.99 a year.
Does AssetTiger offer a free trial or a free plan?
Not a permanent one. Its 250-asset tier, which appears in many free asset management roundups, is described on its own pricing page as a 30-day trial. The paid tiers are published and priced by asset count with unlimited users at every level, starting at $20 a month for 500 assets and reducing to $18 on annual billing. If a permanently free tool is the requirement, the open-source self-hosted route is the honest answer.
Which is cheaper for a 200-device fleet?
Self-hosting is cheapest on licence and that is rarely the deciding number at this size, because both vendors’ hosted figures are small enough that a few hours of somebody’s time a year closes the gap. Compare on who owns the server and what happens when that person changes role. Also add roughly a third to your device count before picking an asset-count tier, since a refresh puts retiring and replacement machines in the register at the same time.
What does asset-count pricing miss?
It assumes your record count tracks your fleet size, and during a refresh it does not. You keep the retiring machine for its history and add its replacement for its location, so a 400-device fleet replacing a third of itself briefly holds over 530 records. The fix is a retirement and archive rule decided before you pick a tier, keeping the history while taking the record out of the active count, rather than paying for a larger tier for one quarter.
Can either tool find devices automatically?
Neither is a discovery tool, and discovery would only partly help anyway. Network and management discovery finds devices that are switched on and reachable, which is a useful population and not the same as the one you own: it cannot see a laptop in a drawer, one bought and never deployed, or one with somebody who has left. Those three categories are exactly where registers go wrong, so treat discovery as a reconciliation source rather than a register.
Which should a team with no technical capacity pick?
A hosted tier, from either vendor, and spend the saved attention on the reconciliation instead. The reason is not that self-hosting is hard to set up, since it takes an afternoon, but that it creates an ongoing dependency with no natural owner, and an unpatched register holding your fleet’s serial numbers and assignment history is a worse outcome than a modest annual bill. Name an owner for the data regardless of which route you choose.
