Dimitri Cabete Jorge, Co-Founder & CTO · Last updated: August 2026 · Facts verified: August 2026
TL;DR: GLPI is a free, open-source ITSM and asset management platform maintained by the French company Teclib'. Its strength is the combination of deep asset tracking and ITIL-aligned ticketing at zero license cost. The limitation is what that costs in labor. Upgrades break plugins, the interface still reads dated after GLPI 11's refresh, and getting real value out of it takes genuine Linux, PHP, and MariaDB competence. It suits budget-conscious IT teams and service providers with the engineering capacity to maintain it. Teams that want a low-maintenance setup without a sysadmin on call should look at Snipe-IT for asset tracking alone or Freshservice for managed ITSM.
Ratings: G2: 4.5/5 (42 reviews) · Gartner Peer Insights: 4.3/5 (7 ratings), verified August 2026
What Is GLPI?
GLPI (Gestionnaire Libre de Parc Informatique, or Free IT Equipment Manager) is a free, open-source IT asset platform that pairs ITIL service desk features with license tracking and software auditing. It was created in 2003 by French developers from the INDEPNET association, and Teclib' has maintained it since taking over stewardship in July 2015.
The software is licensed under GPL v3, so it is free to download, self-host, and use commercially. GLPI 11 reached stable release on 1 October 2025. The current versions are 11.0.8 and 10.0.26, both shipped on 24 June 2026 to fix critical security issues, and the tenth-generation branch stays under maintenance for organizations not yet on 11. GLPI 12 is in development, with experimental agent support arriving in August 2026.
Scale is not the constraint people assume it is. The Econocom deployment runs 260,000 tickets and 2 million assets across 16 countries on a single GLPI instance.
What Is GLPI Used For?
GLPI covers service management and IT asset management in one install, which is the reason most teams adopt it. The work happens without a second tool or a license line.
- Hardware and software inventory: computers, monitors, printers, network devices, phones, operating systems, and installed software. Each record carries full modification history and lifecycle status from procurement to retirement, plus purchase value, warranty, and depreciation. Native inventory keeps the database current through the GLPI Agent from version 10 onwards.
- Helpdesk and service desk ticketing: the assistance module follows ITIL practice across incidents, requests, problems, changes, and a knowledge base. Business rules read any ticket attribute to automate categorization and assignment, with SLA enforcement built in.
- Change management: changes link to tickets and assets and follow the same validation path. Since GLPI 11, they can be configured as recurrent changes that open on a schedule, for example every Wednesday evening to track Windows update deployments.
- License and contract tracking: GLPI inventories licenses, ties them to individual assets, and alerts before a warranty or maintenance contract expires. License management is manual upkeep; there is no automation for it.
- Financial and budget management: budgets, costs, suppliers, and licenses in one module, with per-asset fields for supplier, order number, invoice, value, warranty, amortization type, and total cost of ownership.
- Multi-entity management for MSPs: entities let one instance serve several isolated organizational units or client companies, with shared rules and cross-entity reporting for administrators.
- Network discovery and SNMP inventory: the agent's network discovery uses ARP, ICMP, NetBIOS, and SNMP to find and import devices automatically, pulling consumable levels, print counters, and network topology with them.
Key Features of GLPI
Four things carry an evaluation in 2026: what GLPI 11 changed, the inventory agent, the integration and authentication layer, and where AI and sustainability tracking actually sit.
What GLPI 11 changed
- A built-in form editor: GLPI 11 replaced the third-party FormCreator plugin with a native interactive editor, so service catalog forms no longer depend on a separate plugin someone has to keep compatible.
- Recurrent changes: change requests generate on a defined schedule from templates, with calendar-aware working hours and no manual ticket creation.
- Custom asset types: teams can define new asset types, including vehicles, industrial equipment, and electrical infrastructure, and GLPI manages them exactly as it manages native objects. That matters in OT and mixed environments.
- Two-factor authentication and webhooks: GLPI 11 added native 2FA on sign-in and outbound webhooks that trigger HTTP calls to external applications, alongside a rebuilt self-service portal.
- Quality-of-life work: administrators can read logs in the browser without server access, which is the difference between diagnosing a problem and filing a ticket with whoever holds SSH.
The inventory agent
- How it collects: the GLPI Agent gathers inventory from connected devices and posts it to the server over REST as JSON or XML.
- Current release: Agent 1.19, dated 4 August 2026, carries security fixes and experimental GLPI 12 support. Agent 1.16, from 3 February 2026, added IEC61850 support for inventorying intelligent electronic devices in industrial settings.
Integration and authentication
- Two APIs: GLPI ships both a REST API (V1) and a RESTful API (V2), with V2 using OAuth2 token authentication.
- Directory support: LDAP v3 including Microsoft Active Directory, with no cap on the number of directories. Subscriptions add OAuth2 single sign-on and SCIM user synchronization.
AI and sustainability
- AI arrives as a plugin: the GLPI-AI plugin adds ticket summarization, response suggestions, and rephrasing. It comes with a paid subscription from the Basic tier up, and it needs a separately purchased LLM subscription on top. Commercial competitors ship this in the product.
- Carbon tracking: the Carbon plugin, released October 2025 and updated to 1.3.0 on 16 July 2026, measures the environmental impact of computers, servers, monitors, mobile devices, and network gear. It runs on GLPI 11.0 only.
- Project management: projects support Gantt and Kanban views with task assignment, and link to tickets, assets, and contracts.
GLPI Pros & Cons
Full ITSM and ITAM coverage for no license fee, with the real cost showing up in setup and ongoing administration.
What Users Say
What users consistently praise:
- Zero-cost licensing with real ITSM breadth: reviewers list helpdesk, asset management, change management, CMDB, and a customer portal under one GPL license, with no seat limits on a self-hosted install. Value for money is its highest-scoring dimension anywhere it is measured separately.
- Assets and tickets in one place: tracking tickets alongside assets, SSL certificates, contracts, and warranties comes up repeatedly as the thing that stopped teams buying a second tool. One reviewer runs 1,300 workstations and a CMDB next to the ticket queue.
- Automated discovery: the agent reporting devices without anyone touching them is the most-cited operational win, particularly for network inventory.
- Plugin breadth: reviewers value the catalog, and practitioners name specific ones they rely on, including time tracking and linking tickets to projects.
What users consistently complain about:
- The interface: reviewers writing in February 2026, months after GLPI 11 shipped, still compare it to an older LAMP-server application. Menus draw the same complaint, along with button labels that do not say what they do.
- Plugins breaking on upgrade: reviewers report plugins failing between releases, including a fatal class-not-found error moving from 11.0.6 to 11.0.7 and a plugin version reverting during a 10-to-11 migration.
- Weak native reporting: flagged independently on every platform. GLPI's own help center points users at a reporting plugin, and advanced dashboards sit behind a paid tier.
- Search speed on large databases: the open issue tracker carries this on both branches. One report on version 10 describes overall search taking several minutes, and a separate report after upgrading to 11.0.1 on roughly 90,000 tickets describes ticket search slowing noticeably once the database moved to MySQL 8 or later.
- The configuration curve: ticket-form customization defeats new users, some interface changes need PHP and database knowledge, and the sheer volume of configuration options reads as overwhelming.
Where reviewers diverge:
- Setup difficulty: plenty of reviewers describe installation as straightforward, and ease of setup scores well below ease of administration on the platform that separates the two. Practitioners describe Windows Server with IIS and PHP as difficult, ticketing configuration as fiddly, and documentation as confusing or more complete in French. Both groups are probably right about their own stack.
- Total cost of ownership: value for money scores near the top of the scale. Practitioners add the part no score captures: Linux, PHP, and Apache maintenance, a test environment, upgrades, and plugin upkeep, none of which appears in a seat-based comparison.
- The plugin marketplace: buyers read extensibility as a feature, practitioners read it as maintenance risk. Independently developed plugins each need a manual compatibility check on every upgrade, and the ones that lapse become the security problem.
GLPI Pricing
The software is free. Paid options are a self-hosted subscription for support and premium plugins, or managed cloud hosting priced per IT agent. End users are unlimited on every option.
Self-hosted
GLPI Network Cloud
Rates come from the GLPI pricing page. All pricing information verified August 2026.
Gotchas:
- All prices exclude tax, and local tax applies by country.
- The free edition means zero software cost and full exposure to infrastructure, maintenance, upgrade, and backup labor. That is the real line item, and it does not appear on any invoice.
- Cloud pricing counts IT agents, meaning anyone on a standard interface profile. That is what makes it cheap for a large workforce with a small IT team.
- Private Cloud bills a 25-agent minimum whether or not you have 25. A ten-person team pays for 25.
- Public Cloud carries real limits. Shared CPU and RAM, a 500-agent-per-hour inventory quota with a one-hour lockout if exceeded, 5 GB of attachment space, a 20 MB attachment ceiling, and no VPN, IP filtering, MySQL read access, or incremental backup.
- Support runs Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm Paris time, in French and English. Contractual response is four hours, instance restoration twelve hours, a confirmed bug workaround 48 hours, and final bug resolution twelve days.
- Recovery objectives differ sharply by tier: Public Cloud is a 24-hour RPO and an 8-hour RTO, Private Cloud is one hour and four hours.
- Plugin access is tiered on self-hosted plans. Advanced Dashboard and approval by mail need Standard; Advanced plugins need the Advanced tier. Budget the tier by which plugin you need, since headcount alone will mislead you.
- Data is portable by contract. On first written request, during or after the contract, Teclib' returns the full MySQL database and attachments in a standard format within 30 calendar days at no charge.
- The 45-day Public Cloud trial needs no card, and there are no backups during the trial period.
Is GLPI Worth It?
Yes, if you have the technical depth to run a Linux, PHP, and MariaDB stack and want the full ITSM and ITAM feature set without a license line. It is strongest where an internal team or a service provider can absorb the operational work in exchange for eliminating software cost, and for organizations whose asset estate is the reason they need a service desk in the first place.
The multi-entity architecture is the part worth paying attention to if you run client environments, since one instance can hold several with real isolation. And the Econocom scale figures show the ceiling is high enough that most organizations will hit their own infrastructure limits before GLPI's.
Run the arithmetic against the managed option before committing. Ten IT agents on GLPI Network Cloud Public is €190 a month, around €2,280 a year excluding tax, with no server to maintain. Self-hosting is free software on infrastructure you already own, plus the hours of whoever keeps PHP, the database, and the plugin list current. If that person costs more than €2,280 a year in diverted time, the cloud tier is cheaper.
Look elsewhere if you want asset tracking with less maintenance attached, since Snipe-IT covers the asset half with a gentler setup and no ITIL configuration to work through. The same applies if you want full ITSM without owning the stack: Freshservice removes the infrastructure and plugin overhead entirely, at a per-agent price GLPI does not charge.
GLPI vs Snipe-IT
Both are open-source and self-hostable at zero license cost, so scope is what separates them. GLPI is a service desk with an asset database underneath. Snipe-IT is an asset database that stops there deliberately.
Where GLPI wins:
- Breadth: ITSM and ITAM in one platform, with no second tool to buy or reconcile.
- Service desk depth: ITIL-aligned incidents, requests, problems, and changes, with business rules and SLA enforcement.
- Multi-entity architecture: several client environments on a single instance with isolation between them, which is the MSP case Snipe-IT does not address.
- Financial management: budgets, contracts, licenses, and amortization tied to individual asset records.
- Discovery reach: the agent handles switches, routers, and network infrastructure alongside workstations, agentless over SNMP or agent-based.
Where Snipe-IT wins:
- Setup speed: reviewers consistently find it easier to install and learn, with a gentler curve to a working system.
- Interface: cleaner and more current than GLPI's, with a narrower remit that keeps it that way.
- Fit for small teams: organizations that need asset tracking and nothing else avoid configuring an ITSM platform they will not use.
- Managed option: self-hosted Snipe-IT is free, and its hosted tier starts at $39.99 a month, which is a lower entry point than GLPI's cloud minimum for a small team.
GLPI wins on depth and multi-tenancy. Snipe-IT wins when the honest requirement is an asset tracker running by the end of the afternoon.
GLPI Alternatives
Teams leave GLPI for one of three reasons. The requests matter more than the asset database, they lack the PHP and Linux capacity to maintain a self-hosted LAMP stack, or they want the service desk without the configuration work.
Siit: Pick this if the bottleneck is the requests around the assets. Siit runs the service desk inside Slack and Microsoft Teams, so there is no portal for employees to remember. It charges for admins with employees unlimited, and routes and approves cross-departmental work automatically. It answers a different question entirely from where the asset record lives.
Snipe-IT: Pick this if you need a free, open-source hardware and software asset tracker with a modern interface and a simpler install, and you do not need ITIL ticketing or change management. Its self-hosted edition stays free.
Freshservice: Pick this if you want ITIL-aligned ITSM as managed software, with no infrastructure to run, no-code automation, and AI in the product itself with no plugin or LLM contract to arrange. The trade is a per-agent license fee where GLPI charges nothing.
How GLPI Works With Siit
Siit does not integrate directly with GLPI. Teams running both run them side by side, which is worth saying plainly before anything else.
What Siit does cover is the layer around GLPI: the identity, endpoint, and chat tools a GLPI-using IT team already operates, and the employee requests that arrive before a ticket exists.
What Siit can do around a GLPI deployment:
- Identity actions through Okta: password reset, group add and remove, app assignment, and suspend or reactivate, run from a request with approval on the sensitive ones.
- Directory context through Microsoft Entra ID: directory sync and group membership. Entra does not reset passwords, so those route through Okta, JumpCloud, or Google Workspace.
- Endpoint actions: lock, wipe, and inventory sync through Microsoft Intune for Windows and mobile fleets, and the same three through Jamf for Apple hardware.
- Requests in chat: employees submit and track in Slack or Microsoft Teams, so access requests and onboarding handoffs arrive with routing and approvals attached.
One boundary worth stating plainly: Siit does not replace GLPI's CMDB, its financial module, or its ITIL change process, and it does not report on them. It handles the request layer in front of the toolchain, which is a different job from holding the asset record.
Siit connects with 500+ connectable apps across identity, device management, HR systems, knowledge bases, and ticketing. For a team whose asset truth lives in GLPI, that is what keeps a request touching IT, HR, and Finance in one thread.
