Owning your system outright is a real option, and a genuinely good trade for some shops. It is also routinely oversold. Here is what each licence permits.
Open does not mean effortless
The licence costs nothing. The server, the configuration, the upgrades and the person who restores the backup all cost something. Over five years, self-hosting can beat per-seat SaaS, but only if you compare against the honest second number rather than against zero.
Four labels that get used interchangeably and should not be.
We will not print the words “open source” unless we have read an OSI-style licence in the repository. Several vendors in this directory describe themselves that way and do not qualify, which is why we check the source tree rather than the homepage.
An OSI-style license covering the software you would run, with nothing held back for a paid edition.
Technical teams willing to self-host and support a community ERP with a real MRP engine in its code.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-2.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Real MRP under an Apache license, for teams with developers to spare.
Free plan; no published paid price
Apache-2.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Free MIT-licensed ERP with EDI, for shops that will install and look after it themselves.
Free plan; no published paid price
MIT · repository(opens in a new tab)
Small food and craft producers comfortable running Docker who want batches, lots and costing for free.
Free plan; no published paid price
AGPL-3.0-only · repository(opens in a new tab)
The gentlest open-source ERP to start with, module by module.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-3.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
A highly customisable open-source framework for organizations that will fund an implementation.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-3.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
A full open-source ERP with nothing held back for a paid edition, if you can carry the setup burden.
From $5/mo · $25/mo useful
GPL-3.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Heavyweight community ERP with no license fee and a long lineage.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-2.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Excellent free parts-and-BOM control for hardware shops, not a planning engine.
Free plan; no published paid price
MIT · repository(opens in a new tab)
Open-source ERP for food and wholesale, with unusually transparent cloud pricing.
From €99/mo · €398/mo useful
GPL-2.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
The simplest free way to know what components you have and where.
Free plan; no published paid price
AGPL-3.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Foundation-governed open-source ERP with no commercial edition to upsell you.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-3.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
Self-hosters who want free, documented MRP and a real ledger, and can live without capacity planning.
Free plan; no published paid price
GPL-2.0 · repository(opens in a new tab)
An open core with paid proprietary parts. What is missing from the free edition is the whole question.
Open-source ERP with documented MRP; free to self-host, or €35 per user on Pro from 10 users.
Free plan · From €35/user/mo
AGPL-3.0 core. The Axelor Open Suite repository, including its production and supply-chain (MRP) modules, is published under AGPL-3.
The planning brain you bolt onto an ERP that cannot plan.
Free plan · From €546/mo
MIT core. The license file states the software "has dual licensing.
Formerly OpenERP, TinyERP
An open-core ERP covering manufacturing, stock and accounting; read the Community versus Enterprise line carefully.
From $0/user/mo · $24.90/user/mo useful
LGPL-3.0 core. The Community edition is LGPL-3.
Scheduling only, and refreshingly honest about that.
Free plan · From €0/mo
AGPL-3.0 core. The Community Edition is AGPL-3.
You can read the source. The license restricts what you may do with it. This is not open source.
The most API-forward option here, with a license that needs reading carefully.
From $40/user/mo
Source available Not plain AGPL-3.0, so we do not list it as open source or open core. The license file puts the core under AGPL-3.0 and then adds restrictions: everything under packages/ee and any file containing.ee "require the purchase of a commercial license", reselling it as a hosted service is prohibited, and "any use of this software for internal production use is strictly prohibited unless the modifications are made open-source in accordance with the AGPLv3 license or a commercial license is obtained". Read that last clause before planning a self-hosted deployment. It is stricter than most people expect from AGPL. The MRP engine is in that directory (packages/ee/src/planning/mrp), along with the finite-capacity scheduling engine, SAML SSO and the QuickBooks, Xero and other integrations. Carbon's licensing page says a commercial license is needed if "You use anything under packages/ee or any .ee file.", so a self-hosted Community install has no MRP, finite-capacity scheduling or integrations.
The only serious print-farm ERP we found, with gram-level material costing.
Free plan · From $0/mo
Source available Business Source License 1.1, described by the vendor as "free for non-competing use". The LICENSE file sets "Change Date: December 5, 2029" and a change license of Apache 2.0; each version converts on that date or four years after it is first published, whichever comes first. Until then the Additional Use Grant allows production use except a competing commercial SaaS offering. BSL is source available, not open source: you can read and run the code, but the license restricts competing use. We will not print the words "open source" for a BSL product, even though the vendor's own materials use them.
We show two numbers for every paid product. It would be dishonest not to do the same here.
A zero licence fee is a real advantage and it is not a total. The work does not disappear when the invoice does, it moves to you. Here is what actually differs, line by line.
| What it takes | Self-hosted | Paid plan |
|---|---|---|
| The licence | Nothing | Bundled into the subscription |
| A server to run it on | You rent and size it | Included |
| Standing it up | Your hours, once | Onboarding, sometimes a paid package |
| Version upgrades | Your hours, on your schedule | Applied for you |
| Security patching | Yours to track and apply | The vendor's problem |
| Backups | You configure them, and test the restore | Usually included, still worth checking |
| Learning it | Documentation and forums | Documentation, plus someone to ask |
| When it breaks mid-run | You, at whatever hour it happens | A support line with a stated response time |
| When you grow | Same license, bigger server | Often another seat, and another |
| When you want to leave | The data is already yours | Depends entirely on the export |
Do the arithmetic with your own numbers
We will not print a total, because the two inputs that decide it are yours: what your time is worth, and how much of it this will take. What we can do is show the shape.
Suppose a small server at $20 a month, four hours to stand the system up, and an hour a month keeping it patched and checking a restore works. At $50 an hour that is $240 of hosting and sixteen hours, so about $1,040 in the first year. A $99 a month plan is $1,188. On those assumptions the gap is roughly one afternoon of your time.
Change any input and the answer moves, often a long way. Ten users instead of one, and per-seat pricing turns that gap into a rout in favour of self-hosting. Value your evenings highly, or have nobody in the building who enjoys this work, and it goes the other way just as fast.
Those figures are an illustration with stated assumptions, not a claim about any product on this page. Put your own numbers in.
None of this argues against self-hosting. Run a release yourself and hiring never multiplies a seat price, a renewal can’t spring a rise on you, and the data sits on your own server. That is worth real money. A project can still change the licence of future versions, so read it again before each major upgrade. The point is only that the comparison is not a subscription against zero. It is a subscription against your time.