Atlas vs Snipe-IT
Atlas and Snipe-IT: a free asset register, or a costed estate
Snipe-IT is a free, open-source asset register you can self-host, with unlimited assets and users. Atlas is a hosted platform that adds contracts, budgets, capex, chargeback across properties and a group roll-up. If the requirement is a reliable list of equipment at no cost, Snipe-IT is hard to beat. Atlas is built by Sulayo, a Dubai product studio.
What does Snipe-IT give you for nothing?
A great deal. Snipe-IT is free and open source, self-hosting costs nothing but the server, and every tier including the free self-hosted one carries unlimited users and unlimited assets. Its hosted plans start at $39.99 a month or $399.99 a year, rising through small business and dedicated tiers. For an organisation that needs to know which laptop is with which employee, and which has been checked back in, Snipe-IT does the job properly and has done for years.
What does Atlas add beyond an asset register?
Atlas is built around money rather than around equipment. Contracts and AMCs with their renewal and notice dates, operating budgets and capex, compliance items and risks, a savings register with costed opportunities, a board pack, and chargeback that allocates shared IT cost across properties by rooms, asset count or evenly. Atlas also scopes every record to a property and rolls it up to the group, which is the part a single-tenant asset register is not built to do.
Where Snipe-IT is genuinely stronger
On cost and on control, and both are serious advantages. Snipe-IT is free, so the budget conversation never happens, and it is open source and self-hostable, so the data can sit on hardware you own in a jurisdiction you choose, with no vendor able to change the terms underneath you. For an organisation with a capable sysadmin, a tight budget, a single site, or a hard requirement to keep data in-house, Snipe-IT is the better answer and Atlas is an unnecessary expense.
At a glance
- Snipe-IT: licence
- Free and open source, self-hostable
- Snipe-IT: hosted price
- From $39.99 a month or $399.99 a year; unlimited users and assets on every tier
- Atlas: price
- Per property, per year, in AED, quoted against the estate
- Contracts and renewals
- Atlas: AMCs, notice periods, renewal deadlines and annual values
- Budgets and chargeback
- Atlas only. Snipe-IT is an asset register, not a finance system
- Data location
- Snipe-IT can be self-hosted anywhere. Atlas is hosted by Sulayo
Competitor details are taken from those vendors' own published pages and were checked on 2 September 2026. Confirm the current position with the vendor before deciding.
Questions people ask
Is Atlas worth paying for when Snipe-IT is free?
Only if the problem is money rather than equipment. If the question is which laptop is with whom, Snipe-IT answers it for free and Atlas is overkill. If the question is what IT costs each of eighteen properties, which contracts auto-renew next quarter and what to put in front of the board, that is not a question a free asset register is designed to answer at all.
Can I move from Snipe-IT to Atlas later?
An asset register is one of the easier things to move, because the data is a list with known fields, and starting on Snipe-IT is a perfectly sensible first step for a group that is not yet ready to pay for anything. Sulayo would rather a group start on Snipe-IT and outgrow it than buy Atlas a year before it needs it.
Does Snipe-IT handle multiple properties or entities?
Snipe-IT has locations and companies, which covers a good deal of it, and a determined administrator can model a portfolio that way. What it does not do is roll a portfolio up financially: allocate shared cost, compare properties against each other, or produce a group position. That is a different product rather than a missing feature.
Does self-hosting really cost nothing?
The software costs nothing. A server, backups, updates, TLS certificates and somebody's time to keep all of that working are real costs that simply do not appear on an invoice. That is a fair trade for many organisations and a bad one for others, and it is worth pricing honestly before calling it free.
How current are these Snipe-IT details?
They were checked against Snipe-IT's own published pricing page on 2 September 2026. Confirm the current position with the vendor before making a decision, because packaging changes and this page will not change with it on its own.