Key Takeaways
- Published inventory software plans run from free to about $700 a month; enterprise systems are priced by quote.
- Price follows users, items, locations, and order volume, and features such as barcodes, batch tracking, and integrations often sit in higher tiers or add-ons.
- Onboarding and hardware add real money: in the worked example, $3,588 of subscription grows to between $5,087 and $14,141 in year one.
- Ask each vendor for a written first-year total that includes onboarding, extra seats, and the renewal price.
Last updated October 5, 2026. Vendor prices were checked on each vendor's pricing page in October 2026. Plans change often, so confirm current prices before you buy.
Inventory management software costs anything from nothing to about $700 a month for published small-business plans, and enterprise systems are priced by quote. In October 2026, Sortly's paid plans run from $49 to $299 a month and inFlow's standard plans from $99 to $699 a month on annual billing. Sortly, Zoho Inventory, and Odoo also offer free plans, with limits on items, orders, or apps, and inFlow offers a 14-day free trial.
What moves the price is the number of users, items, locations, and orders you manage, which features you need (barcodes, batch tracking, integrations), and the one-time costs around the subscription, such as onboarding and hardware. This guide shows real plan prices, the features that cost extra, and a worked first-year budget, so you can compare quotes on the same basis.
Inventory software pricing models at a glance
Vendors charge in a few recognizable ways. Knowing which model you are looking at tells you where the price will grow.
| Pricing model | How it works | Examples from vendor pages | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Core tracking with hard limits | Sortly Free: 100 items, 1 user. Zoho Free: 50 orders a month, 1 user, 1 location. Odoo One App Free: one app, unlimited users | Limits are reached quickly once you add products or channels |
| Flat-rate tiers | A fixed monthly price that includes a set number of users, items, or locations | Sortly: $49, $149, $299 a month. inFlow: $99, $299, $499, $699 a month | Extra seats and add-ons cost more (inFlow lists $29 a month per added team member) |
| Order-volume tiers | Price steps up with monthly order volume, users, and locations | Zoho Inventory: five tiers, including a free one, from 50 to 15,000 orders a month | Overages and add-ons when order volume grows |
| Per-user pricing | A price for each person who logs in | Odoo Standard and Custom plans, billed per user per month | Cost climbs with headcount, including occasional users |
| Quote-based | No public price; the vendor scopes the deal | Sortly Enterprise (10,000+ items, 12+ users); large ERP suites | Ask for an itemized quote covering licenses, onboarding, migration, and support |
Real plan prices from four vendors
These are list prices copied from vendor pricing pages in October 2026. They are examples of how the market prices, not a ranking.
Sortly
| Plan | List price per month | Unique items | Users | Notable features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 | 1 | Basic tracking, item photos |
| Advanced | $49 | 500 | 2 | Unlimited QR code labels, inventory import |
| Ultra | $149 | 2,000 | 5 | Barcode and QR labels, purchase orders, pick lists, stock counts |
| Premium | $299 | 5,000 | 8 | Custom role permissions, QuickBooks Online integration |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | 10,000+ | 12+ | API and webhooks, SSO, dedicated success manager |
Sortly's page advertises a 50 percent discount that applies only to the first year of a new subscription, followed by a 20 percent discount on yearly plans. In other words, year two can cost more than year one, so ask for the renewal price. Source: Sortly pricing.
inFlow
| Plan | Price per month (annual billing) | Team members included | Locations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $99 | 2 | 1 |
| Core | $299 | 5 | 5 |
| Pro | $499 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Max | $699 | 20 | Unlimited |
inFlow's page shows annual-billing rates and describes a 20 percent annual saving. It also sells manufacturing plans from $169 to $859 a month, a scanning-focused Stockroom plan at $69 a month, and add-ons: $29 a month per extra team member, $39 for serial and lot tracking, $49 for API access, and $39 for a B2B portal. Source: inFlow pricing.
Zoho Inventory
| Plan | Orders per month | Users | Locations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 50 | 1 | 1 |
| Standard | 500 | 3 | 2 |
| Premium | 3,000 | 5 | 4 |
| Plus | 7,500 | 10 | 6 |
| Enterprise | 15,000 | 10 | 10 |
Zoho prices each tier by order volume, users, and locations and shows prices in local currency, so check Zoho's pricing page for your region. Barcode generation, stock counting, and serial and batch tracking are listed as additions starting at the Premium tier.
Odoo
Odoo charges per user per month on its Standard and Custom plans and includes Inventory in both. A free One App plan lets you run a single app with unlimited users. The Custom plan also allows on-premise installation or Odoo.sh hosting. Odoo shows prices in local currency, so see Odoo's pricing page for current figures.
What drives the price
Five factors explain most of the gap between a $0 plan and a $700 one. Count each before you ask for a quote.
- Users. Per-user plans scale with every login, while tiered plans include a set number and charge for extras.
- Items, orders, and locations. Sortly caps unique items, Zoho caps orders, and inFlow tiers by locations. Your largest count usually decides the tier.
- Features. The features below often sit behind higher tiers or add-ons.
- Integrations. Accounting, e-commerce, and shipping connections can be limited by tier or sold separately.
- Deployment. Cloud subscriptions are billed monthly or yearly; on-premise adds hardware and IT time (see the comparison below).
| Feature | Where it appears in the examples above |
|---|---|
| Barcode generation, stock counting, serial and batch tracking | Zoho Inventory, from the Premium tier |
| Purchase orders, pick lists, stock counts | Sortly, from the Ultra plan ($149 a month) |
| QuickBooks Online integration | Sortly Premium ($299 a month) |
| API and webhooks, SSO | Sortly Enterprise (quote) |
| Serial and lot tracking, API access, B2B portal | inFlow add-ons: $39, $49, and $39 a month |
Setup, onboarding and hardware
Subscription price is rarely the whole bill. inFlow publishes its onboarding packages, which makes a useful benchmark: a $499 base package (guided self-setup, required on most plans), a $999 training package, and a $2,999 implementation package where the vendor sets the system up with your data. Enterprise implementations are quoted individually and depend on data migration, integrations, and customization.
Hardware is a separate line. inFlow's own pricing guide estimates $1,000 to $5,000 for scanners, label printers, and tablets. Smaller teams can often start with phones or tablets they already own and add dedicated scanners once counting volume justifies them. If you are moving data from spreadsheets or another system, budget for cleanup as well; our guide to data migration cost and the data migration cost calculator show what that work involves.
A worked first-year budget
This example uses inFlow's published prices for a five-person team with five locations on the Core plan, plus inFlow's own hardware estimate. It is illustrative: other vendors price differently, but the line items are the ones to ask every vendor about.
| First-year line item | Low case | High case |
|---|---|---|
| Core plan, $299 a month on annual billing | $3,588 | $3,588 |
| Base onboarding package | $499 | $499 |
| Training package | $0 | $999 |
| Implementation package | $0 | $2,999 |
| API access, $49 a month | $0 | $588 |
| Serial and lot tracking, $39 a month | $0 | $468 |
| Hardware (inFlow's $1,000 to $5,000 estimate) | $1,000 | $5,000 |
| Data cleanup and staff training time | Not included | Not included |
| Estimated first-year total | $5,087 | $14,141 |
For comparison, a five-user team on Sortly Ultra ($149 a month, 2,000 items) pays $1,788 a year in subscription at the list monthly price, before hardware and before any first-year discount. A one-person shop with fewer than 100 items can start on Sortly's free plan, or on Zoho's free plan if it processes fewer than 50 orders a month. The real constraint on free plans is the cap, not the feature list.
Cloud or on-premise: the cost comparison
Cloud software is billed as a subscription and includes updates and hosting. On-premise software adds servers, electricity, and the time of whoever maintains them. inFlow, which sells cloud software, published a five-year comparison that is worth reading with that bias in mind. Its on-premise estimate includes the following.
| On-premise cost item | inFlow's five-year estimate |
|---|---|
| Server hardware (mid-range) | $20,000 to $24,000, plus a refresh every 3 to 5 years |
| IT labor (10% of an administrator's time) | About $48,000, based on a $96,800 median salary from BLS data |
| Electricity | About $2,960 |
| Software license | Varies by vendor |
Source: inFlow's total cost of ownership comparison. For most small and midsize businesses, cloud is the cheaper and simpler route. On-premise is usually chosen for data-control or regulatory reasons, and those reasons should be named in the budget instead of assumed.
Hidden and recurring costs
Ask every vendor for a first-year price in writing that includes onboarding, extra seats, add-ons, and the renewal rate. The items below are the ones most often left out of a headline price.
- Onboarding and implementation: $499 to $2,999 at inFlow; quoted separately for enterprise systems.
- Extra users and add-ons: inFlow lists $29 a month per added team member and $39 to $49 a month for individual add-ons.
- Hardware: $1,000 to $5,000 by inFlow's estimate.
- Promotional pricing that expires: Sortly's 50 percent discount applies to the first year of a new subscription only.
- Outgrowing a tier: item, order, and location caps push you to the next plan, often at a higher step than you expected.
- Staff time: training and data cleanup consume hours that no vendor invoice will show.
How to compare quotes without getting lost
- Count users who need to edit records separately from those who only scan or view.
- Count products, variants, and locations, including bins and sublocations if you use them.
- Estimate monthly orders for each sales channel, since some plans are tiered by order volume.
- List the integrations you need, such as accounting, e-commerce, and shipping, and confirm which tier includes them.
- Mark your must-have features, such as batch or serial tracking, purchase orders, and bills of materials.
- Request the first-year and three-year totals in writing, including onboarding and the renewal price.
A simple formula keeps the comparison honest: first-year cost equals twelve months of subscription, plus onboarding, data migration, hardware, integrations, and training. Once the system is live, track whether it is paying off with the inventory turnover ratio calculator and tune reorder quantities with the economic order quantity calculator.
When ERP or custom software makes sense
Off-the-shelf inventory software suits most small and midsize businesses. Consider an ERP-based or custom approach when you need warehouse workflows, manufacturing, or integrations that standard plans cannot support, or when per-user pricing becomes expensive at your headcount. Our guides on the benefits of an ERP inventory management system, ERP software development cost, warehouse management system software cost, and bespoke software versus off-the-shelf explain when each route pays back.
Conclusion
Published inventory software plans run from free to about $700 a month, with enterprise systems quoted individually. The subscription is only part of the bill. Onboarding, hardware, add-ons, and renewal pricing can multiply the first-year cost; in the worked example, $3,588 of subscription grows to between $5,087 and $14,141. Count your users, items, locations, and orders first, then compare vendors on a written first-year total.
Outgrowing off-the-shelf inventory software?
Perimattic builds ERPNext and custom inventory systems for clients, so we have an interest in the build-or-buy question. The prices in this guide come from the vendor pages listed below. If your workflows do not fit standard plans, see our ERPNext development services or contact our team.
Sources and further reading
- Sortly pricing (checked October 2026) | https://www.sortly.com/pricing/
- inFlow Inventory pricing (checked October 2026) | https://www.inflowinventory.com/software-pricing
- inFlow, How Much Does Inventory Management Software Cost in 2026? (July 17, 2026) | https://www.inflowinventory.com/blog/inventory-management-software-cost/
- inFlow, Cloud-Based vs. On-Premise Inventory Software: Total Cost of Ownership | https://www.inflowinventory.com/blog/cloud-based-vs-on-premise-inventory-software/
- Zoho Inventory pricing (checked October 2026) | https://www.zoho.com/inventory/pricing/
- Odoo pricing (checked October 2026) | https://www.odoo.com/pricing
- Photos on Unsplash: Tianlei Wu, Centre for Ageing Better
