Sortly alternatives in 2026, honestly.

Why people look for an alternative

Sortly earned its place: photo-first folders, a polished mobile app, offline on every plan and years of refinement. The reasons people leave are structural. Unique items are capped per tier (100, 500, 2,000, 5,000), so the bill follows the register. User licences are capped too, with 12 or more only on Enterprise. And the 50% yearly discount applies to the first year only: Ultra is $888 in year one and $1,430 a year after, at today’s list price.

None of that makes Sortly a bad product. It makes the pricing structure the thing you’re actually shopping to escape.

How to choose in five minutes

Count two things: how many items you’ll have in two years, and how many people need to change the register. If items will grow and budgets won’t, avoid anything that meters items. If your gear leaves the building in someone’s hands, insist on real check-out with due dates and signatures. If you need offline in a phone app this month, that narrows it to BoxHero or itemit, or staying on Sortly. And whatever you pick, confirm the exit: full CSV export on every plan. Every tool here can be tried free, including ours.

The free plans, side by side

If you searched for a free Sortly alternative, the limit that matters is what the free plan stops you doing, not the headline price. From each vendor’s own pricing page on 19 October 2026:

	Items	People	Also on the free plan
Sortly	100 unique items	1 user	2 active jobs
BoxHero	100 items	1 member	1 location, barcode scanning, Excel import and export, API
Shelf.nu	Unlimited assets	1 user	Locations, custody, kits, 3 custom fields; CSV import and export start on the $15.83/mo Plus plan
itemit	No free plan	14-day trial, no card
inFlow Stockroom	No free plan	14-day trial, no card
ItemTally	Unlimited, never metered	1 editor, 10 borrowers	Custody with due dates, signatures, reservations, CSV export, API

Sortly counts unique items, so 40 screwdrivers in one entry count once. That helps a stockroom of bulk supplies and does little for a tool crib where most things are one of a kind. A free plan with a one-user limit suits a solo tradesperson. If a second person has to record hand-overs, every row except ours needs a paid plan, and ours needs one only past 1 editor.

If your data has to stay in Europe

Schools, councils and many European companies now ask two separate questions: where the data is stored, and which company holds it. Here is what each vendor says on its own pages.

• Sortly is Sortly Inc. of San Francisco. Its privacy policy says data may be stored in or transferred to the US, Canada or other countries outside the EEA, and that transfers from the EEA rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.
• Shelf.nu stores data in Frankfurt and runs its application servers in Amsterdam, according to its security page. The company named there, Shelf Asset Management, Inc., has a US address. Shelf can also be self-hosted, which puts the location entirely in your hands.
• ItemTally is made by Ethereal Labs AB in Göteborg, Sweden, and the register database is hosted in the EU with Hetzner. Some services around it are US companies, including Cloudflare for the network and file storage and Resend for e-mail. Our EU page names every one and what it sees.

If self-hosting is acceptable, Shelf gives you the most control. If you want a hosted service from a European company, ItemTally is one to try.

Figures from each vendor’s pricing page on 16 October 2026, except the free plan table (19 October 2026). Prices change; check theirs and ours before deciding.