iTop
A simple, web based CMDB & IT Service Management tool
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Aug 2026
iTop models IT the way ITIL says to: configuration items, the dependencies between them, and the incidents and changes that touch them. That makes it the closest open source structural match to ServiceNow, and also the most work to set up.
Combodo releases the core under AGPL, free and self-hosted, with the CMDB, ticketing and change management included. Paid editions and the iTop Hub add extensions, connectors and support, sold by quote rather than a published price list.
The dependency graph is the reason to choose it. When a database goes down and you need to know which twelve services just broke, iTop can actually answer that. Snipe-IT cannot. Small teams: overkill. Large teams with a real change-management process: this is the fit.
The catch is the data model. iTop is only as good as what you feed it, and populating a CMDB honestly is a months-long project that never entirely ends. Teams that skip that work end up with an expensive list of servers nobody trusts.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
open coreFree (community, self-hosted): CMDB, service desk, incident and change management under AGPL. No user or CI ceiling.
Self-hosted cost: PHP and MySQL. Installation is straightforward; modeling your configuration items honestly is the real cost and it is measured in months, not hours.
Paid (Combodo): Commercial editions and iTop Hub add extensions, connectors and vendor support. Combodo quotes rather than publishing a price list, so budget a sales conversation.
Core CMDB and ITSM are free under AGPL; Combodo's paid editions add extensions and support at quote-based pricing.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- Skip it, the CMDB overhead is not worth it alone
- Small team
- Overkill unless you already run ITIL
- Medium team
- free, self-hosted
- Large team
- Paid edition for connectors and vendor support
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A low score is not a verdict on quality. Young and niche tools start low by design. How we calculate scores
Trust Signals
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Must share source even for SaaS/network use. Strongest copyleft.
Commercial use: ✓ Yes
About
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- Combodo (Organization)
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