NetBox
The premier source of truth powering network automation. Open source under Apache 2. Try NetBox Cloud free: https://netboxlabs.com/products/free-netbox-cloud/
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Aug 2026
NetBox is the source of truth for network infrastructure and it won that position outright. Racks, devices, IP addresses, VLANs, circuits and cables all get modeled, and the API is good enough that most network automation tooling simply assumes NetBox is on the other end of it.
Apache 2.0 and free to self-host, built on Python, Django and Postgres. Standing it up is straightforward. The actual work is discipline, because a source of truth is only true for as long as you keep it current.
NetBox Labs sells NetBox Cloud and NetBox Enterprise across Starter, Professional and Premium tiers. Pricing is not published, so budget a sales conversation rather than a credit card. Solo and small teams: self-host, the community edition is complete. Large teams: price the cloud tiers against your own ops cost.
The catch is not the software, it is the discipline. NetBox discovers nothing on its own. It documents what you tell it, and a stale source of truth is worse than none, because people carry on trusting it.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
free self hosted paid cloudFree (community, self-hosted): The complete data model. DCIM, IPAM, circuits, cabling, virtualization, tenancy, a full REST and GraphQL API, and a large plugin ecosystem. Apache 2.0.
Self-hosted cost: Python, Django and Postgres. A well-trodden install. Ongoing cost is data hygiene, not compute.
Paid (NetBox Labs): NetBox Cloud in Starter, Professional and Premium tiers, plus NetBox Enterprise for self-managed deployments with vendor support. No public pricing on any tier; all require contacting sales.
Community edition is free and complete; NetBox Labs' cloud and enterprise tiers are quote-only with no published pricing.
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License: Apache License 2.0
Use freely. Patent grant included.
Commercial use: ✓ Yes
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