Comparison
Chalk vs AssetTiger
The cheapest per-asset tracker a district will find, with no feature gating and unlimited users — and no ticketing, no roster, and no way to see a Chromebook that did not arrive on a spreadsheet.
What both do well
- Both do check-in and check-out with due dates and overdue alerts, which many asset trackers skip entirely.
- Both track warranty and contract expiry with alerts, and both do physical audits with barcode or QR scanning and printed labels.
- Neither charges per user, so every technician and building secretary can have an account.
- AssetTiger's native mobile apps, depreciation methods, lease and disposal workflows, and per-asset price are all real advantages Chalk does not match — Chalk has no native app and no depreciation module.
Where AssetTiger is strong
- The lowest per-asset cost in this comparison by a wide margin, on a clean single meter.
- No feature gating between paid tiers — the vendor states explicitly that you upgrade to track more assets, not to unlock capabilities. That is unusually honest packaging and worth conceding.
- Unlimited users on every paid plan, so every building secretary and tech can have an account for free.
- Native iOS and Android apps with barcode and QR scanning, plus label printing from any printer — from a company whose main business is asset tags.
- Check-in and check-out with due dates and overdue alerts, which is more custody machinery than most trackers at this price.
- Deep reporting for the category — a large library of report types and a very granular permission model.
What to check before you buy AssetTiger
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No ticketing or help desk of any kind, and no connectors to one. A district running AssetTiger buys or keeps a separate service desk, and the two never see each other.
Basis: No ticketing capability or integration appears anywhere in AssetTiger's feature list.
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No MDM or device-management ingest at all — nothing pulls from Google Admin, Intune, or Jamf. Every Chromebook enters by CSV import or by hand, and nothing detects a device you did not know about.
Basis: AssetTiger publishes no MDM connectors; this is the largest functional gap for a Chromebook district.
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No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, or PowerSchool — and no student, guardian, or family concepts. Nothing notices a transfer or a withdrawal.
Basis: None appear in AssetTiger's features or integration documentation.
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No parent e-signature on a device agreement and no student fee assessment or family balances, so damage at collection time is handled outside the system.
Basis: Absent from AssetTiger's documented feature set.
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Fund tracking exists, but it is generic budget allocation rather than grant-program aware — it will not produce the ESSER, Title, or E-Rate attribution an audit asks for without you building the structure by hand.
Basis: AssetTiger lists a fund-tracking feature with a per-plan cap; no grant-program or funding-source-restriction concepts are documented.
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The weakest identity story in this comparison: two-factor plus Google SSO only, with no evidence of SAML support, and certainly no ability to act as an identity provider itself.
Basis: AssetTiger's feature list names 2FA and Google SSO; no SAML or OIDC support is documented.
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The free plan is a 30-day trial, not a free tier. After it lapses the account is view-only, and it is limited to two users during the trial.
Basis: AssetTiger's pricing table labels that column a free 30-day trial; third-party review sites still repeat a legacy free-forever claim that the vendor's page contradicts.
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Stock inventory is a separate paid add-on, and there is no documented link between it and repair records, so consuming a part against a specific repair is not a supported workflow.
Basis: Inventory is listed and priced as an add-on; no repair-to-parts linkage appears in the documentation.
Where Chalk pulls ahead
- Chalk pulls ChromeOS from Google Admin, Windows from Intune, and iPads from Jamf automatically, so the inventory is what Google says you own rather than what someone remembered to put in a spreadsheet — and it writes back to Google, with OU moves, disable, and deprovision behind a diff you approve.
- The help desk is in the same system as the devices: SLAs, routing, canned responses, knowledge base, CSAT, and analytics, on a ticket that already knows the student and their devices.
- Chalk syncs your SIS — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, OneRoster 1.1, plus Clever and ClassLink import — so devices point at real students with a school, a grade, and an enrollment, and a transfer moves the device with the student.
- The rest of the 1:1 loop that a tracker cannot model: e-signature at the counter, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, repairs consuming parts out of stock, and fee assessment with family balances and insurance handling.
- Funding sources as a managed first-class list alongside purchase orders and warranty, built for ESSER and Title reporting rather than generic budget buckets.
- Chalk is itself a SAML 2.0 and OIDC identity provider with a student portal, QR badges, and two-factor, and provisions outward to Google, AD, and Entra.
- Self-hosting Chalk is free forever under AGPL-3.0 as a single binary with every module included — free that does not expire in 30 days.
Common questions
Isn't AssetTiger free for our first 250 assets?
It used to be, and a lot of review sites still say so, but the vendor's own pricing page now labels that a 30-day free trial limited to 250 assets and two users — after which the account goes view-only. Worth checking before you build a rollout plan around it. If free is the requirement, Chalk's self-hosted build is AGPL-3.0 and free permanently, with every module included and no asset cap.
How will our Chromebooks get into AssetTiger?
By CSV or by hand. There are no MDM connectors at all — nothing reads Google Admin, Intune, or Jamf — so the inventory is only ever as accurate as the last import someone ran. For a 1:1 district that is the central problem, because the authoritative list of what you own already exists in Google Admin, and any device that never made it onto a spreadsheet is invisible. Chalk syncs from Google Admin directly and can write changes back.
AssetTiger is much cheaper. What are we actually giving up?
It is genuinely the cheapest per asset here, and its no-feature-gating policy is more honest than most of this market — we will say that plainly. What you give up is everything that is not asset tracking: no help desk, no MDM sync, no roster, no student, no parent signature, no damage fees, and no grant-aware funding attribution. If you already have a service desk you like and your inventory is your only gap, that trade can be right. If you are buying the second system to close those gaps, price both together.
It has fund tracking. Doesn't that cover ESSER and Title reporting?
Partially, and we want to be precise rather than claim it has nothing. AssetTiger does have a fund-tracking feature, but it is generic budget allocation — it is not aware of grant programs, has no per-source transfer restrictions, and will not produce the attribution an ESSER or E-Rate audit asks for unless you construct that structure yourself. Chalk treats funding sources as a managed first-class list tied to purchase orders and devices.
Can students or parents sign a device agreement in AssetTiger?
No — there is no e-signature workflow, and no guardian in the data model to sign one. Check-out records that an asset went to a user with a due date, which is real custody but not an agreement. Chalk captures an e-signature at the desk as part of check-out, keeps it on the device record, and can run attestation campaigns later in the year.
How does sign-in work for staff?
Two-factor plus Google SSO. We found no evidence of SAML support, which matters if your district standardized on Entra ID or another IdP. AssetTiger is certainly not an identity provider itself. Chalk both consumes SSO and issues it — it is a SAML 2.0 and OIDC provider, so it can be the login for your other vendors and give students a portal identity with a QR badge.
Sources
Claims about AssetTiger above are drawn from these pages, checked when this comparison was written. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
Trying Chalk beside AssetTiger?
Chalk installs to a populated inventory from your SIS and Google Admin in about 30 minutes. Self-host it free forever under AGPL-3.0, or let us run it — priced by fleet size, never per seat or per student.