Comparison
Chalk vs GLPI
The one product in this comparison that shares Chalk's whole premise — free, open source, self-hostable, with a real ITIL service desk attached to a real asset inventory — and none of its K-12 model.
What both do well
- Both are free to self-host under a copyleft license — GLPI under GPL-3.0, Chalk under AGPL-3.0 — with the full feature set and no per-asset meter on the software you run yourself.
- Both put a real help desk and a real asset inventory in one system, with tickets, a knowledge base, SLAs and dashboards over shared data.
- Both publish hosted prices openly instead of gating them behind a sales call, and both offer a self-host path for districts that want their data on their own server.
- GLPI's breadth beyond IT devices — datacenter infrastructure, contracts, budgets, suppliers, a full CMDB and a very large plugin ecosystem — is wider than Chalk's, and its production history is far longer.
Where GLPI is strong
- Genuinely free and genuinely open: GPL-3.0 on GitHub, downloadable and self-hostable with no license fee, no crippled community edition, and two decades of production use behind it.
- A full ITIL service desk — tickets, problems and changes, with planning, statistics and dashboards — sitting on the same database as the asset inventory rather than integrated with it.
- Very broad inventory coverage: computers, monitors, software, network equipment, printers, phones, cartridges, consumables, SIM cards, cables, PDUs and datacenter infrastructure, plus a CMDB over the relationships between them.
- Financial management most asset trackers do not attempt — budgets, contracts, suppliers and license tracking as first-class objects, so the cost side of the estate lives with the asset side.
- GLPI Agent does automated inventory across platforms, so hardware and software data arrives without anyone typing serial numbers.
- A multi-entity model with granular profiles and access control that maps naturally onto a district of many schools, plus a large plugin ecosystem — and both deployment shapes are real and priced openly, self-hosted or hosted GLPI Network at a published per-user rate.
What to check before you buy GLPI
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The free download and the product Teclib' sells are not the same surface. OAuth SSO, SCIM, GLPI AI, the advanced dashboard and whole tiers of official plugins are bundled into paid GLPI Network subscriptions.
Basis: Vendor pricing page lists these as contents of the Basic, Standard and Advanced subscription tiers.
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Self-hosted support starts at €100 per month even for a small installation, and the meter is IT agents — the technicians who answer tickets — with tiers stepping to €300, €1,000 and €4,500 per month.
Basis: Vendor pricing page, self-hosted subscription tiers with per-tier agent limits.
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It is a general ITIL tool with no K-12 model: no student, guardian or enrollment concepts, and no SIS or rostering connectors — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, PowerSchool, Infinite Campus or Skyward. Students arrive by import.
Basis: Absent from GLPI's published feature set, which describes users, groups and entities rather than students.
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No 1:1 circulation machinery. GLPI can reserve and assign equipment, but there is no student device agreement, no parent e-signature, no overdue on a school-year loan, no damage fee and no family balance.
Basis: Absent from the vendor's documented modules, which cover assets, helpdesk, CMDB and financial management.
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No ChromeOS story. Inventory comes from GLPI Agent and network scanning; Google Admin, Intune and Jamf ingest are plugin or integration territory rather than documented core modules, and there is no ChromeOS AUE surface.
Basis: Core inventory is documented as GLPI Agent-driven; no first-party MDM connector appears in the published feature list.
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It is not an identity provider. GLPI authenticates against directories and external providers — and OAuth SSO is itself a subscription plugin — rather than issuing SAML or OIDC to your other vendors.
Basis: Vendor pricing page lists OAuth SSO and SCIM as plugins included with paid subscriptions, positioning GLPI as the consumer of identity.
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Self-hosting GLPI is a PHP and database deployment plus agent rollout that you patch and upgrade yourself, unless you buy a subscription or engage a partner. That is a real operations line, not a download.
Basis: GLPI is distributed as a PHP application released on GitHub with a separately versioned GLPI Agent; the vendor routes implementation through its partner network.
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Pricing, documentation and support are anchored to a European vendor and priced in euros, so a US district is usually buying implementation through a partner rather than from the vendor directly.
Basis: Vendor site publishes euro pricing and directs implementation to its Platinum Partner network.
Where Chalk pulls ahead
- Chalk pulls students, staff, schools and enrollments from your SIS over OneRoster 1.1 — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus and Skyward connectors plus Clever and ClassLink import — so the roster is there before the first Chromebook is checked out, and a transfer or withdrawal moves the device with the student.
- Chalk serves a full OneRoster 1.1 API outward and is itself a SAML 2.0 and OIDC identity provider with a student portal and QR badges, so it can replace a separate SSO product rather than consuming one through a paid plugin.
- The complete 1:1 loop: due dates and overdues, e-signature at the counter, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, and fee assessment with family balances — Chalk assesses fees and never touches card data.
- Chalk ingests ChromeOS from Google Admin, Windows from Intune and iPads from Jamf as first-party connectors, and writes back to Google — OU moves, disable, deprovision, annotated fields — behind a diff preview you approve, with typed confirmation on destructive actions.
- Warranty and ChromeOS auto-update expiration surface on the device, in the ticket and in a fleet refresh runway report, with purchase orders and funding sources as a managed list for ESSER, Title and E-Rate questions.
- Chalk self-hosts as a single binary with every module included and no plugin tiers — the download and the product are the same thing, and there is no separate SSO or dashboard edition.
- Chalk's hosted ladder is published and priced by fleet size in dollars, never per seat and never per student, so adding technicians never changes the bill.
Common questions
GLPI is free and open source too. Why would we pay for Chalk?
You might not, and it is worth saying plainly: GLPI is free, GPL-3.0, self-hostable, and it has a real service desk and a real asset inventory — the same shape of argument we make. Self-hosting Chalk is free forever under AGPL-3.0 as well, so this is not a price comparison. The difference is what the software already knows. GLPI knows users, entities, contracts and configuration items. Chalk knows students, schools, enrollments, ChromeOS auto-update expiration, device agreements, damage fees and funding sources, and it syncs the roster that keeps all of that current. If your district has the appetite to model a school year inside a general ITIL tool, GLPI will get you there. Most do not.
What does the GLPI subscription actually buy?
Support and plugins, not the right to run the software — that is already free. Teclib' publishes self-hosted GLPI Network tiers from €100 per month up to €4,500, metered by IT agent count with end users unlimited, and the tiers gate things a district would probably want: OAuth SSO, SCIM, the advanced dashboard and the higher plugin tiers. Hosted GLPI Network is €19 per user per month on public cloud. Worth pricing carefully, because the free download and the subscription product are not the same feature set.
Will GLPI manage our Chromebooks?
Not out of the box in the way a Chromebook district means. GLPI's inventory comes from GLPI Agent and network scanning, which is excellent for Windows, macOS, Linux, printers and network gear — and ChromeOS is none of those. There is no first-party Google Admin connector in the core feature set and no auto-update-expiration surface, so AUE dates and enrollment state would be an import or a plugin project. Chalk pulls ChromeOS from Google Admin directly, reports the AUE refresh runway, and writes changes back through a reviewed diff.
Can GLPI handle student check-out with a signed parent agreement?
No. It can assign and reserve equipment, which is asset custody and works fine for staff laptops, but there is no student or guardian in the model, no e-signature on a device agreement, no overdue on a school-year loan, no damage fee and no family balance. Those are the specific mechanics of a 1:1 program rather than of IT asset management, and they are what Chalk was built around.
Which one is more work to run?
GLPI, in most districts. It is a PHP application with a database and a separately versioned agent to deploy and keep patched, and the vendor routes implementation through a partner network. Chalk self-hosts as a single binary with every module included and no plugin tiers to reconcile. That said, GLPI has two decades of production hardening and a plugin ecosystem we cannot match, and if you already run PHP infrastructure comfortably the gap narrows a lot.
Could we run GLPI for district IT and Chalk for the student fleet?
Yes, and it is a reasonable division — GLPI for servers, network gear, contracts and the CMDB, Chalk for the roster, the student devices, the circulation desk and the fees. Chalk serves a OneRoster 1.1 API and is a SAML and OIDC identity provider, so it can also sit underneath GLPI as the identity and roster source rather than competing with it.
Sources
Claims about GLPI 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 GLPI?
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.