Chalk

Comparison

Chalk vs Lansweeper

The strongest network discovery engine in this comparison — it will find every device on your wire, including the ones nobody told it about, and it will not know that any of them belongs to a seventh grader.

Pricing: Quote-and-portal, not a published ladder. Lansweeper meters by licensed asset count: its documentation states that most subscriptions limit the number of assets you can scan, and that scanning of new and existing assets may stop once you hit the limit. Plan changes and asset-coverage increases run through a Self-Service Subscription Portal with live price previews; upgrading to a Pro plan is self-serve, Enterprise is explicitly 'Talk to Sales', and downgrades are not available in the portal at all. The one fixed figure Lansweeper publishes at a retrievable URL is in its own online store: a Lansweeper Classic Helpdesk Agent license at $120.00 per agent per year. No education discount is documented.

What both do well

  • Both keep Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS in one inventory, and both can pull device data from Microsoft Intune.
  • Both have a real self-hosting story, where the district runs the software on infrastructure it controls rather than only renting a tenant.
  • Both do custom fields, saved views, dashboards and a documented API over the asset record.
  • Lansweeper's discovery stack — agentless scanning, SNMP, a passive traffic sensor, cloud resource inventory and CVE correlation — is an entire capability class Chalk does not have at all. Chalk has no network discovery agent.

Where Lansweeper is strong

  • Genuine network discovery, which almost nothing else in this category has: agentless scanning of Windows over WMI, Linux and macOS over SSH, and printers, switches, routers, firewalls and NAS over SNMP, so the inventory includes devices no one ever entered.
  • A passive traffic sensor that discovers assets from network communications, catching devices that active scanning misses entirely — the closest thing to a real answer for shadow IT and unmanaged OT gear.
  • An IT Agent for Windows, Linux and macOS endpoints that rarely touch the LAN, and Cloud Discovery across Azure, Intune, Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, AWS and GCP — with a reconciliation engine that merges the same device seen through several sources into one asset record instead of three.
  • Vulnerability detection built on CPE correlation and VulnCheck, with CVSS severity and patch status against the software and OS actually in your inventory, alongside hardware and software lifecycle tracking for end-of-sale and end-of-support dates.
  • Deployment packages in Lansweeper Classic — install software, run scripts and make remote changes on Windows machines from the same console that inventoried them.
  • A full built-in help desk in Classic: tickets from the web console, email, API or import, dispatching rules, SLAs, teams, internal notes and a knowledge base.

What to check before you buy Lansweeper

  • Lansweeper is two products with a documented feature gap between them — Lansweeper Platform in the cloud and Lansweeper Classic on-premises — and which capabilities you get depends on which one you deploy.

    Basis: Vendor's own 'Comparing Lansweeper Platform and Lansweeper Classic' documentation page, which lists discovery targets and features per product.

  • ChromeOS discovery is a Lansweeper Classic capability. In the newer Lansweeper Platform the vendor's comparison table marks Chrome OS as 'Planned (Cloud Discovery)'. For a district whose fleet is Chromebooks, that is the whole fleet sitting on the older product.

    Basis: Vendor comparison table lists Chrome OS as supported in Classic scanning and Planned for Lansweeper Platform.

  • Even in Classic, ChromeOS scanning is work you do yourself: your license must support Chrome OS scanning, and you build a Google Cloud project, enable the Admin SDK, create a service account and grant it scopes before a single Chromebook appears.

    Basis: Vendor's 'Chrome OS scanning requirements' documentation page.

  • The help desk is licensed per agent. Unlimited users can file tickets, but exactly one agent license is included, and every additional technician who answers tickets is a paid seat at $120 per year.

    Basis: Vendor's 'Manage helpdesk agents' documentation plus the listed price in Lansweeper's own online store.

  • That help desk belongs to Classic. The cloud Platform documentation covers no ticketing module of its own — service management appears as connectors to Jira Service Management, ConnectWise, Zendesk and Freshservice, meaning a second vendor.

    Basis: Lansweeper's documentation index places every help-desk article under Classic, and lists ITSM tools as integrations under Platform.

  • The asset meter has teeth: reaching your licensed asset limit can stop scanning of new and existing assets until you delete assets or upgrade.

    Basis: Vendor's 'Manage your licensed asset limit' documentation page.

  • No student, guardian or enrollment concepts, and no SIS or rostering connectors — the identity sources documented are Active Directory, Entra ID, Intune and Microsoft 365. Students arrive by CSV, if at all.

    Basis: Absent from Lansweeper's documentation index, which covers directory and cloud identity sources only.

  • Nothing models the 1:1 program itself: no device agreement, no parent signature, no fee for a cracked screen, no family balance, and no funding-source dimension for ESSER, Title or E-Rate reporting.

    Basis: Absent from the vendor's documented feature set, which is discovery, inventory, risk and deployment.

Where Chalk pulls ahead

  • Chalk pulls students, staff, schools and enrollments from your SIS over OneRoster 1.1 — with connectors for PowerSchool, Infinite Campus and Skyward, plus Clever and ClassLink import — so assigning a device means picking a real student with a school and a grade, not tagging an IP address.
  • The help desk is in the same product at the same price, with no per-technician seat: SLAs, routing, canned responses, a knowledge base, CSAT and analytics, on a ticket that already knows the student and every device assigned to them.
  • Chalk writes back to Google Admin — OU moves, disable, deprovision, annotated fields — as a diff you preview and approve, with typed confirmation on destructive actions. Lansweeper's ChromeOS support is a read-side scan.
  • The full 1:1 circulation 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.
  • Purchase orders, warranty surfaced on the device, in the ticket and in the AUE refresh runway, and funding sources as a managed list built for ESSER and Title reporting.
  • Chalk is itself a SAML 2.0 and OIDC identity provider with a student portal and QR badges, and serves a full OneRoster 1.1 API outward so other district systems can pull roster data from it.
  • Self-hosting Chalk is free forever under AGPL-3.0 as a single binary with every module included, and the hosted price ladder is published and priced by fleet size — never per seat and never per student.

Common questions

Will Lansweeper find our Chromebooks?

In Lansweeper Classic, yes — but you supply the plumbing. The vendor's requirements page has you create a Google Cloud project, enable the Admin SDK, create a service account and grant it scopes, and it notes your Lansweeper license must support Chrome OS scanning. In the newer cloud Lansweeper Platform, the vendor's own comparison table still lists Chrome OS as Planned. If Chromebooks are your fleet rather than a corner of it, that is the first thing to pin down with their sales team.

Does Lansweeper include a help desk?

Lansweeper Classic does, and it is a real one — email and API ticket intake, dispatching rules, SLAs, teams, internal notes and a knowledge base. Two caveats. It is licensed per agent: one agent license comes with your license and each additional technician is $120 per year from Lansweeper's store. And it is a Classic feature; the cloud Platform documents integrations with Jira Service Management, ConnectWise, Zendesk and Freshservice rather than a desk of its own. Chalk's help desk is included, with no per-technician charge.

What does Lansweeper do better than Chalk?

Discovery, and it is not close. Lansweeper scans your network agentlessly, runs a passive traffic sensor that surfaces devices active scanning misses, inventories AWS, Azure and GCP resources, correlates CVEs against what it found, and can push software and scripts to Windows machines. Chalk does none of that — it has no network discovery agent and no vulnerability management. If your problem is 'we do not know what is on our network', Lansweeper is the better tool and we would say so in the room.

Can we run both?

That is a sensible split, and plenty of districts would land there. Lansweeper answers what is on the network and what is vulnerable; Chalk answers who has the device, what it costs, what fund bought it and what the ticket about it says. They overlap on the inventory table and nowhere else, so you can adopt Chalk's roster sync, circulation desk and help desk without touching a Lansweeper deployment.

How does Lansweeper pricing actually work?

It meters licensed assets, and the meter is enforced — the documentation says scanning of new and existing assets may stop once you hit your limit. Plan and asset-coverage changes run through a subscription portal with live price previews, Pro upgrades are self-serve, and Enterprise routes to a sales conversation. Lansweeper does not publish a per-asset figure we could verify, so get a quote at your real device count. Chalk publishes its hosted ladder by fleet size, and self-hosting is free forever under AGPL-3.0.

Does Lansweeper know which student has the device?

No. It relates assets to users it learned from Active Directory, Entra ID, Intune or Microsoft 365 — there is no student, guardian or enrollment in the model, no SIS or rostering connector, and therefore nothing that notices a transfer, a withdrawal or grade rollover. That gap is the whole reason Chalk exists as a separate thing rather than a Lansweeper report.

Sources

Claims about Lansweeper 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 Lansweeper?

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.

See pricing Self-host on GitHub