GLPI vs ServiceNow IT Service Management
GLPI and ServiceNow IT Service Management are both IT service management software. GLPI is open source under GPL-3.0, with 6.5k GitHub stars. ServiceNow IT Service Management is a commercial product from ServiceNow.
Which to pick
- Pick GLPI when
- An IT department wants a free, self-hosted helpdesk and asset register and is comfortable with a PHP application.
- Pick ServiceNow IT Service Management when
- A large enterprise needs ITIL-aligned service management at scale and will fund a platform team.
Side by side
IT asset management and ITIL service desk in one: inventory of computers and software, licences, contracts, tickets, changes and a knowledge base.
Enterprise IT service management covering incidents, problems, changes, requests, CMDB and service portal on the Now Platform.
Configuration is deep and the interface takes training; some plugins and hosted options are sold by Teclib.
Expensive, and it needs dedicated admins and developers to run well.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service
PHP, Symfony, Vue and MySQL
JavaScript
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source, sold by ServiceNow
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
6.5k GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 11 years ago, latest release 12.0.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More IT service management (ITSM) and PSA tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.