Leihs vs SAP Ariba
Leihs and SAP Ariba are both procurement software. Leihs is open source under GPL-3.0, with 246 GitHub stars. SAP Ariba is a commercial product from SAP SE.
Which to pick
- Pick Leihs when
- A university or institution lends cameras, laptops or tools to many users and wants a proven self-hosted system.
- Pick SAP Ariba when
- A large enterprise on SAP ERP wants source-to-pay that connects to the Ariba supplier network.
Side by side
Equipment booking, lending, inventory and procurement for organisations, where people reserve items and staff hand them out and track returns.
SAP's procurement suite and supplier network for sourcing, contracts, buying, invoicing and supplier management.
Built around Swiss university needs with a Ruby and Clojure stack that takes skill to host.
Users often find it clunky, and suppliers may pay fees to transact on the network.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server
Cloud service
Ruby, Clojure and PostgreSQL
Not published
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source, sold by SAP SE
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.
246 GitHub stars
770 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 14 years ago, latest release 7.15.3.
Not known
Other comparisons
More procurement software
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.