What to look for in free inventory software for a CPG brand

We chose the six below on these criteria, and checked each vendor's pricing page in October 2026. Most free plans were built for resellers. If you make product, you need a few things a reseller doesn't:

• The right kind of cap. Free plans end at SKUs, orders, users, transactions, or apps. Most tools count every ingredient, jar, lid, and label as an item, so a 30-SKU cap holds about six of your products.

• Production and recipes. You turn ingredients into finished goods. The tool needs a recipe or bill of materials that takes inputs out and puts finished units in, and it should cost each batch from what the inputs actually cost.

• Lot tracking. Retailers, co-packers, certifiers, and recall notices all ask which lot went where. Without lot codes, a recall covers everything you've ever made.

• A co-packer model. Many tools assume you run the line yourself. If a co-packer makes your product, you need a way to order a run, receive finished goods, and still see the cost per unit.

• Wholesale, not just DTC. Shopify handles shoppers. You also need a way for stores and distributors to order at their own prices.

• A path to your books. Invoices and bills should reach QuickBooks Online without retyping.

• Setup you can finish. For most small teams, self-serve onboarding on a manufacturing tool takes weeks. So ask what it takes to load items and recipes, and whether a person helps.

Quick comparison: 6 free inventory management tools for CPG

Pricing checked October 2026 on each vendor's own site.

1. Peasy, best for brands that make product and sell wholesale

Pricing: Free. No subscription, no trial clock, no premium tier, and no cap on items, users, or orders. Peasy earns on optional payment processing, only when you choose to invoice or pay bills through it.

Best for: CPG brands with one to ten people that make product from ingredients, in house or at a co-packer, sell on Shopify and wholesale, and need lot codes on every batch.

Overview: Peasy covers the four jobs between your store and your books: buying, receiving, making, and selling.

We built it for food and beverage makers, so recipes, lots, co-packer runs, and wholesale ordering are in the core product, not a paid tier.

Setup is a guided call, not a self-serve wizard. Loading your items and recipes takes most brands four to five hours over a week or two.

Key features:

• Lot codes assigned on every delivery and every batch, with the supplier's lot number stored alongside yours, and a trace from any lot to the batches and customers it reached

• Recipes (Templates) with an estimated cost per unit, and the actual batch cost from the lots each Work Order used

• Co-packer runs ordered as a PO that receives finished goods and records the ingredient lots in one step

• Shopify sync in both directions, with on-hand counts pushed back every minute

• A wholesale Storefront where each buyer signs in and orders at their own catalog prices and minimums

• QuickBooks Online sync for customers, vendors, invoices, bills, and payments, plus a month-end COGS export

Watch out for: No expiry dates on lots yet, and no barcode scanning. Faire orders import in beta. QuickBooks Online only, one Shopify store per account, and reporting is saved views and exports rather than dashboards.

Ideal for: A brand that's been asked for lot codes, sells to a few stores at wholesale prices, and doesn't want its inventory tool to become a line item.

2. Katana, best free plan for small catalogs

Pricing: Free up to 30 SKUs, with unlimited users and locations. Past 30 SKUs there's one paid plan, Advantage, on a custom annual contract with no published price.

Best for: A small catalog that wants full manufacturing features now and expects to pay once it grows.

Overview: Katana is a manufacturing-first inventory platform, and the free plan is the whole product with a SKU cap, not a stripped-down version. If you have a handful of products, that's a lot of software for nothing.

Then there's the cliff. Past 30 SKUs, the only option is a custom-priced contract, and setup is on you. Consultants who've set it up for brands say building every bill of materials by hand takes far longer than expected.

Key features:

• Production planning with bills of materials, routings, and a shop floor app

• Batch and serial number tracking from materials to finished goods

• Purchase orders with landed-cost calculations and multicurrency

• Sales orders, price lists, kits and bundles, and channel sync

• QuickBooks Online and Xero integrations, plus an API

Watch out for: Katana counts material variants as SKUs, so ingredients and packaging eat into the 30, and a food brand with a handful of products can hit the cap on inputs alone. Shopify is the only store connection on the free plan. Onboarding is self-serve.

Ideal for: A brand with two to six products that wants proper production features and has budget for a contract later.

3. Ardent Seller, best for makers running a few batches a month

Pricing: Free for 50 transactions a month, 2 users, and 2 locations.

Maker is $19 a month for 150 transactions, Artisan $49 for 500, and Workshop $89 for 1,500. A pay-as-you-go option charges per transaction with 30 free credits a month.

Best for: A maker doing a handful of batches and a few dozen orders a month, especially on Etsy, Shopify, or Square.

Overview: Ardent Seller is built for small makers, and every plan, the free one included, has every feature.

Instead of capping SKUs, it meters activity: each purchase, sale, production run, transfer, adjustment, or count is one transaction. That works if you're small in volume but not in product count.

Key features:

• Recipes and bills of materials with subassemblies and production scheduling

• COGS calculation, pricing tiers, variants, and bundles

• Multi-location tracking with barcode and QR support

• Reports on costs, margins, and profitability

• Etsy, Shopify, and Square integrations, plus AI document import for purchases and expenses

Watch out for: Four deliveries, four batches, two counts, and 40 orders use up the free plan in one ordinary month. Lot tracking and QuickBooks aren't listed.

Ideal for: A maker-scale brand with low monthly activity that wants recipe costing without a SKU cap.

4. Zoho Inventory, best free plan for direct-to-consumer brands

Pricing: Free for 50 orders a month, 1 user, and 1 location. Standard is $29 a month billed annually for 500 orders, 3 users, and 2 locations.

Premium is $79 a month for 3,000 orders, 5 users, 4 locations, and batch tracking.

Best for: A solo founder shipping direct, with no wholesale and no lot tracking yet.

Overview: Zoho Inventory is an ecommerce order and fulfillment system with a generous free tier for one person.

It's strong on the selling side, with backorders, dropshipping, and shipping built in, and it fits naturally if you already run Zoho Books or CRM.

Where it stops is production. There's no recipe, only composite items that bundle at the moment of sale.

Key features:

• Sales orders, invoicing, returns, and multichannel selling

• Backorders, dropshipping, and packaging and shipping with post-shipment tracking

• Purchase orders, receiving, and vendor payments

• Composite items (bundles) and price lists

• Serial and batch tracking, barcode generation, and stock counting on Premium

Watch out for: 50 orders a month is about 12 a week. A second user means a paid plan. Batch tracking costs $79 a month, and there's no way to turn ingredients into finished goods.

Ideal for: A DTC brand that buys finished product or uses a turnkey co-packer and wants a free order system.

5. Odoo, best if you only count stock

Pricing: One App Free is $0 with unlimited users, for a single app. Standard, which unlocks every app, is $31.10 per user per month billed yearly ($24.90 for the first 12 months).

Best for: A team that wants several logins on one stock list and doesn't make product yet.

Overview: Odoo is a full ERP sold app by app, and its Inventory app is a serious warehouse system: multi-warehouse, lots and serials, replenishment rules, barcode scanning.

The free plan gives you that one app with unlimited users, which is unique on this list.

Where it breaks is that Inventory and Manufacturing are two apps. Add the second one and you're on per-user pricing.

Brands that evaluate it tend to say the same thing: they liked it, and it was a lot more than they needed.

Key features:

• Min-max replenishment rules that propose or trigger purchase orders automatically

• Multi-warehouse and multi-company stock visibility

• Lot and serial number tracking, packaging, and cycle counting

• Push and pull routes, GS1 codes, and single, wave, batch, or cluster picking

• Barcode, QR, and GS1 scanning that works offline

Watch out for: The day you start making product, you need the Manufacturing app, and a five-person team on Standard is $155.50 a month. Expiry dates aren't mentioned on the Inventory page. Setup takes real time.

Ideal for: A brand with a team that counts and moves stock but buys finished goods, or one planning to grow into a full ERP.

6. Sortly, best for supplies and equipment

Pricing: Free for 100 items, 1 user, and 1 custom field. Advanced is $49 a month, Ultra $149, and Premium $299, with QuickBooks Online integration on Premium.

Best for: Tracking the tools, supplies, and equipment you own, not the product you make.

Overview: Sortly is a visual asset tracker: every item gets a photo, a QR label, and a folder.

It's simple, mobile-first, and quick to set up, which is why it appears on so many free inventory lists. It isn't built for manufacturing, and none of its plans mention recipes, production runs, or lot tracking.

Key features:

• Photo-based item records with custom folders and fields

• Barcode and QR scanning from a phone, plus third-party scanner support

• Low stock alerts and date-based maintenance alerts

• A mobile app for counting from anywhere

• Inventory reports

Watch out for: No recipes, production, or lots on any plan. QuickBooks Online costs $299 a month. 100 items is reached quickly once ingredients and packaging are included.

Ideal for: A brand that wants to track equipment, packaging supplies, or merch, alongside a real inventory system for the product itself.

Tools on free lists that aren't free

Five tools show up in free inventory roundups but have no free plan, only a trial:

• MRPeasy: 30-day trial, then Starter at $49 per user a month. (Not related to Peasy.)

• Stocksmith (formerly Craftybase): 14-day trial, then from $20 a month. Lot tracking from $99 a month.

• inFlow: Lite at $99 a month, billed annually.

• Fishbowl: Essentials at $229 a month, billed annually.

• Cin7: Standard at $349 a month.

A trial is a paid plan with a countdown. If a roundup calls it free, check the pricing page.

What free inventory software actually costs

Free or paid, the price shows up in the same four places. Check each one before you load a single item:

• The cap. Count your items in the tool's units. Four products made from four ingredients plus a jar, lid, and label is 32 items, not four SKUs.

• The connectors. Shopify, a 3PL, and an accounting link are often priced separately. A per-warehouse connector fee passed through from a third-party integrator is common on the older platforms.

• Per-user pricing. A tool that costs a hundred dollars a user when you sign up can cost several times that per user a few years later. If the plan is per user, assume it will rise.

• Setup. A tool that quotes a setup fee is telling you something about how long setup takes. One that doesn't still takes time, and that time is yours. For a manufacturing tool, expect the recipes to be the slow part.

When a spreadsheet still works

Before any of that, one test. Your spreadsheet is still fine if you aren't missing production runs for want of ingredients, and you aren't losing sales from being out of stock.

If neither is happening yet, you're choosing a tool for the growth you expect. That's a good reason, as long as the tool is free to sit in until then.

How to choose free inventory software for your CPG brand

• You make product, sell wholesale, and need lots: Peasy. It's the only free plan that covers all three with no cap.

• Under 30 SKUs including ingredients and packaging, and you'll pay later: Katana, once you've confirmed what counts toward the 30.

• Low monthly activity and you sell on Etsy or Square: Ardent Seller, as long as 50 transactions covers your month.

• DTC only, under 50 orders a month, no lots yet: Zoho Inventory.

• You only count stock and several people need access: Odoo's free Inventory app.

• You need expiry dates or first-expiring-first-out today: Check that it's on the plan you'd pay for. No free plan here includes it.

Common mistakes when picking free inventory software

• Treating a trial as a free plan. A countdown isn't a plan. Five of the tools on most free lists charge from day one.

• Leaving lot tracking until a buyer asks. Zoho puts it on a $79 plan, and Ardent Seller and Sortly don't have it. If a retailer, certifier, or co-packer could ask for lot codes this year, pick a tool that has them on the free plan.

• Picking a tool that assumes you run the line. If a co-packer makes your product, check that you can order a run and receive finished goods without pretending to be the factory.

• Starting a fifth system without finishing one. By then you're tired of migrations. Pick the tool you can load in a week, move one workflow first (usually buying and receiving), and expand only when it earns it.

Best free inventory software if you make product

If you make product, sell wholesale, and will be asked for lot codes, use Peasy.

It's free at any volume, and lots, recipes, co-packer runs, the wholesale Storefront, and QuickBooks Online are all in the free product.

If you're under 30 SKUs and happy to pay later, Katana is the strongest capped option. If you only ship direct, Zoho's free plan will carry you to about 12 orders a week.