Lately we’ve seen many Odoo partners take an interest in Frappe. Many of them have been working on Odoo for more than a decade but they are now unhappy, because their customers are unhappy. Odoo’s price increase has affected their customers and slowed down their sales. I heard a story of one such customer in Africa, they spent a year implementing Odoo and even before they could use it properly, it was time to pay more, not because their users grew, or their usage grew, just because there was an increase in the price per user. They felt cheated as their planned budgets went for a toss. Since then I’ve been reading about the frequent price hikes.
The price hike started in selected markets like the US in January 2026, but now it is happening across the board. The price has increased by 20%. Customers are forced to upgrade and pay more, and if they don’t want to, they still have to pay extra to avail legacy version support. Customers don’t have a way out of this lock-in.
Recently Odoo also introduced a way to tax “light users”. These users could be employees, shop floor workers, etc, who don’t need to have full and regular access to the core application. These users were earlier free, but now Odoo wants to charge INR 195 / $9 per user per month. That is a lot! (Note: The earlier version of this article compared light users with ERPNext portal users which has been corrected)
The Odoo customers that came for a promise of open source must be heavily disappointed and rightfully so. They cannot derive any benefits that they probably expected from open source like more control, flexibility, no lock-in and affordability. Why? Because Odoo is NOT open source.
Odoo makes money from their “enterprise edition” which is closed source. Investors smartly call this as “open core” business model but that’s just open-washing. Odoo’s community edition has very limited features and excludes some of the most fundamental features like accounting.
Not only is Odoo not open source, they’re also not affordable. Their enterprise edition does NOT start from INR 580 / USD 30 per month for all apps, which is what their marketing claims.
These ads are appealing, but misleading. Because they conveniently forget to mention “per user” which is an important variable in their pricing. This is visible as soon as you land on their website.
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There’s more! INR 580 / USD 30 per user is only for the first year as a special discount, you start paying INR 725 / USD 38 per user per month from the second year. Some would argue that this pricing is still affordable compared to Zoho One, SAP, and the Microsoft Dynamics of the world.
But is it really? Let me peel the onion further. INR 725 / USD 38 will give you Odoo Online, which is a stripped down version of Odoo's core software. It has feature limitations, no API integrations, no customisation capability, no marketplace apps. Nothing.
So, it isn’t fair to compare Odoo Online with SAP.
The real pricing: ₹1,350 / USD 61 per user per month
This is what you pay to get any meaningful benefit from Odoo software. That is a lot for any small business to afford. To put things in perspective, a 50-employee organisation will have to pay ₹67,500 / USD 3000 per user per month.
While you make peace with this, there’s more! Licensing fees are separate from hosting fees. Odoo charges you separately for their Odoo.sh hosting.
The final dent in your bank: Odoo.sh
Every software has to be hosted on a cloud to be accessible over the internet and for that Odoo offers Odoo.sh. The pricing for Odoo.sh is separate from the per user licensing fees. Odoo.sh hosting pricing is expensive. The pricing variables aren’t exactly comparable to AWS / GCP or Frappe for that matter so it is difficult to make a direct comparison. But most developers find it expensive.
More lock-ins, and a push to longer commitements
Odoo is making more users move to annual commitments. "If you are paying us annually, the price increase will be capped at 7% per year", is Odoo's pinky promise to their customers. Which means if you’re on a monthly plan, Odoo can raise prices at any time, by any amount!
So, Odoo’s promises of no vendor lock-in and no long term contracts don’t seem true either.
Open Source ≠ Freemium
Odoo’s strategy relies on growing the top of the funnel with marketing blitz, free and affordable limited features and monetising when customers grow their usage. And their recent price increase likely ties back to their need for better unit economics. This isn’t necessarily a problem.
But sorry to break this to you Odoo, open source ≠ freemium / open-core. Customers will eventually know about the open-washing. Because enterprise editions, regular price increases, annual commitment that locks you in, and rigid rules are exactly the opposite of open source. Customers deserve to know this, sooner than later.
Frappe’s approach
At Frappe, we believe open source should have no exceptions. None of the Frappe apps and features are hidden behind “enterprise editions”, and yet it leaves us enough ways to make money, grow at 50% YoY, profitably.
When it comes to marketing, Odoo burns over hundred million dollars on marketing in digital ads, billboards, paid influencer marketing (I'm not kidding), but guess what, ERPNext alone manages to get 8-10% of Odoo’s traction, without any paid marketing. It is purely on the back of a good product, word of mouth, and a developer community built over years.
India Odoo vs. ERPNext
Global Odoo vs. ERPNext
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This traction excludes the growing interest in the new apps (Frappe CRM, Helpdesk, Learning, Builder) and the Frappe Framework itself. So, the interest in Frappe could be even higher.
When you use Frappe, there is no "per user" pricing, including light users. This means you don’t pay any licensing fees for any of the Frappe apps. You can add as many users as you can within the cloud plan you purchase.
| Odoo Online | Odoo Custom | ERPNext | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing Fees | $38 per user per month | $61 per user per month | $0 (no licensing fees) |
For hosting, we have Frappe Cloud. Frappe Cloud is Frappe's own cloud hosting platform. Here’s how Odoo’s pricing compares with Frappe’s for 10, 50, 100, 500 users.
| Users | Odoo Online | Odoo Custom + Odoo.sh | ERPNext + Frappe Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $311 | $610 + ~$72 = ~$682 | $0 + $25 = $25 |
| 50 | $1,555 | $3,050 + ~$130 = ~$3,180 | $0 + $25 = $25 |
| 100 | $3,110 | $6,100 + ~$245 = ~$6,345 | $0 + $200 = $200* |
| 500 | $15,550 | $30,500 + ~$667 = ~$31,167* | $0 + $300 = $300* |
*It is difficult to make an accurate guess for the hosting prices based on # of users, both for Odoo.sh and Frappe Cloud. Here we assume that a $200/mo and $300/mo dedicated server plan can take up 100 and 500 users which may not exactly be true if you have high transaction volume and concurrent users.
So, if you're evaluating or using Odoo, be aware of their claims and pricing and don’t get vo(odoo)ed. The reality is, you don't have to pay "per user" with open source.
The real power of open source is affordability
One of the huge benefits of open source is affordability and that is what we aim to give our users. In fact, we’re working towards dropping our prices each year.
In the upcoming Frappe Cloud version II, which is going to offer general-purpose hosting beyond Frappe, the price will be VM-based and highly competitive. Stay tuned for more updates on this.
The journey has been slow and patient. But the mission of slaying the SaaS industry isn’t going to happen overnight. Businesses are taking time to notice the power of open source, especially the non-technical decision makers. But the day they see it, they will not be able to unsee it. Investors have been talking about how AI is leading to SaaSocalypse, but we at Frappe have already been disrupting the market with high quality open source software and we have only just scratched the surface.
Sorry NetSuite: image from Oleg Kuryan’s public LinkedIn post; Sorry SAP: image by much.
So, while Odoo is going around adding billboards apologising to SAP and NetSuite about their lower per-user pricing, we want to tell them:
This isn't a real billboard
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License Fees are 4x lower then calculated in the article for the license. the Odoo Custom is below 15USD per month for indian market, in europe usa the price is higher there it is 61USD.
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Some immoral minds in their hybris want to use computers to spy on and enslave more people, others use it to liberate them, to help everybody to reap the benefits of sharing and collectively creating, to develop live situations, to lift populations out of poverty, and to deliver on the promise of automation and the power of human intelligence, creativity and empathy. Everybody to make their choice of their direction.
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Euhm, just use odoo community and you pay close to nothing? If you need an app, build it with claude....
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I agree with some of your points, but I don't think the comparison presents the complete picture.
First, Odoo and ERPNext have different business models, target customers, and value propositions. Comparing only their licensing costs doesn't necessarily reflect the total cost or value of maintaining an ERP.
ERPNext's open-source licensing is certainly an advantage. However, customer needs to pay additionally for anykind of support and maintenance. If a business needs dedicated account management, faster assistance, or quick support, those services also have a cost but in odoo everything is included in user costing. Hence customers will compare the overall value they receive, not just the licence fee.
Second, Odoo's pricing increase should be evaluated in context. Software development, infrastructure, security, support, and ongoing product improvements all come with increasing costs. A price increase is a legitimate concern for customers, particularly when it affects their budgets, but as customer we do understand this will increase after certain point of time to meet cost to company hence for me increase in price after 4-5 years is Okay. The important question is whether the value delivered justifies the price.
Third, I believe the comparison should also consider the breadth of functionality, user experience, integrations, ecosystem, implementation partner network, and the effort required to achieve the same business outcomes. A lower licence price does not automatically translate into a lower total cost of ownership.
Odoo Community also provides an open-source with limited standard features but I can have this built as per my requirement with inhouse devloper team.
I respect ERPNext's open-source approach, and some of your points are valid. But presenting Odoo primarily through the lens of price increases and licensing limitations overlooks the value of its integrated ecosystem and commercial offering. If you compare overall cost then it is still affordable.
Only the rider of the boat can understand how the journey is going on.
At the end of the day, the best ERP isn't necessarily the one with the lowest licence fee; it's the one that delivers the right functionality, support, flexibility, and long-term business value at a cost the customer can justify.
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Thanks for the detailed analysis
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Good Präsentation.
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vo(odoo)ed ! This one word said it all.
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Very nicely compared Odoo with ERPNext. What customer like about ERPNext is “100% freedom”, low cost and no Vendor Lock-In.