If you’ve been running a free AssetTiger account, you’ll have had the email. On 1 August 2026 the free plan became a 30-day free trial. On 31 August, accounts that haven’t upgraded move to view-only — you’ll still see your records, but you won’t be able to work with them the way you have been.
What actually changed
AssetTiger’s free tier was, for years, the most generous in this category: 250 assets and two users, no time limit, plus fairly relaxed sub-limits on sites, locations and categories. If you had a workshop’s worth of kit and wanted a free register, it was a genuinely good answer, and plenty of people built real inventories on it.
From 1 August 2026 that plan is a 30-day trial. Existing free users were offered $110 in “Rewards Cash” — credit against labels from MyAssetTag, the label manufacturer that owns AssetTiger — plus 50% off the first year of the Basic plan, which is $20 a month for 500 assets.
Nothing about this is underhand. Free tiers cost real money to run, and a company is entitled to decide the sums no longer work. But it does change the question you’re answering. You’re not choosing between free plans any more. You’re deciding what to pay for, and where.
First: get your data out, today
Whatever you decide, do this bit now rather than in the last week of August.
Log into AssetTiger and export your data while you still have full access. Even if you’re planning to subscribe, having your own copy costs you nothing and takes ten minutes. Exports are also much less stressful to do before a deadline than after one.
Keep the file somewhere sensible. Every serious alternative — including the one I make — can take a spreadsheet, and it’ll save you retyping a few hundred rows later.
Then work out what you actually need
The instinct when a free plan disappears is to hunt for another free plan. Sometimes that’s right. But it’s worth ten minutes of honesty about what you’re really using, because the answer often isn’t what you’d guess.
Ask yourself:
– How many assets do you genuinely track? Not the theoretical maximum. The actual number in the register today.
– Who needs to get in? One person in an office, or five people on sites who need it on their phones?
– What do you do with it weekly? Print labels? Check kit in and out? Produce reports for a client or an insurer?
– What would it cost you to lose it? If the answer is “a day of my life”, a subscription may be cheaper than you’re treating it.
That last one catches people out. A tool register is boring right up until a van gets emptied and the insurer wants a list.
Your options
Pay for AssetTiger. Genuinely worth considering, and I’d rather say so than pretend otherwise. If your week revolves around reports, AssetTiger is hard to beat — sixty-plus pre-built reports, a custom report builder, scheduled reports by email. It also has more custom field types than most, granular permissions, and configurable alerts with lead times for warranties and service dates. With the first-year discount and the rewards credit, the first year is cheap. If those are the features you’re using, upgrading is the least disruptive thing you can do.
Move to a spreadsheet. Only half a joke. If you’ve got forty items in one workshop and you never print a label, a spreadsheet is free and you already know how it works. Plenty of businesses are over-tooled for their actual problem.
Move to another system. There are several, and they’re not interchangeable. EZOfficeInventory and Asset Panda are more serious operations platforms priced accordingly — EZO’s entry plan is $63.55 a month, and Asset Panda doesn’t publish pricing at all. itemit is UK-based and strong on RFID, starting at £26.99 a month for one user. Which of those fits depends entirely on your answers above.
Where Asset Giant fits — and where it doesn’t
This is the part where I’m selling you something, so here’s the honest version.
Asset Giant has a free plan that holds 100 assets with one user. That’s smaller than AssetTiger’s old free tier, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. What it has instead is no clock on it — no card, no trial countdown, no automatic upgrade.
If you do subscribe, our Crew plan is £19 a month for 500 assets and three users — priced in pounds, from a UK company. For that you get things AssetTiger doesn’t do at all:
– AI that works from a photograph. Point your phone at a tool and it identifies it, then fills in the make, model and specifications. You can also ask your inventory questions in plain English. AssetTiger has no AI features; every asset is typed in by hand.
– Labels you design and print yourself. A visual QR label designer, a print queue for batch-printing to standard label sheets, and the ability to assign pre-printed stickers. Worth noting AssetTiger is owned by a label manufacturer, which shapes what they build here.
– Jobs and projects. AssetTiger has sites, locations and departments, but no concept of a project. If you work job to job, that matters.
– Consumables included, rather than sold as a separate $15-a-month product.
And where AssetTiger is still better: reporting, custom field types, granular permissions, alerts, and first-class depreciation and contract records. If that list is your daily work, pay them. You’ll be happier.
If you do want to move, we’ll do the boring bit
The thing that actually stops people switching isn’t the decision. It’s the prospect of retyping three hundred rows.
So: send us your AssetTiger export and we’ll import it for you, by hand, free, on any paid plan. Assets, locations, categories and clients. You don’t retype anything, and there’s no charge for it.
You can start free to have a look around first, and if you subscribe, get in touch and we’ll move everything across.
Whatever you choose — export your data this week. Deadlines have a way of arriving early.
*Details of AssetTiger’s plan changes are as described in their own customer communications and pricing pages, checked on 3 August 2026. Competitor pricing moves; check their sites for current figures. See our full comparison or the detailed AssetTiger comparison.*