As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates GLPI 3/5 and OTOBO 3/5 in IT Service Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick GLPI and 2 pick OTOBO. GLPI scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Change, problem & release management, Assets, CMDB & discovery, Pricing transparency, plus 2 more). OTOBO scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Self-service portal & service catalog and Service desk, incidents & requests). Provenance — GLPI: EU-Made; OTOBO: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
On the criterion means, GLPI is ahead in five of seven: change and problem 4.5 to 4.0, assets and CMDB 6.5 to 6.0, deployment and integration 6.3 to 6.2, sovereignty 7.2 to 7.0, and pricing transparency 6.7 to 6.3 — the first two and pricing with no judge leaning OTOBO. OTOBO is ahead on service desk, 6.2 to 5.8 with two judges leaning its way, and above all the self-service portal, 6.0 to 5.2 with five judges leaning OTOBO and one tie. Sovereignty and deployment are genuine splits: two judges lean GLPI, one OTOBO, three tie. The weighted totals split as well — of the five judges with recorded totals, three (change manager, solo admin, skeptic) come out higher for GLPI and two (service-desk lead, public-sector IT) for OTOBO; the MSP owner's totals were not recorded. No overall winner: the split is the answer.
Choose GLPI if
You need broad asset coverage: assets and CMDB stands at 6.5 vs 6.0 with three judges leaning GLPI and none OTOBO, and the GLPI verdict cites hardware and software inventory, FusionInventory or OCS discovery, and a PNG-exportable impact analysis.
Your team runs changes formally: change and problem scores 4.5 vs 4.0 — the weakest criterion for both products, with the verdicts finding no public information on change types or a CAB for either — and three judges lean GLPI while none lean OTOBO.
You pay per user: published prices run '19 € Excl. tax / month / user' starting with 1 user and '21 € Excl. tax / month / user' for 25 or more, with a 45-day free trial; pricing transparency is 6.7 vs 6.3 with two judges leaning GLPI and none OTOBO.
You weigh sovereignty: the mean is 7.2 vs 7.0 with two judges leaning GLPI, one OTOBO and three ties, and the GLPI verdict cites a French contracting entity, OVH cloud hosting in France, and terms stating no personal data is transferred outside the EU or EEA.
You integrate heavily: deployment and integration is 6.3 vs 6.2 with two judges leaning GLPI and one OTOBO, and the GLPI verdict lists a REST API with webhooks and a plugin marketplace.
Choose OTOBO if
Your front line is the ticket queue: the service desk mean is 6.2 vs 5.8 with two judges leaning OTOBO and none GLPI, and the OTOBO verdict records tickets by email, phone and portal, calendar-based SLA escalations and a free load-balancer add-on.
Your users must serve themselves: the self-service portal is 6.0 vs 5.2 with five judges leaning OTOBO and one tie — the largest lean count on any criterion in the table.
You must run on-premise: the OTOBO verdict documents on-premise operation to keep full control over all data with the codebase fully downloadable, and one judge leans OTOBO on deployment and integration.
You are a service-desk lead buying for your own operation: that judge's weighted total is 6.2 for OTOBO vs 5.9 for GLPI, the widest recorded gap.
You buy for public-sector IT: that judge's weighted total is 6.3 for OTOBO vs 6.2 for GLPI.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Skeptic
Has seen "ITIL-certified" on a tool whose change management is a status field, a "CMDB" that is a list of devices without a single relationship, and an "AI agent" that searches the knowledge base. Reads that a product runs on premise and asks whether that edition gets the same features, which of the asset packs are extra, where the tickets and attachments are stored — and how ten years of ticket history would leave.
GLPI
This judge's pick
OTOBO
Criterion by criterion
Service desk, incidents & requests
GLPI
Tickets arrive by email collectors and the web interface, incidents and requests are handled separately, and the documented automation covers categorisation, escalation, SLAs and OLAs, an impact-urgency priority matrix and rule-based assignment, with reports by technician, category and request. We found no public information on chat or Teams intake, a visual workflow builder, a mobile app for agents, ticket time tracking, business hours or SLA-compliance reporting, so I settle at the middle level and no higher.
OTOBO
Intake by email, phone and portal with automatic email-to-ticket, incidents and service requests kept apart, SLAs with response and solution times, multi-level escalation on working-time calendars, major incident processes with automatic notifications and master-slave ticket bundling are all documented, and load-based assignment by workload and service capability is available free of charge as a community add-on. We found no public information on time tracking on tickets, AI assistance or a mobile agent app, and the workflow engine is still on the roadmap in the university's own case study.
Change, problem & release management
GLPI
Problem records link to their incidents with symptoms, causes and impacts, and changes carry a full status list, a validation workflow with an approval threshold, deployment and fallback plans, cost tabs and links to tickets, problems and configuration items — that is real substance, not a status field. But we found no public information on standard, normal and emergency change types, known errors, blackout periods, a change advisory board, or any ITIL process certification, so I score below the middle level.
OTOBO
Change and problem management exist as named modules linked to incidents and configuration items, with approvals mentioned and logging of all data accesses and changes; we found no public information on change types, risk or impact assessment, a change calendar, a CAB or release records. A forum post on the vendor's site states the only change management documentation is the ITSM package's own manual, and a question on archiving changes drew zero replies — thin ground for a process a buyer would be audited on.
Assets, CMDB & discovery
GLPI
The inventory covers hardware, software, licences, contracts, virtual machines and a life cycle from stock to withdrawal, with per-asset modification history, a dedupe rule, network discovery via the FusionInventory or OCS Inventory plugins and agentless dynamic inventory. The visual impact analysis with dependency and impact arrows, groups, configurable depth and PNG export is genuinely documented, and telemetry references instances managing 60,000 assets; we found no public information on connectors to Intune, SCCM, JAMF, VMware, AWS or Azure, or on licence metering, which keeps it off the higher level.
OTOBO
This CMDB is not a flat device list: predefined but customizable CI classes with a YAML editor, relationships between CIs, users, tickets, changes and services shown in a tree view, the asset lifecycle from procurement to retirement, and population from auto-discovery, inventory, directory services and product databases via REST/SOAP. We found no public information on discovery for named platforms, connectors such as Intune, SCCM or JAMF, or licence compliance and metering.
Self-service portal & service catalog
GLPI
The self-service portal is documented with a redesigned service catalog, hierarchical categories, fuzzy and unified search over forms and knowledge base articles, access rights filtering, incident reporting with real-time tracking, resource reservation, branding and single sign-on. We found no public information on satisfaction surveys, announcements, portal languages, a virtual agent, or automated fulfilment such as password reset, and accessibility conformance is not stated.
OTOBO
A portal customizable to corporate design with a searchable service catalog scoped to each user's entitlements across IT, HR, facilities and fleet, dynamic forms, multi-step approvals, ticket history, knowledge base suggestions while a ticket is written, a news ticker for major disruptions, single sign-on and CSAT surveys is fully documented. We found no public information on costs or delivery times per catalog item, a virtual agent, measured deflection, or accessibility conformance.
Deployment, integrations & multi-client operation
GLPI
A documented REST API with OAuth clients, scopes and endpoints for tickets, users, entities, profiles and status, webhooks, a plugin marketplace, Entra ID and Active Directory import, SCIM, role-based profiles and a downloadable self-hosted edition next to the cloud are all evidenced. We found no public information stating feature parity between the cloud and self-hosted editions, on Microsoft Teams or Slack connectors, on RMM or monitoring connectors, on MSP billing, or on a public status page — so I stop one step above the middle.
OTOBO
One hundred per cent open source with a free download, Docker installation recommended, on-premise or managed cloud, a documented REST/SOAP API, Active Directory and LDAP, single sign-on, roles, groups and ACLs, multi-tenant visibility restriction, a high-availability cluster in the top support tier, and an OTRS migration guide detailed down to database and operating-system switches. We found no public information on Teams or Microsoft 365 integrations, webhooks, SCIM, monitoring or remote support connectors, a public status page, or a statement that the managed cloud edition matches the self-hosted one.
European sovereignty
GLPI
The contracting entity is Teclib' SAS in Paris, the cloud runs on OVH in France, the named subprocessors are OVH and Scaleway for hosting, Sendgrid for the email relay and Stripe for payment, and there is a published DPA, a contractual commitment to no transfers outside the EU/EEA, breach notification duties, and destroy-or-return of data with written confirmation on exit. The captured pages name Sendgrid and Stripe without their locations, and the only ISO 27001 mention concerns a partner SIEM project — we found no security certification stated for the service itself — so I stop one step below the top levels.
OTOBO
The contracting entity is demonstrably German — Rother OSS GmbH, registered under HRB 12744 at Amtsgericht Straubing — the vendor's website, email and support portal run in data centres in Germany and Switzerland, the named subprocessors (Rapidmail in Germany, Google under a signed processor agreement with IP anonymisation) are disclosed for that chain, and the self-hosted open-source edition is documented with full control over all data. We found no public information on security certifications such as ISO 27001, on where the managed cloud would host customer data, or on a customer-facing data processing agreement; the published privacy policy stands at 13 December 2019.
Pricing transparency
GLPI
Cloud tiers are public — "19 € Excl. tax / month / user" starting with 1 user and "21 € Excl. tax / month / user" for 25 or more — with unlimited assets and end users, disk tiers, VAT treatment, annual billing, a one-month termination notice and a 45-day free trial, and the vendor states modules are not sold separately. The self-hosted subscription exists but its price is not captured, custom architectures are "Based on a quote", and we found no public information on onboarding or setup fees, which keeps full computability out of reach.
OTOBO
Three public support tiers at 3.900€, 9.900€ and 24.500€ per year with unlimited agents and incidents, plus an open-source edition and add-ons that are licence-free, let a buyer see the software cost at once. But the tiers cap service requests at 10, 35 and 100 without stating what that quota counts, and we found no public information on managed hosting prices, onboarding, training, minimum term or VAT treatment.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
GLPI
OTOBO
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates both 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick GLPI and 2 pick OTOBO. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is GLPI or OTOBO European?
GLPI is European (EU-Made). OTOBO is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do GLPI and OTOBO store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — GLPI: Default not stated; pages mention France. OTOBO: Default not stated; pages mention Germany and Switzerland.