About ERPNext
ERPNext is an open-source ERP built by Frappe Technologies, an Indian company. It runs on the Frappe Framework (Python and MariaDB), it is free to self-host with no per-user licence fee, and the source code is public. It has been in active development for well over a decade and has one of the largest communities of any open-source ERP, including a substantial network of Indian implementation partners.
Its manufacturing coverage is real, not nominal. ERPNext supports multi-level BOMs with nested sub-assemblies, versioning and effectivity; work orders that trigger material transfer and generate job cards; a Production Plan that performs material requirements planning against demand and current stock with lead-time offsetting; capacity planning across workstations; and subcontracting. Alongside that sit accounting, stock, CRM, HR and payroll, projects, assets and quality — a broader module surface than OEMup offers.
Commercially, Frappe sells managed hosting rather than the software. Frappe Cloud shared sites start from around ₹410 per site per month, with servers and dedicated instances above that, and crucially the pricing is per site and based on compute, not per user. Self-hosting on your own infrastructure remains free.
About OEMup
OEMup is a cloud manufacturing ERP built for Indian SMEs in the 5–250 user range. One product covering CRM, procurement, inventory, production (multi-level BOM, MRP, manufacturing orders, capacity planning), accounting with GST, TDS, e-invoice and e-way bill native, and HRMS with Indian payroll. Browser, iOS and Android.
The design premise is narrower than ERPNext's on purpose. Rather than a configurable platform that can model almost any business, OEMup ships with the defaults an Indian manufacturing SME actually needs already set — GST tax structures, e-invoice flows, PF/ESI/PT payroll rules, job-work and ITC-04 handling — so that going live is a data-entry exercise rather than a design exercise.
OEMup is one of the two products being compared, and we are not a neutral party. We have tried to correct for that by writing the ERPNext case as strongly as we can defend it. Every “ERPNext wins” row below is a real, unqualified win — and if you read the verdict and conclude ERPNext is right for you, that is a correct outcome for this page.
Side-by-Side Comparison
The important thing to notice in this table is how many rows are green on both sides. On core manufacturing capability these two systems are close. The differences that matter are in delivery — how the capability reaches you, who configures it, and who fixes it when it breaks.
| Capability | ERPNext | OEMup |
|---|---|---|
| Licence cost | ✓ Free and open source, no per-user fee | ~ Paid per-user subscription |
| Pricing model | ✓ Per site, scales with compute not headcount | ~ Per user — cost grows with team size |
| Multi-level BOM | ✓ Nested sub-assemblies, versioning, effectivity | ✓ Multi-level, alternates, phantom, versioned |
| Material planning (MRP) | ✓ Production Plan, net-change & regenerative | ✓ MRP releasing indents & manufacturing orders |
| Work orders & shop floor | ✓ Work orders + job cards per operation | ✓ Manufacturing orders + operation-level WIP |
| Capacity planning | ✓ Finite/infinite scheduling, Gantt view | ✓ Workstation capacity load |
| Subcontracting / job work | ✓ Subcontracting flows supported | ✓ Job work with ITC-04 reconciliation |
| GST, e-invoice, e-way bill | ~ Via the separate India Compliance app | ✓ Core product, in every plan |
| Indian payroll (PF / ESI / PT) | ~ HR module, needs India-specific configuration | ✓ Preconfigured Indian statutory payroll |
| Module breadth beyond manufacturing | ✓ Projects, assets, quality, website, more | ~ Deliberately scoped to manufacturing SMEs |
| Customisation ceiling | ✓ Full source access via Frappe Framework | ~ Configuration and API, not source changes |
| Data ownership / lock-in | ✓ Your data and your code, host anywhere | ~ Hosted SaaS; full export supported |
| Time to go live | ~ Weeks to months, partner-dependent | ✓ Days to weeks, preconfigured defaults |
| Technical skill needed in-house | ~ Helpful to essential, especially self-hosted | ✓ None |
| Who fixes it when it breaks | ~ Community, your partner, or a paid AMC | ✓ One vendor, single line of accountability |
| Version upgrades | ~ Managed on Frappe Cloud; yours if self-hosted | ✓ Applied centrally, nothing to manage |
| Cost predictability | ~ Implementation quotes vary widely | ✓ Published per-user price |
Where ERPNext Wins
ERPNext is genuinely better when…
- You have 30, 60, 200 users. Per-site pricing versus per-user pricing is not a close contest at that scale.
- You have a developer, a capable IT person, or a partner you already trust.
- You want to own the code and the database, with a credible exit at any time.
- You need reach beyond manufacturing — projects, asset maintenance, quality, a website.
- Your processes are genuinely unusual and you need to change behaviour, not just settings.
- You want to trial it properly at near-zero cost before committing to anything.
ERPNext gets hard when…
- Nobody in the company is technical and there is no budget for a good partner.
- You need GST e-invoicing working correctly next month, not after a configuration cycle.
- Your partner disappears mid-project — the most common failure mode we hear about.
- Customisations and the India Compliance app have to survive every version upgrade.
- Something breaks during month-end and “the community” is the escalation path.
- The implementation quote arrives and the free software turns out to be the cheap part.
ERPNext removes the licence line from your budget entirely. It does not remove the implementation, the configuration, the data migration, the training or the ongoing support — and for an SME those have always been the larger share of an ERP's cost. Judge the two options on total cost and delivery risk, not on the licence line.
Where OEMup Wins
1. Preconfigured beats configurable — if you are not going to configure it
ERPNext's flexibility is its strongest feature and its biggest cost. It can model an Indian pump factory, a hospital, or a school, which means that out of the box it assumes none of them. Someone has to decide your tax templates, your warehouse structure, your BOM conventions, your naming series, your payroll components. That someone is a consultant, and that is most of the implementation fee.
OEMup starts from a much narrower assumption — you are an Indian manufacturing SME — and ships with those decisions already made. That is worse if your business is unusual. It is decisively better if your business is a fairly typical factory and you would rather be entering opening stock than designing a chart of accounts.
2. India compliance in the core, not in a second app
ERPNext handles Indian GST through the India Compliance app from Resilient Tech — a well-maintained open-source project covering GST setup, e-invoicing and IRN, e-way bills, TDS/TCS and return workflows. It is good software and the separation keeps the core product clean. It is also a second moving part with its own release cycle that must stay compatible with your ERPNext version and your customisations.
In OEMup, e-invoice and e-way bill generation are core product features present in every plan, updated with the product. There is no compatibility matrix and nothing to install. For a factory with no technical staff, that difference is larger than it looks on paper.
3. One line of accountability
With ERPNext there are up to four parties: Frappe (the software), your hosting, your implementation partner, and the maintainers of any add-on apps. When something goes wrong at month-end the first job is working out whose problem it is. A good partner absorbs this; that is precisely what an AMC buys.
OEMup is one vendor for the software, the hosting, the compliance and the support. Fewer options, but one phone number.
4. A cost you can predict before you start
OEMup's price is published per user per month. ERPNext's real cost is an implementation quote that, on published Indian partner figures, ranges from about �,000 to 𠮓,00,000 for a small manufacturer, plus an AMC typically quoted at 15–25% of that per year. The mid-point is reasonable. The spread is the problem when you are budgeting.
Not sure which side you fall on?
Book a 20-minute demo. If it turns out ERPNext is the better fit for your factory, we will tell you so on the call — a bad-fit customer is worse for us than no customer.
Book a Demo →3-Year Total Cost of Ownership: 5-User Factory
Comparing a free licence against a subscription only makes sense if implementation is counted on both sides. Below is a three-year view for a five-user Indian factory, single location, GST e-invoicing required, payroll for about 30 employees. ERPNext figures are shown as a range because that is the honest shape of the number — published Indian partner implementation quotes vary by roughly 4×. Indicative, as of July 2026, exclusive of GST.
ERPNext (Frappe Cloud + implementation partner)
Self-implemented with in-house Linux/Python capability, this can fall below 𠮑 lakh — hosting and your own time only. That is a real option and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
OEMup Professional plan
Professional plan, monthly billing. Launch offer (₹999/user/month) for 6 months, then the standard ₹1,999/user/month. See full pricing →
The ranges overlap, and that is the finding. ERPNext is cheaper at the low end and can be more expensive at the high end; OEMup is a narrow, predictable band. Nobody should choose between these on three-year cost alone, because the spread inside the ERPNext column is wider than the gap between the columns. Choose on who is going to run the implementation and who you want to call when it breaks.
The table above uses five users. Run it at 30 users and the arithmetic reverses hard: ERPNext's hosting barely moves, while a per-user subscription scales linearly. If you expect to be well past 25–30 users within the three years, ERPNext's cost structure is simply better and you should weight that heavily.
Migrating between the two
Worth saying in both directions, because it is a fair question.
ERPNext to OEMup. ERPNext is one of the easier systems to leave, which is a point in its favour rather than against it — everything is reachable through its REST API or a direct database export. OEMup imports items, BOMs, customers, vendors, chart of accounts, opening stock and open transactions. A typical 5–25 user factory completes the move in 2–3 weeks: one week for import and trial-balance reconciliation, one week of parallel running, one week of supervised use.
OEMup to ERPNext. Also supported. OEMup exports masters and transactions to CSV and exposes a REST API. We would rather you did not, but a comparison page that only describes the door in one direction is not worth reading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ERPNext good for manufacturing?
Is ERPNext really free?
Does ERPNext handle Indian GST, e-invoice and e-way bill?
Which is cheaper over three years?
When should I choose ERPNext over OEMup?
When is OEMup the better choice?
Can I migrate from ERPNext to OEMup?
What happens when ERPNext needs an upgrade?
Final Verdict — Which Should You Pick?
Pick ERPNext if: you have a technical person or a trusted partner; you are heading past 25–30 users; you want to own the code and data outright; you need modules well beyond manufacturing; or your processes are unusual enough that configuration will not be enough and you need to change behaviour.
Pick OEMup if: you are a fairly typical Indian manufacturing SME; nobody in the building is technical; you want GST e-invoicing working correctly without treating it as a project; you want one vendor accountable end to end; and you would rather have a predictable monthly bill than an implementation quote with a 4× spread.
The failure mode we see most often is not choosing the wrong software. It is choosing ERPNext on the strength of the free licence, under-budgeting the implementation, and ending up with a half-configured system nobody trusts. If you go the ERPNext route — and plenty of factories should — budget the implementation properly and pick the partner more carefully than you pick the software.
Book a 20-minute demo
Bring your BOM and a real production scenario. We will show you the same workflow in OEMup and give you a straight answer on whether it beats an ERPNext implementation for your factory.
Get a Demo →Related reading: OEMup vs Tally · OEMup vs Zoho Inventory · The 5 best Tally alternatives · Why SMEs can’t afford expensive ERP · MRP explained · Multi-level BOM guide