🔧 2026 comparison: What is the best CMMS software?
Updated 31 July 2026 — features and pricing checked on the vendors’ official pages; ratings and review volumes checked on Capterra. Where a vendor publishes no price, we say so instead of guessing.
✅ What a CMMS actually does for you
A CMMS — Computerized Maintenance Management System — holds your assets, work requests, work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, spare parts, costs and indicators in one place. The point is not to “put maintenance into software”. It is to close a loop that paper and spreadsheets cannot: report, prioritize, plan, execute, record, analyze, improve.
Three kinds of maintenance sit inside that loop, and every product below handles them differently:
Corrective maintenance, carried out after a failure is detected;
Preventive maintenance, triggered by elapsed time or by usage;
Condition-based and predictive maintenance, triggered by a measured state — vibration, temperature, hours, cycles.
No law anywhere requires you to buy a CMMS. What the law requires is that the equipment be maintained in safe working order, and that you can show it. In the United States, OSHA’s general duty clause obliges every employer to furnish a workplace free from recognized hazards, and dozens of specific standards require inspection records — 29 CFR 1910.184(e)(3)(ii), for instance, requires a record of the most recent month in which each alloy steel chain sling was thoroughly inspected. In the UK, PUWER 1998 requires work equipment to be maintained in efficient working order and in good repair, with a maintenance log kept up to date where one exists. A CMMS is how you produce that evidence without a filing cabinet. It does not make the maintenance compliant by itself.
We looked at around thirty products and kept ten that an English-speaking buyer in North America, the UK, the EU or Australia would realistically shortlist. The result is not a universal podium: a multi-site factory, a facilities contractor and a school district are not buying the same product. The comparison below therefore re-ranks against your profile and priorities.
🧭 CMMS, EAM, FM or specialized tool — compare the right family
“CMMS” covers products that barely overlap:
A general-purpose CMMS (Limble, UpKeep, Fiix, eMaint, ManWinWin) organizes maintenance work: assets, work orders, preventive schedules, parts, costs and KPIs.
An EAM — Enterprise Asset Management platform (IBM Maximo) widens the scope to the whole asset lifecycle: capital planning, procurement, contracts, linear assets, GIS, condition monitoring and enterprise integration.
A facility management product (Infraspeak, Brightly Asset Essentials) puts more weight on service requests, SLAs, contractors, contracts and multi-building estates.
A field-first CMMS (MaintainX) starts from the technician’s phone and works backwards to the office.
A specialized tool (GearTracker) goes deep on one sub-domain — here the compliance of regulated equipment, PPE and the certifications of the people using it — without running the whole maintenance process.
The first filter in the comparison, Full CMMS only, removes tools whose scope does not cover the complete base. Use it if you genuinely intend to replace a CMMS rather than complement one.
🏆 The interactive ranking
Pick a profile, switch on the filters that matter, and if you want, adjust how much each criterion counts. The ranking is recalculated in your browser. Open any product for its scores, strengths, limits, price and review sample size.
Your profile:
10 solutions ranked against your priorities — open a card for the evidence, the limits and the per-criterion scores.
The strongest field adoption in the panel, and the largest volume of positive public reviews. Everything starts from what the technician actually does: work orders, procedures, checklists, photos and messages. The free plan is genuinely permanent, but a complete CMMS means Premium at $65 per user per month.
Maintenance coverage
8.5
Usability & adoption
9.5
Price & transparency
7.0
Mobile & scheduling
9.5
Parts & purchasing
8.0
Data & integrations
7.5
Rollout & support
9.0
Strengths
✅ Best-in-class mobile and offline experience, learned in minutes rather than days
✅ Permanent free plan with unlimited work orders and unlimited requester users
✅ Procedures and inspections attached directly to the job, not filed somewhere else
✅ Premium is genuinely complete: parts, purchase orders, costs, meters, API and full analytics
✅ The largest public review base of the panel — 1,052 Capterra reviews at 4.8/5
Weaknesses
⚠️ The free plan allows only 2 active repeating work orders and 2 work orders with procedures
⚠️ The jump from Essential ($20) to Premium ($65) is where most of the CMMS scope lives
⚠️ Multi-site governance, SSO, IoT and resource planning all require Enterprise, on quote
Express free forever (100 assets); Start from €599
✅
🇵🇹 Portugal
IBM Maximo
Enterprise asset management
AppPoints licensing, no public rate
❌ Demo
🇺🇸 United States
Infraspeak
Maintenance & facility management
Case by case, contracted minimums
❌ Demo
🇵🇹 Portugal
Brightly Asset Essentials
Facilities & public sector
No published price
❌ Demo
🇺🇸 United States
GearTracker
Equipment & certification compliance
Free ≤ 100 items, then $0.99/item/year
✅
🇫🇷 France
1. MaintainX — the one your technicians will actually use
Overview
MaintainX starts from what happens on the floor: work orders, procedures, checklists, photos, messages and requests. That mobile-first design explains the strongest public signal in this comparison — 4.8/5 across 1,052 Capterra reviews when we checked.
The published grid has four tiers. Basic is free but caps you at two active repeating work orders and two work orders with procedures. Essential is $20/user/month billed annually ($25 monthly). Premium is $65 annually ($75 monthly) and is where the CMMS actually becomes complete: meter-based maintenance, parts inventory, purchase orders, time and cost tracking, REST API and full analytics. Enterprise adds multi-site, SSO, IoT and resource planning, on quote.
Strengths
📱 The best mobile and offline experience of the panel, learned in minutes rather than days.
🆓 Permanent free plan, with unlimited work orders and unlimited requester users.
📋 Procedures attached to the job rather than filed somewhere else.
🏭 Premium is genuinely complete: parts, purchase orders, costs, meters, API and full analytics.
⭐ 4.8/5 across 1,052 Capterra reviews — the largest positive review base of the comparison.
Weaknesses
🔒 The free plan is tighter than it looks: two active repeating work orders and two work orders with procedures. That runs out inside a week of real use.
💵 The $20 → $65 step is where the scope lives. Budget Premium, not Essential, or you are comparing the wrong product.
🏢 Multi-site governance, SSO, IoT and resource planning need Enterprise, on quote.
Who it suits? Teams that have already failed to get a legacy CMMS adopted, and want the technicians, the procedures and the field data back at the centre.
2. Limble — highest satisfaction, now with a hidden price
Overview
Limble ties with MaintainX at the top of the satisfaction table — 4.8/5 across 755 Capterra reviews, 99% of them above four stars — and its reputation is built on onboarding and customer success rather than on feature count. Standard covers unlimited assets, work orders and requesters; Premium+ adds offline mode, spare parts, vendors, purchase orders, meter-based scheduling and API; Enterprise adds multi-location controls, SSO and ERP/IoT integrations.
The notable change in 2026 is that Limble no longer publishes prices. The pricing page now leads to a calculator, so every comparison begins with a sales conversation. That is a real regression for a buyer trying to build a shortlist.
Strengths
⭐ 4.8/5 across 755 Capterra reviews, with 99% rating it above four stars.
🤝 Onboarding and customer success are the most consistently praised part of the product.
🧰 Generous entry scope: unlimited assets, work orders and requesters even on Standard.
🔌 Offline mode, spare parts, purchase orders and API from Premium+.
Weaknesses
💸 No published pricing at all. The grid became a quote calculator in 2026, so every comparison now starts with a sales conversation.
📊 Reporting is the most frequent complaint in public reviews: several basic report types are missing while advanced ones exist.
📈 Cost climbs quickly with licence count, which reviewers flag specifically for small and mid-sized companies.
Who it suits? A mid-sized maintenance team that values being carried through the rollout more than it values comparing price sheets.
3. UpKeep — cheap to start, expensive where it counts
Overview
UpKeep publishes $24/user/month for Essential and $55 for Premium, and — importantly — does not charge for requester, view-only or third-party contractor users. With 1,330 Capterra reviews at 4.6/5 it has one of the largest install bases in the category.
Read the plan boundaries carefully, though. Mobile offline mode and the external request portal only appear at Professional, and Professional has no published price. For a field maintenance team, offline is not a nice-to-have; it is the product. So the two things you most need are precisely the two you cannot budget for.
Strengths
💶 Low entry price: $24/user/month with unlimited work orders and unlimited locations.
👥 Requesters, view-only users and contractors consume no paid licence — a real saving when hundreds of people only ever report a fault.
⭐ 1,330 Capterra reviews at 4.6/5, with customer service rated 4.7/5 and 24/7 live support.
Weaknesses
📵 Mobile offline mode is a Professional feature, and Professional has no published price. For a field team, offline is not an option — it is the product.
💵 Cost escalation is the dominant negative theme, one public review citing a licence near $100/user/month.
🐛 Technical glitches are the second-most-cited complaint.
Who it suits? Organizations with many occasional requesters and a small core of paid technicians — provided you get Professional pricing in writing before you sign.
4. Fiix — the industrial one with a real price list
Overview
Fiix, owned by Rockwell Automation, offers a free plan (limited users, 25 active PM tasks) plus Basic at $45/user/month, Professional at $75 and Enterprise on quote. The published feature matrix is unusually honest about what each tier excludes.
Its industrial depth is genuine: meters, downtime tracking, purchasing and RFQs, inventory cycle counts, multi-site and reliability analysis. The catch is that everything connecting Fiix to the rest of the plant — API, custom integrations, workflows, audit trail, SSO — sits in Enterprise, and the Lite operator licence is itself a paid add-on.
Strengths
💵 A published price list with a detailed, unusually honest feature matrix per tier.
🆓 A free plan that is genuinely useful: assets, work orders, inventory and 25 active PM tasks — enough to prototype a real asset hierarchy.
🏭 Real industrial depth: meters, downtime, purchasing and RFQs, cycle counts, reliability analysis.
🔌 Rockwell Automation ecosystem, with a documented integration path to the control layer.
⭐ 4.5/5 across 628 Capterra reviews.
Weaknesses
📈 Basic is single-site and has no purchasing; Professional reaches $75/user/month.
🔒 API, ERP integrations, audit trail, workflows and SSO are Enterprise-only.
👷 The Lite operator licence is itself a paid add-on — price every field role before you compare.
Who it suits? An industrial operator that wants a proven cloud CMMS and expects to connect it to ERP, sensors or automation later.
5. eMaint — the one for validated environments
Overview
eMaint, part of Fluke Reliability, is the only product here that publishes explicit support for regulated environments: computer systems validation and a slow-track release server, so a validated instance is not forced onto the vendor’s release cadence. Enterprise includes unlimited request-only portal licences, multi-site, SSO and API.
Pricing is entirely opaque. Professional requires a minimum of three users, Enterprise five, and both are billed as a prepaid annual commitment. There is no self-serve trial.
Strengths
🧪 Explicit support for validated environments — computer systems validation and a slow-track release server. Almost nobody else at this level offers it.
📄 Unlimited request-only portal licences on Enterprise.
🔒 Price locked for the contract term, which makes multi-year budgeting predictable.
🔧 Fluke Reliability’s condition-monitoring hardware behind the software.
Weaknesses
💸 No published pricing and no self-serve trial: evaluation is entirely sales-led.
👥 Three- and five-user minimums rule it out for a very small team.
⭐ Weight the 4.5/5 carefully: Capterra flags many eMaint reviews as vendor-referred with an incentive offered.
Who it suits? Pharmaceutical, food, medical device and other regulated manufacturers who need a validated maintenance record.
6. ManWinWin — the free edition that is a real product
Overview
Founded in Lisbon in 1981, ManWinWin is used in more than 120 countries and rates 4.6/5 across 258 Capterra reviews. Its distinguishing feature in this panel is Express: free forever, for 100 assets and a single user. That is not a trial. It is a working CMMS you can use to prove the concept to a board before asking for budget, and several public reviews say exactly that.
Paid tiers start at €599 for Start, with Professional and Business on quote — a mixed licence-and-quote model that makes total cost harder to project than Fiix’s or MaintainX’s.
Strengths
🆓 Express is free forever for 100 assets and one user — the cheapest way to prove the concept to a board before asking for budget.
🏅 In continuous development since 1981, deployed in more than 120 countries.
🇪🇺 A European vendor, which shortens the data-residency conversation for EU and UK procurement.
🏷️ Solid core: preventive maintenance, work orders, assets, spare parts, QR/NFC tagging, digital signatures.
⭐ 4.6/5 across 258 Capterra reviews.
Weaknesses
🔌 Fewer integrations than the American cloud products, and less customization at enterprise scale.
📱 The mobile app is described as basic in public reviews, next to MaintainX or Limble.
🧮 A mixed pricing model — a €599 licence figure alongside quote-only tiers — which makes total cost hard to project.
Who it suits? A small or mid-sized industrial site, especially in Europe, that wants to start free and grow into the same product.
7. IBM Maximo Application Suite — the heavyweight
Overview
IBM Maximo is the reference for very large asset estates: utilities, rail, energy, defense, public infrastructure. Nothing else here handles linear assets, condition monitoring, predictive maintenance and enterprise integration at the same depth.
It is also the heaviest to deploy and the hardest to price. The AppPoints model publishes no per-user rate, and Capterra shows just 4.2/5 across 41 reviews — a thin sample, largely because the organizations that run Maximo do not review software publicly.
Strengths
🏗️ Unmatched functional depth across asset lifecycle, reliability, monitoring and predictive maintenance.
🔌 Built for enterprise integration — ERP, GIS, IoT, historians.
🛡️ Credible for regulated and safety-critical infrastructure: utilities, rail, energy, defense.
🏛️ Vendor longevity is not a question anyone needs to ask.
Weaknesses
📚 The steep learning curve dominates public reviews, which describe extensive training and experience as prerequisites.
💸 AppPoints licensing publishes no per-user rate, so early budgeting is guesswork.
🐌 Reviewers report slow performance and a cluttered interface.
⭐ Only 41 Capterra reviews — a thin sample, largely because the organizations that run Maximo do not review software publicly.
Who it suits? Organizations whose asset base is the business, and who already run an enterprise IT function to support it.
8. Infraspeak — the best answer when maintenance is a multi-party problem
Overview
Infraspeak connects managers, technicians, requesters, clients and contractors on one platform, with dedicated interfaces per role, an offline mobile app with NFC, and a large integration catalogue including SAP, building management systems and IoT. It rates 4.7/5 across 140 Capterra reviews, with customer service at 4.8/5.
Its terms deserve attention: pricing is set case by case, and contracted quantities are billed as minimums. Negotiate how you scale down — the number of users, sites and locations — not just how you scale up.
Strengths
🤝 The best multi-party coordination model of the panel: managers, technicians, requesters, clients and contractors on one platform.
⭐ 4.7/5 across 140 Capterra reviews, with customer service at 4.8/5.
📱 Role-specific interfaces, offline mobile app and NFC tagging.
🔌 A large integration catalogue, including SAP, building management systems and IoT.
Weaknesses
💸 No public pricing, and the terms make contracted quantities a billed minimum — negotiate how you scale down, not just up.
📚 A steep initial learning curve and limited report customization, per public reviews.
🏭 Better suited to buildings and services than to a plant with heavy spare-parts logistics.
Who it suits? Facility managers, hospitality, retail, healthcare and service providers coordinating several teams, clients and suppliers across many sites.
9. Brightly Asset Essentials — familiar, supported, and the worst value score here
Overview
Brightly Asset Essentials, now a Siemens company, is a fixture in North American education, local government and healthcare estates. Functionally it is solid, and support is the most praised aspect in public reviews.
It is also the only product in this comparison whose value-for-money rating (3.3/5 across 195 reviews) sits a full point below its overall rating (4.4/5 across 272). The reviews behind that gap are specific: annual price increases, and implementation charges appearing after the sale — one reviewer describes being told data migration was included, then billed $1,500 and later a further $2,500. We report that because it is the kind of thing a comparison exists to surface.
Strengths
🏫 Deep familiarity with public-sector and education estates, including capital planning.
🛟 Support is the most praised aspect in public reviews.
📊 Flexible departmental reporting, useful when each building has its own budget owner.
🏛️ Siemens ownership removes the vendor-longevity question.
Weaknesses
💸 Value for money rated 3.3/5 across 195 reviews — a full point below its overall 4.4/5, and the weakest score of the panel.
🧾 Charges appearing after the sale: one reviewer describes being told data migration was included, then billed $1,500 and later a further $2,500.
🖱️ A dated interface, described as needing too many clicks to reach useful features.
🔒 No published pricing of any kind.
Who it suits? School districts, municipalities and healthcare estates that value sector familiarity — with the total cost pinned down in the contract, migration included.
10. GearTracker — the complement, not the replacement
Overview
GearTracker is not a CMMS, and this comparison ranks it accordingly. It has no scheduled work orders, no spare-parts inventory and no purchasing. What it does cover is the slice most CMMS handle badly: the individual life of a regulated item — inspections, repairs, who it is issued to — and whether that person still holds the certification to use it.
The pricing model inverts the category’s economics: $0.99 per item per year, with unlimited users on every plan, free up to 100 items. A hundred supervisors cost the same as one.
Strengths
🆓 Permanent free plan up to 100 items, with unlimited users on every plan, free included.
💶 Priced per item, not per user: a hundred technicians cost the same as one.
📱 Pre-populated equipment catalogue with NFC/barcode scanning and expiry alerts.
👤 The only tool here linking equipment, assignment, training and certification in one record.
Weaknesses
🚫 Not a CMMS replacement: no scheduled work orders, no spare-parts inventory, no purchasing.
⭐ No independent public review base, where MaintainX, UpKeep, Limble and Fiix each exceed 600 Capterra reviews.
🏢 A small, recent vendor against Rockwell, Fluke, Siemens and IBM — the continuity question is a fair one to raise in a procurement review.
Rollout & support — data migration, onboarding, documentation, time to value, support coverage.
How the scores were built. We first verified feature presence on the official product and pricing pages. We then penalized plan limitations, features available only as paid options, and the absence of published pricing. Capterra ratings are a corroborating signal, never functional proof: 4.7/5 on 16 reviews and 4.8/5 on 1,052 do not carry the same weight, and Capterra itself flags that several vendors in this category solicit reviews with a nominal incentive.
The per-criterion scores remain an editorial judgement, because no public standard converts a feature list into a number out of ten. They are shown and re-weightable precisely so you can disagree with our ordering using your own priorities. The features, prices and review volumes, by contrast, are tied to the sources below.
Change management — initial training, site champions, and the users’ own time.
Operation — support, interface upkeep, functional administration, data quality.
Exit — full export, attachment formats, reversibility, migration assistance.
A worked example: six users on MaintainX Premium billed annually is $390/month in subscription alone. The same six on Fiix Professional is $450/month. On UpKeep, one Premium admin plus five Essential technicians is $175/month — but without offline mode, which needs the unpriced Professional tier. Those numbers are not interchangeable, because the rights and features included differ. Always request quotes against the same role matrix and the same functional scope.
🧪 How to run a pilot a demo cannot fake
A vendor demo shows the product working in a perfect environment. A useful pilot starts from your data and your irritants:
Import 50 to 100 real assets, with hierarchy, criticality, documents and meters.
Run one complete cycle: request, diagnosis, planning, parts, offline execution, sign-off, cost.
Create one calendar-based PM and one meter-based PM; check deferrals, conflicts and alerts.
Simulate a stockout and a purchase order.
Involve real technicians, requesters and planners — not only the project team.
Export your data and attachments to test reversibility.
Measure five indicators before and after: PM completion on time, backlog, response time, work-order write-up quality, inventory accuracy.
The best pilot is not the one where everything works. It is the one that surfaces the product’s trade-offs before you sign.
🤔 Seven questions to ask before choosing
Which problem comes first? Breakdowns, preventive, parts, compliance, contractors or cost. Without a priority, the requirements list becomes infinite.
Who enters what? If the technician does not close work orders or record parts used, every KPI you build will be wrong.
Is offline real? Test creation, edits, photos, parts and sync in airplane mode. Check which plan it needs.
Which roles are billed? A requester, a contractor and a technician have different needs. Refuse a quote without a rights matrix.
What is actually included in “API available”? It may mean an Enterprise module, a call quota, or a paid integration project.
Cloud or on-premise? Cloud simplifies operations; on-premise answers some industrial constraints but moves the technical maintenance to you.
How do you get your data back? Require formats, attachments, history, export frequency and exit assistance in the contract.
Other credible products we did not rank
This comparison does not claim to cover every case. Depending on your sector and size, also consider:
SAP EAM, Hexagon EAM, IFS Ultimo, AVEVA for very large estates and complex IT landscapes;
Fracttal One, MicroMain, Maintenance Care, Click Maint, Hippo among the mid-market cloud CMMS;
Planon, Archibus, Spacewell, Eptura for IWMS and real-estate-led projects;
ServiceTitan, Jobber, Synchroteam, Praxedo when the real need is field service dispatch rather than asset maintenance.
We did not rank them because we did not verify their current grids, plan limits and international fit to the same standard. Their absence is not a quality judgement.
❓ Frequently asked questions
Is a CMMS legally required?
No. The software is not required anywhere. What is required is that you maintain equipment in safe working order and, for a long list of equipment types, keep inspection records. A CMMS is a way to plan and evidence those obligations; it is not automatic proof of compliance.
Is there a genuinely free CMMS?
Yes, with limits. MaintainX Basic gives unlimited work orders but caps repeating orders and procedures at two each. Fiix Free includes assets, inventory and work orders but limits users and active PM tasks to 25. ManWinWin Express is free forever for 100 assets and one user. GearTracker is free up to 100 items with unlimited users, but is not a CMMS.
What is the best CMMS for a small business?
MaintainX if mobile adoption is the priority and you can budget Premium. ManWinWin Express if you want to start at zero cost and grow into the same product. Fiix Free if you want to prototype an asset hierarchy before committing. UpKeep if you have many occasional requesters — but get Professional pricing in writing first.
What is the best CMMS for a large industrial group?
IBM Maximo remains the deepest on asset lifecycle, linear assets, condition monitoring and enterprise integration. Fiix Enterprise and eMaint Enterprise are the serious mid-weights, with eMaint the one to shortlist if you operate validated environments. The decision usually turns on ERP integration, multi-site governance and data migration rather than on features.
Is a CMMS the same as inspection software?
No. A CMMS plans and records maintenance work. Inspection software produces the record that a competent person examined a specific item against defined criteria on a specific date. Some CMMS import inspection reports and track corrective actions, but they do not replace the inspection itself. See our equipment inspection software guide.
Can a CMMS manage PPE?
It can hold PPE as assets or stock items. It rarely handles individual assignment, per-item inspection history, manufacturer models and the wearer’s certifications as well as a specialized tool. For that scope, something like GearTracker complements the CMMS rather than competing with it.
🚀 Conclusion
For most mid-sized maintenance teams, MaintainX is the sane starting point: it is the one product here whose adoption is not in doubt, and its pricing is fully published. If you value being carried through the rollout more than you value comparing price sheets, Limble is its closest rival — provided you accept that the price only appears after a sales call.
For an industrial site, Fiix offers the best combination of depth and published pricing, and eMaint is the one to shortlist for validated environments. For a very large asset estate, IBM Maximo is still the benchmark, and the decision is an IT programme rather than a software purchase.
For facilities and multi-party estates, Infraspeak has the best collaboration model; Brightly is the familiar choice in North American education and government, with the caveat on total cost above. For a small European site, ManWinWin Express is the cheapest credible way to start.
And if your actual problem is equipment and certification compliance rather than work-order management, do not over-buy a CMMS: GearTracker answers that need more precisely, and pairs with any of the above.
The right choice does not come out of a fixed podium. Use the interactive comparison, then put your two finalists through the same pilot, with your assets, your technicians and your scenarios.