Stowly vs Sortly: Which One Fits a Home Inventory?

Updated August 8, 2026

These two products get compared a lot, usually by someone searching for a way to catalogue their house. That comparison is a bit unfair to both — they are built for different people. Sortly is a capable business inventory system that happens to be usable at home. Stowly is a home inventory app that would be a poor choice for a warehouse. Here is the honest version, so you can tell quickly which one you actually want.

What each one is actually for

Sortly describes itself as helping businesses track inventory, materials, parts, tools, and equipment. Its feature set follows from that: stock levels, low-stock alerts, purchase orders, user licences for your team, and folder structures built around SKUs. Stowly is built around a household — rooms rather than warehouses, warranties rather than reorder points, and a single plan that covers everyone you live with rather than per-seat licensing. Neither is a worse product; they are answers to different questions.

The item limit is the difference you will feel first

This is the practical fork in the road. At the time of writing, Sortly's free plan allows 100 unique items and one user, and raising that cap means moving up a tier — the entry-level paid plan sits around $49 a month for 500 items. That is sensible pricing for a business tracking stock it sells. It is a hard ceiling for a house: a furnished family home catalogued at a level that is actually useful for insurance runs well past 100 items, often into several hundred.

Stowly does not cap items at all, on any plan including the free one. That is a deliberate choice — we think charging people for the capacity to write down what they own is charging for the wrong thing.

What it costs

• Sortly (at the time of writing): free for 100 items and one user; paid tiers from roughly $49/month, rising steeply for higher item counts
• Stowly: free for unlimited items and rooms, no credit card; Plus $4.99/month; Pro $9.99/month
• Sortly prices per business tier; Stowly's Pro plan covers your whole household on one subscription
• Both offer annual billing at a discount

The gap is not really about being cheaper. It is that the two products are priced for different buyers — business software is priced against the cost of losing stock, and household software is priced against a personal budget.

Features built for a house rather than a warehouse

Sortly has things Stowly does not: purchase orders, stock quantity management, low-stock alerts, and team user licences. If you need those, stop reading and use Sortly. Stowly has things Sortly does not, and they are the ones that matter at home — warranty and return-window tracking with reminders before they lapse, an insurance-ready PDF export with photos and values to hand your insurer, a stocktake mode for walking a room, and read-only links to share your inventory with an adjuster or a family member.

Getting your data back out

Worth checking with any inventory tool before you invest hours in it. At the time of writing, Sortly's CSV export is a paid feature, so a free-plan user who wants to leave has to copy their items out by hand. Stowly's CSV export and import come with Plus at $4.99 a month, and full self-serve account deletion is free and built in. Neither is unusual for the category — but if data portability matters to you, check where it sits on the plan you are actually going to use.

When Sortly is the right choice

• You are tracking stock, parts, or materials for a business
• You need purchase orders, reorder points, or low-stock alerts
• Several employees need their own logins and permissions
• You are managing equipment across job sites or locations
• Offline access in a warehouse or basement matters to you

When Stowly is the right choice

• You are cataloguing your own home, flat, or storage unit
• You want a record your insurer would accept after a fire, flood, or theft
• You have more than a hundred things and do not want to pay for capacity
• You want warranty and return dates tracked and reminded
• You want your partner or family on the same inventory without buying seats

The honest summary

If you run a business that holds stock, Sortly is a genuinely good tool and this comparison is not the one you should be reading. If you are standing in your living room wondering how you would ever prove what is in it, that is the problem Stowly was built for — and you can catalogue the whole house on the free plan without hitting a wall.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sortly free? It has a permanent free plan, capped at the time of writing at 100 unique items and one user, with export, label printing, and offline access on paid tiers. Check their current pricing before deciding, since these change.

Can I move my Sortly inventory into Stowly? If you can export a CSV from Sortly, Stowly's CSV import will bring it across — that comes with Plus. For a hundred items or fewer, re-entering with barcode scanning or quick-add is genuinely quick.

Which is better for insurance? Stowly, because it is built for it — warranty tracking, receipts attached to items, and a PDF export laid out for an adjuster. Sortly can hold the same underlying data, but you would be assembling the claim document yourself.