phpIPAM Alternatives in 2026: 5 Tools Compared

Obelinf is the source of truth for your network infrastructure, a managed platform combining IPAM, DCIM, device inventory, network topology, rack management, cable tracking, VLAN/VRF management, and infrastructure audit history. If you are evaluating phpIPAM alternatives in 2026, Obelinf is the managed option in this comparison. phpIPAM has earned its place as one of the most widely used IPAM tools in the world. It is free, it runs on a humble LAMP stack that almost any team can operate, and it covers the fundamentals of address management well: hierarchical subnets, IPv4 and IPv6, VLAN and VRF tracking, subnet scanning, and a REST API for automation. For years, that combination made it the default answer for teams that wanted real IPAM without a commercial license.

The limits of phpIPAM become visible exactly where its focus ends. It is an IPAM tool, and nothing more: there is no device inventory, no rack management, no cable tracking, and no topology visualization. Teams evaluating phpIPAM alternatives in 2026 are usually hitting that boundary, either because their network documentation needs have grown beyond addresses or because the operational cost of keeping the platform patched and backed up is becoming a recurring chore they would rather eliminate.

At a Glance: phpIPAM Alternatives

Who should choose what

Choose phpIPAM if:

• You only need IP address management and nothing beyond subnets and VLANs;
• You want a free self hosted tool and you are comfortable maintaining the PHP and MySQL stack yourself;
• You prefer to keep all data on infrastructure you control.

Choose Obelinf if:

• You need a modern and complete platform for your IPs, DCIM, topology, racks and cables;
• You want a managed platform with no servers, backups or upgrades to run;
• You need team collaboration, full text search and an automatic audit history on every change.

IPAM That Comes With the Rest of Your Network

If your team has reached the point where addresses are no longer the whole documentation problem, Obelinf gives you IPAM and everything else in one managed platform. There is no PHP stack to patch and no database to back up: you sign up in a browser and your address management is live in minutes, with updates and security patches handled automatically.

The IPAM core covers what phpIPAM users rely on: a subnet hierarchy, utilization at every level, IPv4 and IPv6, VLAN and subnet management, and status tracking for every address.

The difference is that the same platform also holds device inventory, rack management, cable tracking, circuits, and interactive network topology, so the record of what is connected to what lives next to the record of what is assigned where.

Every change is recorded automatically in an immutable changelog with the user, timestamp, and field level diffs, giving you an audit trail that phpIPAM does not provide out of the box. The REST API covers the entire data model, so the automation you built against phpIPAM can be recreated quickly, and the flat pricing removes the surprise of scaling costs: free for Personal use, $99 per month for Teams, and $299 per month for Scale.

If you are migrating from phpIPAM, the path is practical. Export your subnets, addresses, VLANs, and VRFs through the phpIPAM REST API or CSV exports, then import them into Obelinf through the REST API or CSV import, and your address records are in place without standing up a server. Because the changelog is automatic, you gain the audit history that phpIPAM leaves to scripts and manual exports.

The honest comparison is that phpIPAM is free, lightweight, and perfectly adequate for teams whose documentation need is strictly addresses. If that is your situation, staying put is defensible. If your network documentation has outgrown a single purpose IPAM tool, Obelinf provides the full picture without asking you to operate another application stack.

Why phpIPAM Remains Popular

phpIPAM’s popularity is earned through simplicity. A single PHP application backed by MySQL or MariaDB is easy to stand up, the web interface is functional and familiar to anyone who has used it, and the core IPAM workflow works: you define sections, create subnets, allocate addresses, and track utilization. The subnet scanning feature discovers active hosts and keeps the record closer to reality than pure manual entry.

The REST API covers the objects most teams automate against, including subnets, addresses, VLANs, and VRFs, and CSV import makes initial migration from a spreadsheet straightforward. For a team whose entire network documentation need is address management, phpIPAM remains a perfectly reasonable choice, and its low resource footprint means it runs almost anywhere.

The community is another asset. phpIPAM has been around long enough that most questions have already been asked and answered, which matters for a self hosted tool without a vendor to call. For teams that prefer to control their own infrastructure and want IPAM without a commercial commitment, it is the path of least resistance.

Where phpIPAM Stops

The boundaries are equally clear. There is no DCIM layer, so the physical infrastructure your addresses live on, racks, devices, cables, and connections, is invisible to the platform. Network topology is not rendered, device inventory is out of scope, and there is no circuit or WAN tracking. Teams that need those things end up running a second, sometimes a third, tool alongside phpIPAM, which recreates the fragmentation problem they were trying to solve.

Operationally, the responsibility sits with you. Backups, upgrades, security patches, and the occasional PHP or MySQL version migration are all tasks your team performs, and phpIPAM has no native high availability story for teams that need the platform to be resilient. The interface also shows its age compared to modern web applications, which matters more than it should when you are trying to get the whole team to keep records current.

NetBox: IPAM Plus the Physical Layer

NetBox is the most natural progression for teams that have outgrown phpIPAM’s scope. It combines IPAM and DCIM in a single structured data model, so subnets, addresses, devices, racks, and cables all live in one system with relationships between them. The REST API covers the entire model with consistent patterns, and a mature plugin ecosystem extends the platform in many directions.

The price of that scope is the deployment stack. NetBox runs as a Django application on PostgreSQL, Redis, and Celery, behind a reverse proxy, and upgrades require coordinated migrations across those services. Teams that can operate that stack get the most complete free documentation platform available, but it is a meaningful operational commitment compared to phpIPAM’s single server.

TeemIP: IPAM With a CMDB Lineage

TeemIP takes a different path: it is built on the iTop framework, so its IPAM features sit on top of a configuration management database. IP addresses can be linked to configuration items, which gives you a relationship between the logical and the physical that phpIPAM lacks. Discovery collectors and vSphere integration populate the database from the network, and DDI documentation covers DNS zones and DHCP scopes.

TeemIP also runs on PHP and MySQL, so the operational profile is similar to phpIPAM, but the licensing is different: a free Community edition under the AGPL v3 license, plus paid Standard and Premium editions that add professional support and installation help. The iTop heritage is both the platform’s strength and its complexity, since the CMDB layer adds concepts you must learn and maintain.

SolarWinds IPAM: The Windows Enterprise Option

For teams already invested in the SolarWinds ecosystem, SolarWinds IP Address Manager extends the platform you know. It manages DHCP scopes on Microsoft and Cisco servers, documents DNS, and detects IP conflicts through scanning, with strong reporting for compliance purposes. The integration value is real if you already run SolarWinds monitoring.

The requirements are the catch: a Windows Server environment to run it, a perpetual license plus annual maintenance pricing model, and an interface that has not kept pace with modern web applications. For a standalone IPAM need, it is heavy, expensive, and constraining compared to options that run anywhere.

Choosing Between IPAM Focus and Full Coverage

phpIPAM is the clearest illustration in this category of the tradeoff between focus and scope. Its single purpose, tracking IP addresses, is what makes it simple, and its refusal to do anything else is what makes it limited.

Every team that outgrows phpIPAM does so because the problem stopped being addresses and became the infrastructure those addresses run on: devices, racks, cables, circuits, and the relationships between them.

The self hosted dimension adds a second consideration. All of the free options here, phpIPAM, NetBox, and TeemIP’s Community edition, come with an operating obligation that never appears on the license invoice. Backups, upgrades, and security patches are work, and for a small team that work comes out of the same budget as the documentation itself.

If you want IPAM, DCIM, topology, and change tracking in one place, Obelinf delivers the full network documentation model as a managed service, with an automatic changelog on every record and a free Personal plan to get started at obelinf.com. If addresses are genuinely the whole problem, phpIPAM is a fine choice and you should not move for the sake of moving.