Free RMM · 2026
Free RMM tools exist, and some of them are good. But the word covers three different deals: a capped free tier, a trial with an invoice at the end, and open source software you host yourself. This guide names the limits and puts honest numbers on what free costs to run.
The short answer
If you want to pay nothing and stay under a small device count, a capped free tier works until you outgrow it. If you want free with no cap, the answer is open source you host yourself. Breeze Community is the full Breeze platform under AGPL-3.0: every module, no device or technician limit, no time limit. You bring a server and, if you want the AI operator, your own Anthropic API key. What you pay is a server bill and a few hours a month of upkeep.
New to the category? Start with what RMM is. If you already know what you need, the only question here is which kind of free you are being offered.
A commercial vendor lets you run the product at no charge up to a device limit, or with some features held back for paid plans. Action1's free tier covers 200 endpoints. NetLock RMM's Community Edition covers 25 devices. That is a fair deal while you fit under the cap, and a migration or an invoice once you do not.
A trial is a paid product with a delayed invoice. It is useful for evaluation and nothing else. Ask what the price is on the day the trial ends, and whether there is a contract minimum behind it.
The license costs nothing and there is no vendor-side meter. You supply a server and the time to run it. This is the only kind of free that does not expire or cap out by design, and it is also the only kind where the uptime, the updates, and the backups are your job.
Two questions decide whether a free RMM tool stays free for you: where is the cap, and what sits behind the paid tier. For a feature-by-feature matrix of the open source projects, see our open source RMM guide.
| Option | Kind of free | Device limit | What is and is not included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action1 (free tier) Free vs open source → | Commercial free tier | 200 endpoints | Capped by endpoint count. Check the vendor for what applies above the cap. |
| NetLock RMM Community Breeze vs NetLock → | Open source (AGPL-3.0), self-hosted | 25 devices | Core platform including multi-tenancy, remote tools, security baseline, and whitelabel. A paid Professional tier lifts the device limit. |
| Tactical RMM Breeze vs Tactical RMM → | Source-available (custom Tactical RMM License), self-hosted | No device cap | Core monitoring and scripting are free. Code-signed agent builds, SSO, and reporting require a paid sponsorship tier. |
| MeshCentral Breeze vs MeshCentral → | Open source (Apache-2.0), self-hosted | No device cap | Nothing is paywalled. It is a remote access toolkit, not a full RMM: no patch management, monitoring, or alerting. |
| Breeze Community Breeze pricing → | Open source (AGPL-3.0), self-hosted | No device or technician limit | All 64 modules with no feature gating. The AI operator is included and runs on your own Anthropic API key. |
Action1 (free tier)
NetLock RMM Community
Tactical RMM
MeshCentral
Breeze Community
Vendor limits and prices change. Figures reflect what was published when our comparison pages were last reviewed. Confirm on the vendor's own site before you commit.
Breeze Community is the self-hosted edition of Breeze. It is not a trimmed-down build. It is the same platform that runs Breeze Cloud, released under AGPL-3.0 with the agent and server source public on GitHub.
The API key is optional. Breeze is fully functional as a traditional RMM without the operator.
Free RMM software is never zero cost. With a commercial free tier you pay in caps and upgrade pressure. With open source you pay in infrastructure and time. The figures below come from the self-hosted cost model in our RMM pricing index, with its assumptions stated so you can adjust them.
This is the small number. Across the four scenarios in the model, from a solo lab to a high-availability production setup, compute, database, and a backup reserve came to between $27 and $79 per month.
This is the large number. The model budgets 4 to 12 hours a month for updates, troubleshooting, security patches, and backup verification. At its assumed $100 per hour loaded labor rate, labor is 94 to 95 percent of the total in every scenario.
When a hosted vendor has a vulnerability, they patch it. When your deployment has one, you patch it, and the clock starts when you notice. There is no on-call rotation but yours.
The honest read: free self-hosted RMM works well for teams with real technical depth who treat the platform as infrastructure they own. It works poorly for teams that adopt it to save money and then underinvest in the upkeep. Our self-hosted RMM guide covers the requirements and security responsibilities in detail.
If nobody on your team wants to own updates, backups, and host security for a critical system, the hours you spend running a free RMM can cost more than a hosted plan. Breeze Cloud is the same platform on infrastructure we run, sold at a flat price rather than per device. It is in public beta with US and EU regions, and migration tooling carries your data, configuration, and device enrollments from self-hosted Community to Cloud if you change your mind later. Current plans are on the pricing page.
Yes, but check which kind of free you are being offered. Commercial free tiers are capped: Action1's free tier covers 200 endpoints and NetLock RMM's Community Edition covers 25 devices. Open source RMM is free at the license level instead: Breeze Community is AGPL-3.0 with no device or technician limit and no feature gating. With any self-hosted option your real cost is the server and the time to run it.
You run the server yourself, so updates, backups, and TLS are your job. The AI operator is included but bring-your-own-key: you supply an Anthropic API key. Support on the free edition is community support on Discord. Breeze makes money from the hosted Cloud plan, paid self-host support plans, and Managed AI Ops, not from charging you to run software on your own hardware.
With open source licenses, yes. AGPL-3.0 (Breeze, NetLock RMM) and Apache-2.0 (MeshCentral) both permit commercial use, so an MSP can manage paying clients with no license fee. The AGPL obligation only triggers if you modify the software and offer the modified version to third parties as a network service. Tactical RMM is different: it uses its own custom license, and commercial or hosted resale requires prior written approval from AmidaWare.
It depends on the kind of free. Capped free tiers set a hard number: 200 endpoints on Action1's free tier, 25 devices on NetLock RMM's Community Edition. Self-hosted Breeze Community has no device or technician limit at all, and the practical ceiling is the size of the server you run it on.
The license is zero. In the self-hosted cost model in our RMM pricing index, server, database, and backup reserve came to between $27 and $79 per month across four deployment scenarios. The larger cost is time: the same model budgets 4 to 12 hours of maintenance per month, and at its assumed $100 per hour labor rate that time is 94 to 95 percent of the total.
Disclosure: this page is published by Breeze, and Breeze is one of the options on it. We are not neutral. Statements about other products are drawn from our reviewed comparison pages If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Deploy Breeze Community on your own server with Docker Compose, with no device limit and no license fee. Or start the Cloud beta and skip the server work.
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