What Is osTicket? Free Open-Source Help Desk, Paid Options and Limits (2026)

osTicket is a free, GPL-2.0 open-source help desk from Enhancesoft that you install on your own PHP and MySQL server, with no limit on agents, tickets or time. The paid routes are the SupportSystem cloud edition from $12 per agent a month and support contracts from $12,500 a year. Prices below were read on osTicket's own pages on September 20, 2026 and rechecked on September 24, 2026.

What is osTicket, and who develops it?

osTicket is a web application written in PHP that turns email, a web form and phone notes into a shared ticket queue. Customers get a portal where they file and track requests; agents get a queue, canned replies, help topics, departments, SLA plans and a knowledge base. It runs on Apache or IIS with MySQL behind it, and the project's own README lists PHP 8.2 to 8.4 as the supported range, 8.4 recommended.

The project is owned and developed by Enhancesoft, which also sells the hosted version. osTicket's About page names four developers on the team. That structure matters more than it sounds: the same company that gives the software away also sells the hosting, the support contracts and the training, so the free edition is the top of a commercial funnel rather than a volunteer side project. The incentive runs toward keeping the free version capable enough to adopt and inconvenient enough that a busy team eventually pays for hosting.

On GitHub the repository carries a GPL-2.0 license, 3.9k stars, 1.8k forks, 121 contributors and 115 releases, with 866 open issues and 329 open pull requests as of September 20, 2026.

Release cadence is the number worth sitting with. Pulling the dates from osTicket's own blog feed: v1.18.0 landed in June 2023, v1.18.1 in October 2023, v1.18.2 in February 2025, v1.18.3 in January 2026 and v1.18.4 in June 2026. Every one of those release notes describes security updates, bug fixes and PHP compatibility. None of them describes a new feature. osTicket 1.x is in maintenance.

The sequel is being advertised, though. next.osticket.com announces osTicket 2.0 as a ground-up rewrite with an API-first architecture, support for database engines beyond MySQL, a redesigned ticket workspace, a page-builder CMS and a theming system. The page has a "Get Notified" button and no ship date, and it doesn't say whether 2.0 arrives under the same license. Treat it as an announcement and plan around 1.18.

What does the free osTicket edition include?

The download is free with no seat cap, no ticket cap and no time limit. osTicket's FAQ states it plainly: the software is distributed under the GPL, so you can download, use, modify and share it. There is no agent limit to hit, no trial clock, and no feature held behind a paywall inside the application itself.

What the free edition does not include, per that same editions table read on September 20, 2026: phone and email support, a walk-through session, managed upgrades and maintenance, guaranteed uptime, and daily backups. Community support means the public forum, where answers arrive when someone feels like answering.

So the honest summary of the free limits is that every one of them is operational:

• Seats and tickets: unlimited, genuinely.
• Hosting: yours. A small VPS runs it comfortably; you are buying the box, the TLS certificate and the backups.
• Upgrades: yours. Every security release is a file upload and a database migration you perform.
• Email: yours to configure. Microsoft and Google have moved to OAuth2, which osTicket handles through a separate plugin you install and configure.
• Support: the forum, or a commercial contract.

One thing to check before you install: osTicket's FAQ page lists PHP 8.1–8.2 as the requirement for the 1.18 series (the 1.17 series before it is listed at 8.0–8.2), while the README and every release note since v1.18.2 say PHP 8.2–8.4. Both pages were live on September 20, 2026. Follow the release notes.

How much does osTicket cost if you don't self-host?

Three paid routes exist, and they are priced very differently from each other.

The hosted edition, SupportSystem. Enhancesoft's cloud version is osTicket that somebody else patches. Its pricing page lists Basic at $12 per agent a month, Standard at $16 and Premium at $24, with a 30-day trial and no commitment. All three include unlimited tickets, unlimited end users and unlimited email addresses. What separates them is small: attachment size limits of 2 MB, 8 MB and 16 MB, three, six or nine custom domains, and SAML authentication plus a help desk audit only on Premium.

A 2 MB attachment cap on the entry plan is worth pausing over if your customers send screenshots. The page's own FAQ says oversized attachments on an email are dropped individually while the rest are accepted, so the failure is silent from the sender's side.

Commercial support on your own install. This is where the numbers jump. osTicket's commercial support page lists Premium Business Support at $12,500 a year for unlimited phone and email support between 1:00 am and 5:00 pm US Central, with a 12-hour guaranteed response, and Enterprise On-Call Support at $25,000 a year, which adds 24/7 on-call developer support, hosting infrastructure support and a 6-hour response.

Services. A 4-hour training and onboarding session over Zoom is $999. The Virtual Appliance edition is quote-only.

Put those next to each other and the shape of the offer is clear. A five-agent team pays $0 self-hosted, or $720 a year on SupportSystem Basic, or $12,500 a year for a support contract on their own install. The support contract is priced for organizations where an unanswered forum thread becomes a compliance problem. A small IT team will never buy one.

Who should use osTicket, and who shouldn't?

osTicket fits teams with three things: someone comfortable running a PHP application, a requirement that data stays on infrastructure you control, and a workload that is mostly email in, email out. Universities, municipal IT, MSPs running per-client installs and internal help desks in regulated industries are the recurring profiles. The absence of a seat cap is the real draw, and it is the one thing no free SaaS tier matches.

It is the wrong choice if you want chat, social or WhatsApp in the same inbox, if nobody on the team will own patching, if you need an iOS and Android app your agents will actually use, or if your buying criterion is "modern interface". That last point is the most consistent complaint in the review data, and reviewers make it while still rating the product well.

On G2, osTicket sits at 4.4 out of 5 from 45 reviews; on Capterra it is 4.3 from 76, with ease of use at 4.3 and customer service at 4.1, last updated September 16, 2026 (both read in a browser on September 20, 2026). Jeff C, an IT assistant manager at a 201–500 employee health and wellness company, wrote on May 20, 2026: "One downside of osTicket is that the user interface can feel somewhat outdated compared to newer help desk platforms." A verified G2 reviewer in primary and secondary education, at a business of 50 or fewer employees, was more concrete on May 26, 2023: "More CSS/customization options would be nice. Had to go into the PHP to make the table full width for a modern display." And devmansur R., also at a business of 50 or fewer employees, on February 27, 2024: "The design, the current design is bit old, and the dashboard is not mobile responsive."

Reddit's IT threads read the same way. r/sysadmin has a standing thread literally titled "Free ticketing system - Other than OSTicket or Zammad?", which is a good measure of the product's position: it is the default answer people are trying to get past.

How does osTicket compare with FreeScout, Zammad and Freshdesk?

Three alternatives cover the realistic decision, and one of them is paid on purpose.

FreeScout is the closest like-for-like and the more modern interface. Its core is free and unlimited, and its paid modules are one-time purchases instead of subscriptions: Workflows is $14.99, Knowledge Base $12.00 and API & Webhooks $12.99 on the USD prices published in its store. That trade is real: FreeScout looks better and costs a few hundred dollars once, where osTicket ships SLAs and departments in the box.

Zammad is the pick when the desk is an IT service desk rather than a customer inbox. Self-hosting is free; the hosted plans start at €7 per agent a month billed annually and cap Starter at five agents, with SLAs only from Professional at €16.

Freshdesk is the paid comparison, and the reason it belongs here is that people arrive at osTicket after Freshdesk stops being free. Freshworks' pricing page now lists only Growth, Pro and Enterprise, at $19, $55 and $89 per agent a month billed annually on the US-served page as of September 20, 2026, and the only free entry on it is a 14-day trial. The old free plan is gone from that page; Freshworks now runs a separate Free program that covers up to 2 agents for 6 months, which is a runway rather than a permanent tier. If you landed here from that change, our roundup of free IT ticketing systems and free help desk software cover the rest of the field.

For a broader view of self-hosted options, the open-source ticketing systems roundup ranks them side by side, and our Chatwoot guide covers the chat-first end of the same category.

Which osTicket alternative fits what you're escaping?

The comparison above is the like-for-like one. This is the routing version, because most people searching for an osTicket alternative already know what is wrong and want the shortest path out of it. There are four common reasons to leave, and they point at different products.

Prices in that table were read on each vendor's own page: Jira Service Management, Spiceworks, Zammad, FreeScout, Help Scout and Freshdesk on September 20, 2026, and Zoho Desk on a US-served read of its pricing page on September 22, 2026. Zoho's page serves local currency outside the United States, so confirm the figure on the page your billing entity will buy from.

The honest ranking, if you want one. If the seat count is what brought you to osTicket in the first place, only the self-hosted options keep it unlimited, and FreeScout is the one people move to when the complaint is the interface. If you are leaving because maintenance is the real cost, the free cloud tiers are tighter than osTicket on seats but free of the patching duty: three agents on Jira Service Management, five technicians on Spiceworks, three users on Zoho Desk, five on Help Scout. And if you are leaving because osTicket 1.x is in maintenance mode and you want a roadmap, that argues for a hosted product, because every self-hosted alternative here carries the same risk in a different repository.

Who should stay on osTicket. If you have a server, someone who patches it, and a workload that is mostly email in and email out, nothing on this list beats free and unlimited. Departments, help topics, SLA plans and a customer portal all ship in the box, which is more than FreeScout gives you before you buy modules. The reason to move is almost never the feature set.

How we researched this

We read osTicket's homepage, editions, features, FAQ, commercial support and professional services pages, the SupportSystem pricing page, the GitHub repository, the project's blog feed for release dates, and the osTicket 2.0 announcement site, all on September 20, 2026, and rechecked the SupportSystem prices, support contract prices, latest GitHub release (still v1.18.4, June 17, 2026) and Freshdesk's pricing page on September 24, 2026, and we captured the screenshots in this post on the same day from those public pages. We pulled the G2 and Capterra ratings in a real browser session because both block scripted requests. We did not install osTicket on our own server for this guide, so every screenshot is the vendor's own and no claim here rests on a first-hand test. Reddit threads are cited by title and link; we did not quote thread contents.

Frequently asked questions

Is osTicket really free? Yes. The self-hosted edition is distributed under the GNU General Public License with no agent limit, no ticket limit and no time limit, and osTicket's own FAQ says so. You pay for hosting, and optionally for support, training or the cloud edition.

How much does osTicket cost if I don't want to self-host? The hosted edition, SupportSystem, is $12 per agent a month on Basic, $16 on Standard and $24 on Premium, with a 30-day free trial, as published on September 20, 2026. Attachment limits are 2 MB, 8 MB and 16 MB respectively, and SAML is Premium only.

What does osTicket's paid support cost? Premium Business Support is $12,500 a year and Enterprise On-Call Support is $25,000 a year on osTicket's commercial support page. A 4-hour training and onboarding session over Zoom is $999. Both are contracts for organizations with an uptime obligation.

What are osTicket's system requirements? Apache, LiteSpeed or IIS with URL rewriting, PHP 8.2 to 8.4 with 8.4 recommended, the mysqli extension, and MySQL 5.5 or later. Note that osTicket's FAQ page still shows an older PHP range than the README and the release notes; follow the release notes.

Is osTicket still being developed? 1.x is in maintenance. Five releases shipped in the 1.18 line between June 2023 and June 2026, and each release note lists security fixes, bug fixes and PHP compatibility rather than features. A ground-up rewrite called osTicket 2.0 is announced at next.osticket.com with no published ship date.

What's the best alternative to osTicket? FreeScout if you want a modern shared-inbox interface and can pay one-time module fees, Zammad if it's an IT service desk and you want SLAs, and a hosted product such as Freshdesk if nobody on the team will own patching. Freshdesk's pricing page no longer lists a free plan, so that route starts at $19 per agent a month after the 14-day trial or the 6-month Free program for up to 2 agents.

What are the best free alternatives to osTicket? Self-hosted, FreeScout and Zammad both run free with no agent cap, in exchange for the same patching duty osTicket carries. Hosted, the free tiers are smaller but maintenance-free: Jira Service Management is free forever for 3 agents, Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk is free for 1 to 5 technician seats with unlimited end users, Zoho Desk's Free edition covers 3 user licenses and Help Scout's free plan covers 5 users with one inbox. Freshdesk's pricing page no longer lists a free plan; its Free program covers only 2 agents for 6 months. Prices verified on each vendor's own page in September 2026.

Does osTicket have a mobile app? There is an osTicket Admin app in Apple's App Store, and reviewers consistently describe the agent web interface as not mobile-responsive. If phone access for agents is a requirement, test it before you commit rather than after.

Sources: osticket.com/editions · osticket.com/faq · osticket.com/commercial-support · osticket.com/professional-support · supportsystem.com/pricing · github.com/osTicket/osTicket · next.osticket.com · forum.osticket.com · G2 osTicket reviews · Capterra osTicket reviews · freescout.net/modules · zammad.com/en/pricing · freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing