Draft. This page is excluded from the sitemap and marked noindex. Claims are placeholders until they have been verified against Sortly's current public pages.
Sortly alternative with AI
Squared Away vs Sortly
Same job — know what you own and where it is. Different way in: Sortly wants you to label and scan it, Squared Away wants you to photograph it. Here is the honest side-by-side, with links to Sortly's own pages.
Start FreeiOS, Android & Web · Free to start · No credit card
Which one should you actually pick?
Choose Squared Away if
- You have a truck, a gang box, or a store room full of gear and no appetite for typing it all in
- You want to photograph a shelf and have the items identified, named, and valued
- You want labels to be optional — tag the twenty things worth tagging, photograph the other four hundred
- You want to search in plain English — "what's on Truck 4?" — instead of building a filter
- You are a small crew and $49/mo for two seats is more than the problem is worth
Choose Sortly if
- You need purchase orders and pick lists — we do not have either
- You need QuickBooks Online sync today
- You are tracking more than about 1,000 items; Sortly's higher tiers go to 10,000+ and ours do not
- You need an API right now — theirs exists on Enterprise, ours is still coming
- You want a longer-established product with a bigger install base behind it
Squared Away vs Sortly, feature by feature
| Feature | Squared Away | Sortly |
|---|---|---|
| AI photo capturePoint a phone at a shelf and have the items identified, named, and valued — no typing.Sortly features page(opens in a new tab) · checked | Multiple items recognised from one photo | Photos are stored, not analysed |
| Plain-English searchAsk a question instead of building a filter.Sortly features page(opens in a new tab) · checked | Search, folders, tags and custom fields | |
| Barcode scanningScanning an existing barcode to identify an item.Sortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | Every plan, including free | Every plan, including free |
| QR label creationGenerating and printing your own labels for your assets.Sortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | Business plans, from $29/mo | Advanced up, from $49/mo list |
| Purchase orders & pick listsSortly features page(opens in a new tab) · checked | ||
| Accounting integrationSortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | QuickBooks Online, from Premium | |
| API accessSortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | Coming soon | Enterprise onlyAPI and webhooks are on the quote-only tier |
| Free tierSortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | 10 items, 1 user | 100 items, 1 user |
| Cost for 500 itemsThe tier each product needs to hold a 500-item inventory.Sortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | $14.99/moPro — 500 items, 3 users | $49/moAdvanced — 500 items, 2 users (list price) |
| Item ceilingThe largest inventory each product will hold.Sortly pricing page(opens in a new tab) · checked | 1,000Plus capacity boosts | 10,000+On Enterprise |
Competitor details verified against their own public pages on . Products change — if you spot something out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.
What each one costs
Like-for-like on the plan you would actually buy to hold a few hundred tools.
Squared Away Free
$0
10 items · 1 user
Squared Away Pro
$14.99/mo
500 items · 3 users
Sortly's listed prices are $24/mo for Advanced and $74/mo for Ultra, but their page states the 50% discount "applies only to first year of new customer subscriptions" — so $49 and $149 are what you pay from year two. Squared Away Starter is $7.99/mo (200 items) and Ultra is $24.99/mo (1,000 items, 5 users); if you outgrow a plan you can add capacity boosts rather than jumping a tier.
Pricing verified . See our full pricing.
The real difference is how the inventory gets created
Every inventory app is easy once the data is in. The reason most tool inventories die is the first afternoon — somebody has to walk the yard and type in four hundred things, and nobody ever does.
Sortly's answer is labels. You print QR or barcode stickers, put one on each asset, and scan. That genuinely works, and if your gear is already labelled it is fast. But it front-loads the same problem: somebody still has to create the four hundred records, and now they also have to stick four hundred labels on things that live in the weather.
Squared Away's answer is the camera. Open the gang box, take a photo, and the AI identifies what it can see — names it, categorises it, estimates a replacement value. You correct what it got wrong. A van that would have been an evening of data entry is about fifteen minutes.
We do labels too. Scanning is on every plan; generating and bulk-printing your own QR labels is on a Business plan, from $29/mo against their $49/mo list. The difference that matters is that with us they are optional — tag the twenty things worth tagging and photograph the other four hundred.
- Sortly: label it, scan it, then it is tracked
- Squared Away: photograph it, correct it, then it is tracked
- Both end up with a searchable inventory — the difference is whether you ever finish building it
Where Sortly is genuinely ahead
If your work has a purchasing side — raising POs and picking items against a job — Sortly does that and we do not. Same for QuickBooks Online sync.
And if you are tracking thousands of SKUs rather than hundreds of tools, their ceiling is simply higher. Our top plan holds 1,000 items before capacity boosts; theirs goes to 10,000 and beyond on Enterprise.
We would rather you knew that before you signed up than after.
Moving over from Sortly
Most small crews do this in an afternoon.
- 1Export your item list from Sortly so you have a reference copy of what you think you own.
- 2Photograph each storage area — truck, trailer, gang box, store room — and let the AI catalog what it sees.
- 3Reconcile against your export and add anything the camera could not reach.
- 4Invite your crew and set permissions. Keep the Sortly free tier running alongside until you are confident.
Common questions
- Is Squared Away actually a Sortly alternative with AI?
- Yes, in the specific sense that matters: Squared Away identifies items from a photo, and as of August 2026 Sortly's own features page describes photos as a way to track appearance and condition, with no automatic identification. Sortly does several things we do not, including barcode labels, purchase orders and QuickBooks sync.
- Is Squared Away cheaper than Sortly?
- For a small crew, substantially. A 500-item inventory costs $14.99/mo on our Pro plan with 3 users, against $49/mo list on Sortly Advanced with 2 users. Sortly currently advertises $24/mo for Advanced, but their page states that discount applies to the first year of new subscriptions only. At high item counts the comparison reverses, because their plans go higher than ours do.
- Can I import my Sortly export?
- Direct import is on the roadmap. Today, most people find photographing their gear is faster than importing a list that was already out of date — and it gives you condition photos and values you did not have before.
- Does Squared Away do barcodes?
- Yes. Scanning an existing barcode to identify something works on every plan including free. Generating QR labels for your own kit, bulk-printing them and using a Bluetooth scanner are on our Business plans, from $29/mo — Sortly gates label creation at $49/mo list. The bigger difference is that labels are optional with us rather than the way in: you can photograph gear that will never carry a tag and still have it tracked.
- What about API access?
- Sortly's API and webhooks sit on their quote-only Enterprise tier. Ours is in development and will not be locked behind an enterprise contract. Neither of us should be your deciding factor if you need an integration working this week.
- What happens when I outgrow my plan?
- You can add capacity boosts — extra items, users, or locations — on top of any plan, instead of jumping a whole tier. Above about a thousand items, though, look hard at whether our ceiling suits you.
See how it works for your trade
Other comparisons
Try it on one truck before you switch anything.
Photograph a single vehicle, search it in plain English, and see whether it beats scanning labels. Free, no credit card, nothing to uninstall.
iOS, Android & Web · Free to start · Upgrade when you're ready