Sortly is a well-built inventory app — for businesses. Over the years it has moved upmarket toward teams, warehouses, and field service, and the home user has been left with a thin free tier and pricing that assumes a company card.
If you just want to know what is in your closets, garage, and storage unit, here is the best Sortly alternative and why it fits home use better.
Where Sortly Pinches for Home Users
- 100-item free limit. One user, 100 unique items. A single garage blows past that.
- Export is paid. CSV and PDF export — the thing you need for an insurance claim — is not on the free plan.
- Subscription pricing. Paid plans start around $49/month, scaled for business budgets.
- Cloud-first. Your item list lives on Sortly’s servers behind an account.
- No on-device AI. You type item names yourself.
None of that is wrong for a business. It is a poor fit for cataloging your own home.
WatInside: A Home Inventory App, Not a Business One
No Item Limits, No Subscription
WatInside is free during early access with no artificial cap on how many items or boxes you add. Inventory the whole house.
Private by Default
Your data stays on your iPhone and syncs only through your own iCloud. No account to create, nothing on our servers, no list of your valuables for anyone to breach.
AI Tagging on the Device
Photograph a shelf and the iPhone’s Neural Engine suggests the item names — locally, with no photo upload. This is the difference between an afternoon and a weekend.
Labels Your Way
Link any box or bin with a printable QR code, a reusable NFC tag, or a handwritten code the camera reads. Nothing to buy.
Built for iOS
Widgets, Siri, and NFC tap-to-view — because it targets iPhone instead of shipping the same code to five platforms.
Sortly vs WatInside at a Glance
Free tier
- Sortly: 100 items, 1 user, no export.
- WatInside: unlimited items, iCloud sync, family sharing.
Pricing
- Sortly: from ~$49/month.
- WatInside: free during early access.
Privacy
- Sortly: cloud account, data on Sortly servers.
- WatInside: local-first, your iCloud, no account.
Item entry
- Sortly: manual, with custom fields.
- WatInside: photo-first with on-device AI tags.
Platform
- Sortly: iOS, Android, web.
- WatInside: iOS only.
When to Stick With Sortly
If you are tracking business stock, need multiple team members, purchase orders, or barcode-based check-in/check-out, Sortly is genuinely good and this is not a knock on it. It is just not a home inventory app anymore.
Verdict
For home use, you want no item cap, real privacy, and fast entry — not a business subscription. WatInside is the Sortly alternative that still treats a home inventory as a home inventory.
Ready to catalog your home the easy way? Download WatInside on the App Store — free, private, no account.
