Manifest vs Sortly: Which One Fits a Home Inventory?

If you're keeping track of a home, Manifest is the better fit. If you're running a business, Sortly is. Sortly is stock software. Its paid plans add things like low-stock alerts, team seats and, from the Ultra plan up, purchase orders. Manifest is a home inventory for insurance: a list you can hand an adjuster, with the receipt on each item and replacement cost and actual cash value totals. Manifest costs $11.99 a year with no item limit. Sortly is free up to 100 items, and its first paid plan is $49 a month.

I build Manifest, so read this with that in mind. I've tried to be fair to Sortly, and there's a whole section below on when it's the better pick. Prices were checked in November 2026.

If you've already ruled Sortly out and want other options, Sortly alternatives covers six of them. This page is just the two apps.

What does a household need from an inventory app?

When a pipe bursts or a laptop gets stolen, the insurer asks for an itemized list. For each item that means what it is, the brand and model, the serial number if it has one, when you bought it, what you paid, and what it would cost to replace. Photos help. A receipt settles arguments about price.

That's the test I use below. A household rarely needs stock counts or reorder points. It needs a list somebody keeps up to date, in a format an adjuster will read.

Manifest vs Sortly at a glance

Sortly's column comes from its pricing page, its App Store listing and its help article on exporting, all checked November 4, 2026. The plan names are from the pricing page's feature table. "Not listed" means I couldn't find the feature on either page. Sortly may still handle it some other way.

How much does each one cost?

Sortly's free plan holds 100 unique items for one user. Quantities don't count against that, so ten identical chairs are one item. The paid plans, from the pricing page:

Those yearly prices include a 50% discount that, in Sortly's words, "applies only to first year of new customer subscriptions. After the first year, a 20% discount applies to all yearly plans." So Advanced is $288 the first year and about $470 a year after that. Paid plans have a 14-day trial, and Sortly wants a card to start it. The App Store listing shows slightly different in-app prices for Advanced ($49.99 and $449.99), so check which one you're paying before you subscribe on a phone.

Every Manifest account starts with a 7-day trial of everything, and you don't need a card for it. After that, Vault is $1.99 a month or $11.99 a year, with no item limit and 15 AI actions a month (scans and value estimates come out of the same allowance). Unlimited is $39 a year and drops the AI cap. Neither plan has a first-year discount, so the renewal price is the price.

For a home that has outgrown 100 items, the cheapest Sortly plan is $288 in year one and about $470 a year from then on. Manifest Vault is $11.99 a year.

Getting items in

This is where most home inventories stall. A furnished house holds hundreds of things, and nobody wants to type them all.

Sortly is fastest when your things have barcodes or you already have a spreadsheet. The free plan includes in-app barcode and QR scanning and spreadsheet import. Furniture, jewelry, art and anything that lost its box years ago still has to be typed.

Manifest fills items in from a photo. It reads the name, brand, model and serial number off the item or its label, and you check what it got. You can also film a short walkthrough of a room and it lists what it sees, or forward an order confirmation email and get back an item with the price, date and receipt attached. Typing still works, and so does importing a CSV.

Getting a claim-ready list out

Sortly's Inventory Summary report, which is on every plan, shows total quantity and value for whatever filters you pick. According to Sortly's help article, you can export it as CSV or Excel, or export items as a PDF with their photos in an album, list or compact layout. If you store a purchase price on each item, you can total a room. Going by its pricing page, it doesn't estimate what an item would cost to replace today or what it's worth after depreciation.

Manifest's insurance export is a PDF with each item's photos, serial number and receipt, plus replacement cost and actual cash value totals. A contents claim turns on those two numbers. Some policies pay replacement cost. Others pay actual cash value, which is replacement cost minus depreciation. ACV vs RCV goes through the difference.

When is Sortly the better pick?

If any of these sound like you, get Sortly:

• You run a business, even a side one. Low-stock alerts (from Advanced), purchase orders and pick lists (from Ultra, $149 a month) and the QuickBooks Online connection (on Premium, $299 a month) are what Sortly is for. Manifest has none of them.
• More than one person edits the list. Advanced has two seats and lets you control who can see and change what. Ultra has five seats, and custom role permissions start on Premium. Manifest is one person per account.
• You scan a lot of barcodes. A live scanner beats photographing labels, and the pricing page lists offline mobile access on every Sortly plan.
• You lend things out and want them back. Check-in/check-out, from Advanced up, tracks who has what. That suits a tool library, a church storeroom, or camera gear you rent out.
• You have under 100 items and just want them organized. The free plan handles that well, with folders, tags, photos and QR scanning, and it costs nothing.

Sortly has also been around a lot longer. It has been on the App Store since 2012, the US listing shows a 4.7 rating from about 9,600 ratings, and the listing's description calls it "trusted by over 20,000 businesses."

When is Manifest the better pick?

Mostly when the list is for insurance. You get photos, serials and receipts on each item, and an export with replacement cost and actual cash value. It also makes sense once you're past 100 things, which most homes are, because Manifest has no item limit on any plan. Photos, room videos and forwarded receipts do most of the typing for you. And it checks your items against the CPSC, NHTSA and FDA recall databases on every plan.

Where it falls short: one person per account, no Android app in the Play Store yet (it runs in the browser), no live barcode scanner, and no business features. It's also a much newer app than Sortly.

Can you move from Sortly to Manifest?

Yes. In Sortly, go to Reports, then Inventory Summary, click Export and choose CSV. Manifest's CSV importer matches Sortly's column headers to its own fields and shows you a preview before it saves anything. Map Sortly's folder column to Location so your rooms come across. The CSV has links to your photos, not the image files. Sortly's Dropbox export does include the original photos, but you'll still be re-adding them to items yourself, so start with the items that matter most. The alternatives post has the step-by-step version.

Every other app, with prices and the date each was checked, is in the home inventory app tracker and the home inventory app comparison.

FAQ

Is Sortly good for home inventory? It can be, if you have fewer than 100 items and want folders, tags and barcode scanning for free. But Sortly is built for businesses. Paid plans start at $49 a month, and the pricing page lists no replacement cost or actual cash value estimates for an insurance claim.

Is Manifest cheaper than Sortly? For more than 100 items, yes. Manifest Vault is $11.99 a year with no item limit, and Unlimited is $39 a year. Sortly's cheapest paid plan is $49 a month, or $288 for the first year billed yearly, and it renews at about $470 a year. Under 100 items, Sortly's free plan costs nothing.

Which is better for an insurance claim, Manifest or Sortly? Manifest. It was built for that job: the PDF export puts photos, serial numbers and receipts on each item and totals both replacement cost and actual cash value. Sortly can export a spreadsheet of your items or a PDF with their photos, using the values you entered, but it doesn't estimate replacement cost or actual cash value. I build Manifest, so weigh that.

Can more than one person use Manifest or Sortly? Sortly, yes. The free plan has one user, Advanced has two and Ultra has five. Manifest is one person per account, so everyone keeps their own list.