Are you looking to self-host a Student Information System for your school?
Self-hosting is your best choice for privacy, to control your data, where it is hosted and who can access it. This requires some technical skills and adds extra-work compared to SaaS solutions. That is especially true for some solutions that require you to have a dedicated server or VPS versus solutions you can have hosted on shared hosting, because the hosting provider takes care of most server administration tasks.
GitHub is the biggest directory for open source software. You may have ended looking for the `school-management` or `student-information-system` tag on GitHub, but here is the thing:
1. Not all projects are hosted on GitHub, so you might miss some interesting options.
2. The projects getting most stars may not be the best systems for production use, but instead the best projects to start developing your own upon. Stars are given by developers that liked the code and the technology or framework used, they may not even have tested the system in real conditions.
You may have also asked a generative AI “what is the best open source school management system”, but some systems will not appear in the list simply because they are not well referenced on the web, that does not mean they are not worth a try!
Deciding which system you go with can be time-consuming and is of importance if you want to choose a system that is future-proof, maintained and secure.
Here is a list and a detailed comparison of the best 5 school management software available for free, that you can self-host on your server or computer.
We’ve carefully selected which points we compare so you can make a choice depending on whether your school is large, or simply want to host the system on your own computer for your personal use / testing.
Below the comparison tables is a description of each of the 5 Student Information Systems we selected. This will give you an overview of what they are offering in terms of management and functionalities.
| Installs on | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS |  Shared hosting Softaculous Docker Linux Windows Mac
|
| Gibbon | Shared hosting Softaculous Docker Linux Windows Mac
|
| OpenEduCat | Shared hosting Softaculous Docker Linux Windows Mac
|
| Frappe Education | Shared hosting Softaculous Docker Linux Windows Mac
|
| AlekSIS | Shared hosting Softaculous Docker Linux Windows Mac
|
| Programming language | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | PHP |
| Gibbon | PHP |
| OpenEduCat | Python |
| Frappe Education | Python |
| AlekSIS | Python |
| Based on an ERP | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | No |
| Gibbon | No |
| OpenEduCat | Yes Odoo |
| Frappe Education | Yes ERPNext |
| AlekSIS | No |
Pros: the ERP already allows managing customers (CRM), suppliers, financial and logistical aspects
Cons: can add extra complexity for small schools along with maintenance overhead
| Lightweight | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | Yes |
| Gibbon | Yes |
| OpenEduCat | No |
| Frappe Education | No |
| AlekSIS | No |
| Moodle LMS integration | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | Yes |
| Gibbon | Yes |
| OpenEduCat | No (only for entreprise customers) |
| Frappe Education | No |
| AlekSIS | No |
| Established since | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | 2013 |
| Gibbon | 2010 |
| OpenEduCat | 2014 |
| Frappe Education | 2023 | AlekSIS | 2020 |
| Actively developed | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | Yes |
| Gibbon | Yes |
| OpenEduCat | Yes |
| Frappe Education | Yes |
| AlekSIS | Yes |
| Add-ons | |
|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | Yes both free and paid |
| Gibbon | Yes only free |
| OpenEduCat | Yes both free and paid |
| Frappe Education | Yes both free and paid |
| AlekSIS | Yes only paid |
| Support | Forum | Commercial |
|---|---|---|
| RosarioSIS | Yes |
Yes |
| Gibbon | Yes |
Yes |
| OpenEduCat | Yes |
No (only for entreprise customers) |
| Frappe Education | Yes |
No (only for cloud customers) |
| AlekSIS | No |
Yes |
RosarioSIS
RosarioSIS may be the best solution if you are looking for a Student Information System that can be installed anywhere and at the same time offers a full range of functionalities. It is based on PHP and is a lightweight application not based on an ERP while offering some financial management capabilities. RosarioSIS exists since 2013 and was initiated between France and Colombia. It has since proven its efficiency and its ability to run for large schools.
RosarioSIS was primarily designed for K-12 schools but can also be used in academies or superior education.
Here is the list of features offered by RosarioSIS:
| School | Portal Polls and Notes, Calendars, Marking Periods, School Information and Configuration |
| Students | Student Information and Enrollment, Medical records, Custom Fields, Reports and Statistics |
| Users | Parent, Teacher and Staff Accounts, Custom Fields, Profiles and Permissions |
| Scheduling | Courses, Student Schedules, Requests, Timetable reports |
| Grades | Report Cards, Transcripts, Honor Roll, Teacher Gradebook, Assignments, Progress Reports, Teacher Completion, Reports and Statistics |
| Attendance | Take Attendance, Administration, Teacher Completion, Absenteeism reports |
| Activities | Extra-curricular Activities and Eligibility |
| Discipline | Referrals, Custom Fields, Statistics, Discipline Logs |
| Accounting and Student Billing | Student Fees and Payments, School Incomes and Expenses, Staff Payroll, Staff and Student Balances, Daily Transactions |
| Food Service | Menus and Food Items, Serve Meals, Manage Student and Staff Accounts, Activity and Transaction Reports |
| Add-ons | Moodle, Staff Absences, Library, School Inventory, Entry and Exit, Meeting, Hostel, Messaging, Email, SMS, Jitsi Meet, Email Alerts, Lesson Plan, Quiz, Class Diary, Student ID Card, Certificate of Enrollment |
Gibbon
Gibbon might be the best alternative to RosarioSIS for small to medium schools. Likewise, it is a lightweight PHP application that you can easily install on a variety of supports. The project was started in Hong Kong in 2010 giving it some maturity. It offers different modules and approaches from RosarioSIS so be sure to compare them. It is the only project in the list that is entirely free and does not offer paid add-ons.
Here is the list of features offered by Gibbon:
| Learn | Planner, Departments, Resources, Timetable, Activities, Individual Needs, Library |
| People | Students, Application Form, Attendance, Behaviour, Data Updater, Staff, Form Groups |
| Assess | Markbook, Rubrics, Tracking, Formal Assessment, Crowd Assessment |
| Other | Messenger, Finance |
| Admin | School Admin, System Admin, User Admin, Timetable Admin |
| Add-ons | Alumni, Approaches To Learning assessments, Badges, BigBlueButton, Class Enrolment, Clinics, Committees, Course Selection, Flexible Learning, Free Learning, Help Desk, Mastery Transcript, Meet The Teacher, Moodle, Policies, Query Builder, Stream, Trip Planner |
OpenEduCat
OpenEduCat may be the best solution if you are looking for a School Management System based on an ERP. It is based on the popular german Odoo ERP, although they are also known to only hear their business customers, not the community helping make it popular. OpenEduCat is developed since 2014 (India) so you will get a proven set of features, although some advanced features and modules by OpenEduCat are not available if you go with the open source edition. So be sure to check that before you go further. Besides that, an ERP written in Python is quite heavyweight so that might be overkill for small schools, but you will get solid foundations.
OpenEduCat was designed to manage any type of school or educational institution.
Here is the list of features offered by OpenEduCat:
| Student Information | Student, faculty, course, batch, program, subject and department records. |
| Admissions | Application intake, stages, convert applicant to enrolled student. |
| Assignments | Create assignments, collect submissions, grade by marks. |
| Attendance | Mark and report student attendance across classes and dates. |
| Examinations & Grading | Exam scheduling, marks, letter grades, marksheets. |
| Fees & Finance | Fee structure, invoicing and collection. |
| Library | Catalogue, members, lending, barcodes. |
| Timetable & Lessons | Class timetable and sessions, lesson planning, material allocation. |
| Parent Engagement | Parent records linked to students; parent portal. |
| Facilities & Campus | Facility and classroom catalogue, multi-campus management. |
| Student Welfare & Lifecycle | Health, discipline, grievance, leave, mentoring, feedback, achievements, withdrawal, progress, skills. |
| Analytics & Dashboards | Management KPI dashboards. |
| Add-ons | None for open source OpenEduCat. For Odoo, see the apps store. |
Frappe Education
Frappe Education is the newest open source Student Information System from the list, as it was (re)started in 2023. Likewise, it is also the one with the least functions and feature set. Like OpenEduCat, it is also based on an ERP (ERPNext, India) so the latter is balanced by the fact that you will also benefit from an ERP and many other apps from the marketplace, although they will not be related to school management specifically. My best bet is that the set of school and student related features will probably grow in the future, so wait and see!
Frappe was designed to manage a B-School, an Academy or even a Primary School.
Here is the list of features offered by Frappe Education:
| Student & Teacher Management | Manage student and teacher profiles, attendance. |
| Admission Management | Streamline the admission process for new students. |
| Fee Management | Organize and manage the fee structure and schedule payments. |
| Course Scheduling & Exam Planning | Efficiently schedule courses and manage course calendars. |
| Student Portal | Students can visit the portal to check their timetable, attendance, pay fees online, and see current and previous grades. |
| Add-ons | None for Frappe Education. For Frappe, check the marketplace. |
AlekSIS
AlekSIS is one of its kind in this list. It is developed with the Python language but is not based on an ERP. We still consider it heavyweight due to the architecture required to run it in production although it might be lighter than OpenEduCat and Frappe Education. So, AlekSIS might offer a good compromise between lightweight solutions (RosarioSIS and Gibbon) and heavyweight ERPs, especially for large schools. AlekSIS was only started in 2020, but the set of features already looks impressive. The company behind it is situated in Germany and their focus might be more oriented towards German schools.
Here is the list of features offered by AlekSIS:
| Personal information management | People, groups, roles and group memberships |
| Identity management | OIDC consumer, OIDC provider, LDAP synchronisation |
| Staff management | Availability, subjects |
| Lesson and course planning | Contingents, timetable planning, substitutions, integration with Untis |
| Student information | Current / live timetable |
| Class register | Attendance tracking, grades, lesson topics, personal notes |
| Pedagogic management | Skills, qualifications / certifications, mentoring |
| Other | Inventory, Matrix server management, Student ID cards, Network infrastructure management |
That’s all for the list of the top 5 free, open-source and self-hostable Student Information Systems. We limited this list to 5 as we think there would not be 10 open source School Management Systems that can fit in the list. We applied strict criteria, the main ones being a system ready for production and still being developed. We hope it will help you make the right choice to manage your school efficiently while retaining control over your data.