9 Jamf alternatives for mid-sized Apple teams (2026)

Jamf is still the reference for Apple management, and for plenty of teams it's the right answer. But somewhere between 200 and 2,000 devices, teams start asking whether they're paying specialist money for a specialist they don't have. Here are nine Jamf alternatives as they stand in September 2026, with published prices where they exist and a plain "quote only" where they don't.

Why mid-sized teams look for a Jamf alternative

Four reasons come up again and again, and cost is only the first.

The bill has no public number. Jamf doesn't publish list prices for Jamf for Mac or Jamf for Mobile. You talk to a rep, you get a quote, and you can't sanity-check it against a web page the way you can with Mosyle or Scalefusion. Every "$14 per Mac" figure in a Reddit thread is unofficial, including the one on a competitor's own homepage. Fine for a 5,000-seat enterprise. Friction for a three-person IT department.

Capability is split across SKUs. Management, identity and endpoint security are separate products. You can buy only the management piece, but the renewal conversation assumes you'll buy more.

Then the depth problem in reverse. Jamf goes further on Apple than anyone: visionOS, watchOS, tvOS, on-premise hosting, scripting down to the payload. At 90 Macs and 140 iPhones with nobody on staff who writes shell scripts for fun, you pay for a ceiling you'll never touch.

The fleet usually isn't Apple-only. Jamf for Mobile now covers Android, but Windows laptops sit outside the console, so you run two tools. That's the commonest reason a mid-sized team goes looking. And hosting. Under NIS2 scrutiny, legal will ask where the MDM database physically sits. Jamf Pro can run in Germany or the UK; Jamf Now is US-only. Some vendors here offer no European option at all.

How we compared them

Eight criteria, applied the same way to each tool:

• Platforms. Apple-only, or Apple plus Windows and Android in one console.
• Enrollment. Automated Device Enrollment and Apple Business Manager, since without both there's no zero-touch.
• Apps and licensing. Whether VPP assignment is device-based, and whether private apps ship without an App Store sign-in.
• DDM. How far Declarative Device Management goes. This stopped being optional in 2026: the legacy software-update commands broke in the macOS 27 and iOS 27 betas.
• Security and compliance. FileVault enforcement with key escrow, encryption reporting, benchmark enforcement.
• Hosting. Which regions, and whether a European option is documented rather than implied.
• Price. Published list only. Where a vendor doesn't publish, we say so.
• Team size it suits. The criterion most tables skip.

One caveat: each price is in the vendor's own currency from the vendor's own page, and billing bases differ (per device versus per user, monthly versus annual-only). The table isn't a like-for-like cost ranking.

The shortlist at a glance

The nine Apple MDM alternatives, one by one

Iru (formerly Kandji)

If you bookmarked Kandji last year, the name is gone. Kandji rebranded to Iru in October 2025 and finished the rollout across the admin console and enrollment screens in April 2026. kandji.io redirects. The bigger change is scope: Iru is no longer Apple-only. It added Windows and Android, and ships as six products including EDR and workforce identity.

What people liked about Kandji survived: zero-touch that works on first boot, automated patch management, and a configuration-as-code mode letting you version-control blueprints and review them as pull requests.

Trade-offs are real. Nothing is priced publicly, and the six-product split means several paid modules rather than one line item. Windows and Android support is less than a year old, so treat it as newer than the Apple side. EU customers get a separate EU API endpoint and the EDR component runs from AWS Frankfurt, though no full region list is published.

Mosyle

The cheapest serious Apple MDM around, and it publishes every rate. Mosyle is Apple-exclusive and proud of it. Business Premium is $1.00 per Mac, iPhone, iPad or Vision Pro per month, minimum 30 licenses, billed annually. Mosyle Fuse adds endpoint security, encrypted-DNS filtering, macOS identity with SSO and patch management at $3.00 per device per month for macOS, $1.50 for iOS and iPadOS. Free tier up to 30 devices.

For an Apple-only fleet watching its budget, hard to argue with. The catch is where the data lives: Mosyle's own security page states all customer data sits in the United States, on Azure. No EU region, plus a 30-license minimum, annual-only billing, and zero Windows or Android coverage.

SimpleMDM

The "mosyle vs kandji" comparison gets all the search traffic, but SimpleMDM earns a shortlist spot. Apple-only, owned by PDQ, priced with no asterisks: $3.00 per device per month billed monthly, $2.50 annually, no contract, 30-day trial, devices prorated mid-period. Enterprise is quote-only.

Declarative Device Management goes to every customer rather than being gated to a top tier, managed software updates and status reports included. Enrollment covers ADE, Apple Configurator, User Enrollment and account-driven enrollment, and hosted Munki comes at no extra cost.

Limits: no Windows, Android or Linux, so a mixed fleet needs a second console. Kiosk behavior goes through Apple payloads rather than a dedicated module. And EU data residency isn't documented: production runs on Google Cloud and Cloudflare with regions unpublished. Ask before you assume.

Microsoft Intune

The "jamf vs intune" question usually isn't about features. It's about whether you already pay for Intune. Intune Plan 1 lists at $8.00 per user per month on an annual subscription, Plan 2 adds $4.00, and six further add-ons (Remote Help $3.50, Advanced Analytics $5.00, and so on) each require Plan 1 as a base. Hold Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 and Plan 1 is in the bundle already, so managing your Macs costs nothing extra.

One date for budgeting: on 1 July 2026 EMS E3 moved from $10.60 to $12.00 and EMS E5 from $16.40 to $18.00, and M365 E3 gained Intune Plan 2 at no extra cost.

On Apple, Intune does the basics properly: ADE, Apple School Manager, Apple Configurator, and DDM software-update configurations for macOS, iOS and iPadOS since March 2026. Conditional Access tied to Entra ID is something no Apple specialist matches. But Apple depth is shallower than Jamf or Mosyle, pricing is per user rather than per device (which quietly distorts every comparison table), and advanced capability is scattered across Plan 2, the Suite and those add-ons.

Appaloosa

Our own tool, so read this with the appropriate skepticism. Appaloosa covers iPhone and iPad management, Mac management, Android and Windows in one console: ADE and Apple Business Manager for zero-touch, device-based VPP assignment, FileVault with key escrow, kiosk and shared-iPad modes, private app distribution through an enterprise app store. Business is €3.49 per device per month from 50 devices, Enterprise €5.49 from 100, and an Advanced add-on (Remote Support, Contacts Sync, File Sharing) is +€1 on Business, included with Enterprise. Hosting is in France, on infrastructure qualified SecNumCloud by ANSSI. To be precise: the hosting is qualified, not the application.

Where we're weaker than Jamf: we're not an Apple specialist. No tvOS, watchOS or visionOS. Our DDM coverage is partial (software update, managed apps, Siri and keyboard settings today, growing declaration by declaration) where Jamf and Fleet go further. No ecosystem of community scripts and conference talks around us either. The 50-device floor rules out small teams, and there's no permanent free tier, only a trial.

Pick us when the fleet is mixed rather than pure Apple, when legal has asked about the CLOUD Act, or when you want multi-OS MDM without standardizing on Microsoft. Running 400 Macs and nothing else? Mosyle or Jamf will serve you better, and we'd say so on the call.

Hexnode

The widest OS list here: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, Android, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, Fire OS and Zebra Link-OS. Hexnode publishes tiers from Pro at $2.20 per device per month to Ultimate at $4.70, with a fourth Ultra tier and the MSP edition on quote. Minimum 15 devices, 14-day trial, 10% off on annual billing.

Apple handling is solid: ADE, Apple Configurator, User Enrollment, account-driven enrollment, and DDM for managed software updates with enforcement deadlines and real-time status. EU customers are auto-assigned to German data centers, stated plainly in the GDPR documentation.

Budget for the feature gating. Custom scripting, FileVault and Mac app management only appear at Ultimate; macOS patch management and BitLocker sit in Ultra, which has no published price. The $2.20 headline is real but it isn't the tier a Mac-managing team lands on.

Scalefusion

Scalefusion grew up managing kiosks and rugged Android, and that heritage still shows on dedicated devices. Published UEM tiers: Essential $2, Growth $3.50, Business $5, Enterprise $6 per device per month, annual billing only, minimum 10 devices.

On Apple it's more serious than its Android reputation suggests. You can push any Apple MDM payload beyond what the dashboard exposes, and DDM drives OS update enforcement on macOS 14+ and iOS 17+ with an MDM fallback below. Day-zero support was announced for the 27 releases. Data centers in Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.

The cost surprise is the module structure. Identity (OneIdP) and endpoint security (Veltar) are separate products at $4 to $5 each per device per month, and the full bundle lands at $12.42. Annual billing only, no monthly escape hatch.

Addigy

Built for MSPs first, and the multi-tenant console shows it. Addigy starts at $8.25 per Mac per month for Apple MDM, no multi-year contract required. The Security Suite starts at $16 per Mac per month and bundles SentinelOne EDR with 24/7 managed detection, CVE tracking, Conditional Access integration, and compliance enforcement against CIS, NIST and DISA STIG.

That benchmark enforcement is the real draw, and bundling a third-party EDR rather than a homegrown agent is defensible. But this is the most expensive entry price here by a wide margin, iOS management is a paid add-on whose rate isn't published, and the best security capability sits in the tier costing twice the base. No EU hosting region appears on Addigy's official pages, so don't assume one.

Fleet

The outlier, and the most interesting one if your team writes YAML for a living. Fleet is MIT-licensed open source built on osquery and driven by GitOps: profiles, policies, scripts and software definitions live in your Git repo and deploy like code. Free is $0 per host, Premium $7.00 per host per month, Custom quote-only. Managed cloud hosting is reserved for 700 hosts and up, so below that you self-host.

Apple support runs deeper than you'd expect from an open-source project: ADE via Apple Business Manager, account-driven User Enrollment, VPP app deployment, FileVault with key escrow, and since version 4.90 the ability to upload any Apple DDM configuration, IKEv2 VPN declarations included. And you can read the code, which is the point.

Two warnings. The free tier is thinner than $0 suggests: disk encryption enforcement, script execution, app deployment, GitOps, zero-touch setup and BYOD enrollment are Premium-only, leaving Free as configuration profiles plus osquery visibility. And $7 per host is the highest list price here, on top of infrastructure you run yourself. Self-hosting does mean you choose the region, so EU residency is in your hands.

Which one fits your profile

Pure Apple fleet. Mosyle if budget rules and US hosting is acceptable. SimpleMDM if you want a console you can learn in an afternoon. Jamf Pro if you have a Mac admin who'll use the depth. Iru if management and security should come from one vendor.

Mixed iOS, Android and Windows. Intune if you already hold E3 or E5. Hexnode or Scalefusion if Microsoft isn't your center of gravity and you have kiosk or rugged devices. Appaloosa if you want Apple handled properly alongside Android and Windows without a Microsoft-shaped stack, and our guide to Apple MDM covers what "properly" means.

Budget is the constraint. Mosyle Business Free up to 30 devices, then Business Premium. Scalefusion Essential or Hexnode Pro, checking whether the features you need sit in that tier rather than two tiers up. Fleet Free if you have engineers and accept the Premium-only gaps.

Data sovereignty is non-negotiable. This thins the field fast. Jamf Pro in Germany or the UK, Hexnode in Germany, Scalefusion in Ireland, the Netherlands or Germany, Iru through its EU endpoint, Appaloosa in France on a SecNumCloud-qualified host, or Fleet self-hosted anywhere. Mosyle, SimpleMDM and Addigy document no EU region, which may end the conversation before the demo.

FAQ

Is there a free Jamf alternative?

Two, with caveats. Mosyle Business Free covers up to 30 Apple devices and is a complete MDM at that scale. Fleet's free tier has no device limit but excludes disk encryption enforcement, script execution, app deployment and zero-touch setup, so most teams outgrow it at the first audit. Jamf Now manages up to 3 devices free, which is a trial more than a plan.

Can I migrate off Jamf without wiping every device?

Not for devices enrolled through Automated Device Enrollment. The management profile is non-removable by design, so switching MDM means reassigning the serial numbers to the new server in Apple Business Manager, then erasing each device so it re-enrolls during Setup Assistant. Plan backups and short downtime per device. VPP licenses get revoked and reassigned through the new server, which is the easy part.

Does every Jamf alternative support Declarative Device Management?

Effectively yes, but coverage varies a lot. Jamf, Intune, Mosyle, Iru, SimpleMDM, Hexnode, Scalefusion and Fleet all support DDM, most through managed software updates first. Fleet and Jamf go furthest on arbitrary declarations. Appaloosa covers software update, managed apps, Siri and keyboard settings. Ask which declarations a vendor supports today rather than whether it supports DDM at all. The second question has stopped being useful.

Where to start

Shortlist two tools, not five, and pick them on the two criteria that actually block a purchase: platform coverage and hosting region. The rest you can test in a trial. If your fleet mixes Apple with Android or Windows and somebody has asked where the data sits, we're worth half an hour.