Dolibarr vs Odoo

Dolibarr and Odoo are the two small-business ERPs in our catalog that you can run from one compose file, and both describe themselves the same way: Dolibarr is "Open Source ERP & CRM for business", Odoo is "a suite of open-source business apps". Both are modular, both put contacts, quotes, invoices, stock, projects and HR behind one login, and both idle in a couple of hundred megabytes on a VPS. The difference that decides the self-hosting choice is what the free download contains. Dolibarr is GPL throughout and ships its accounting; Odoo splits into a Community edition under LGPL and an Enterprise edition that holds Accounting, Payroll and Studio. The stacks differ too, PHP on MariaDB against Python on PostgreSQL, and that shapes how each grows.

What the free download contains

Dolibarr has one edition. The repository README places it under the GPL, "either Version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version (GPL-3+)", and heads its feature list "Main application/modules (all optional)". The features page sorts those modules into CRM & Sales (prospects, opportunities, proposals, sale orders, "Contracts / Subscriptions", "Help Desk / Tickets"), HR ("Expense Reports", "Leave Requests", "Timesheets", "Recruitment"), Product & Stock ("Stocks", "Shipments", "Manufacturing"), "CMS / Website" and "Point Of Sale", and Finance & Billing: "Billing & Payments", "Bank reconciliation" and "Double entry accounting". The last one is the line that matters against Odoo. The wiki says "The Accounting Advanced module provide double entry accounting features", that "Dolibarr provides ready-to-use chart of account for several countries", that you "Journalize transactions in General Ledger" from each journal, and that the ledger exports in "CSV and FEC format" among others. Manufacturing is in the same download: "This module bring MRP features like Manufacturing Orders management", on top of a bill-of-materials module. The site's rule for all of it is "Enable only the features that you need".

Odoo is two products, and its own editions page is the map. "Our business management software is available in 2 versions: Odoo Community (open-source) and Odoo Enterprise (licensed)", and "Odoo Community is the core upon which Odoo Enterprise is built - and you can switch versions at any time." The LICENSE in the Community repository says "Odoo is published under the GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 3". Reading the table column by column, Community has CRM, Sales, Point of Sale, Invoicing and Payments, Expenses, Inventory, Manufacturing (MRP), Purchase, Maintenance, Project, Timesheet, Employees, Recruitment, Time Off, Fleet, Website Builder, eCommerce, Blog, Forum, Live Chat, eLearning, Email and SMS Marketing, Events, Surveys, Discuss, To-Do and Calendar. Enterprise-only are Accounting, described as "Comprehensive Accounting General Ledger, Bank Statement Reconciliation, Analytic Accounting, Vendor Bill OCR, Budgets, Check Writing, Consolidation,Localizations, Reports, ...", plus Payroll, Documents, Spreadsheet, Sign, Subscriptions, Rental, Barcode, PLM, Quality, Helpdesk, Field Service, Planning, Appointments, Approvals, Knowledge, VoIP, IoT, the Android and iOS apps, Version Upgrades, Hosting, and Studio. The source-install guide adds that "The Enterprise git repository does not contain the full Odoo source code. It is only a collection of extra add-ons."

So on the two questions a small business asks first, the answers invert. Books: Dolibarr has a general ledger in the free product; Odoo Community has Invoicing and Payments and stops there. Breadth: Odoo Community's free list is longer and includes a full website builder and shop; Dolibarr's "CMS / Website" and "Point Of Sale" are modules inside a business suite, not a storefront product. Neither has payroll in the free download: Odoo lists it under Enterprise, and Dolibarr's own README files "Payroll module" under "WHAT DOLIBARR CAN'T DO YET".

Ecosystems and extensions

Dolibarr's add-on channel is DoliStore, "the official market place to find addons and plugins for the Dolibarr ERP CRM project", where "Some extensions/modules are free, some are paid." The project site calls it a "central repository for thousand of external add-ons", and the official container mounts /var/www/html/custom for exactly those. Odoo's answer is the /mnt/extra-addons mount on the official image, where "You can mount your own Odoo addons within the Odoo container", and the Odoo Apps ecosystem around it; the no-code customization tool, Studio, is in the Enterprise column. Odoo's ecosystem is the larger one; Dolibarr's is smaller and more of it is free.

Databases and stacks

Dolibarr is PHP. The README says "You can use any web server supporting PHP (Apache, Nginx, ...)" and "a supported database (MariaDB, MySQL or PostgreSQL)"; the container's DOLI_DB_TYPE switches between "mysqli, pgsql". Odoo is Python, and "Odoo uses PostgreSQL as its database management system", full stop; the Docker image "requires a running PostgreSQL server". If you already run MariaDB for other apps, Dolibarr joins it; Odoo brings its own database engine whatever else is on the box.

Footprint and setup

Both are the app container plus a database. Dolibarr's image "does not contains database, so you need to link it with a database container", and with DOLI_INSTALL_AUTO at its default of 1, "The installation will be done during docker first boot", including the admin user. Odoo needs a database created and base installed before the first login, which is why our snippet runs two one-shot commands before up -d. In our install check (GCP e2-standard-2, Ubuntu 26.04, October 2026), Dolibarr idled at ~217 MB of RAM and ~1.8 GB of disk; Odoo idled at ~176 MB of RAM and ~3.6 GB of disk. Odoo's idle is lower, but idle is not where an ERP spends its memory. Odoo's deployment guide sizes production by workers, "1 worker = 6 concurrent users" up to "(#CPU * 2) + 1", with a light worker at "around 150MB of RAM" and a heavy one at "around 1GB of RAM"; its worked example lands at "= 3GB RAM for Odoo" before PostgreSQL. Dolibarr's prerequisites give no RAM figure at all, only that "You can use Dolibarr on a low specification machine such as an old Intel Pentium processor or equal" and that "If you have more than 30 users, a 1GHz CPU or more is recommended", so our 1 GB floor for Dolibarr and 2 GB floor for Odoo are both estimates. Odoo "transmits authentication information in cleartext", so "a secure deployment of Odoo must use HTTPS"; our snippet puts Caddy in front for that. Dolibarr serves plain HTTP on port 80 and wants DOLI_URL_ROOT set to the public URL behind your proxy. We rate Dolibarr 2 out of 5 to deploy and Odoo 3 out of 5.

Which to choose

Choose Dolibarr if you want a small-business ERP where invoicing, bank reconciliation, double-entry accounting, stock, projects and HR are all in the one GPL download, you are happy on PHP with MariaDB, MySQL or PostgreSQL, and you want the install that configures itself on first boot from a 1 GB box.

Choose Odoo if you want the broader free suite, CRM, Sales, Inventory, MRP, Website Builder and eCommerce in Community, and you can either keep the books elsewhere or plan to buy Enterprise, which is where Accounting, Payroll, Studio and the upgrade service live.

Running Dolibarr or Odoo on a VPS

Both installs are verified on Ubuntu 26.04; the pinned compose files with generated passwords are on the Dolibarr and Odoo pages. Size either for the people working in it at once, not the empty install, and back up the database and the document volumes off the server before you depend on them. If the free-software line is what drives you and Dolibarr feels too small, the other all-GPL ERP in the catalog is ERPNext; Odoo vs ERPNext covers that heavier pair.