Home Inventory & Insurance Cataloging

The "fire / flood / theft happened, now itemize what was in the house" problem is solved before disaster strikes by photographing everything in rooms, with serial numbers and receipts attached. For broader stock / asset patterns see Inventory & Asset Management (Snipe-IT, InvenTree); for the document side (warranties, receipts) see Insurance & Vital Documents and Self-Hosted Document Management; for storage organization see Storage & Decluttering.

Insurance-flavored whole-home inventories

• ★ HomeZada — paid + free; room-by-room with photos, model / serial / purchase price / warranty. Generates an insurance-ready PDF. Free tier caps inventory items + storage; paid Premium / Pro unlocks. The 2026 default for "I want one app for inventory + maintenance + improvements."
• ★ Encircle — paid; insurance-industry standard (used by claims adjusters). Pricier and pro-leaning, but the data export survives an actual claim.
• Sortly — paid + free; clean photo + barcode catalog, originally for small-business inventory but a popular crossover for households. Free tier covers ~100 items; paid tiers scale. iOS / Android / web.
• NestEgg — free iOS; basic; "good enough" if your needs are tiny.
• Memento Database — paid + free; very flexible custom-fields tool; works for inventory, but you build it yourself.

Free / OSS / self-host

• ★ Stuff — free OSS; lightweight room-by-room inventory with photos. Self-host friendly; mobile-first. Default for tech-comfortable households.
• Dataimy — free OSS; flexible inventory; less polished than Stuff.
• Snipe-IT — AGPLv3; designed for IT-fleet tracking but works fine for households with checkouts, depreciation, warranty dates, and asset tags. See Inventory & Asset Management.
• InvenTree — MIT; parts-bin oriented but works for household inventory; great if you also have a workshop. See Inventory & Asset Management.
• Notion templates — many free home-inventory templates; works if you'll keep it updated.
• iCloud / Google Drive folder of room-photos — the laziest defensible answer. Walk through with your phone, take wide shots + close-ups of model/serial labels, store in a dated folder. Sync via iCloud / Drive. Pair with Backup & DR for off-site copies.

Specialty / niche

• Whisker — paid; insurance-claim-shape app.
• Liability Tracker — paid; older.
• Encircle Field — adjuster-side companion to Encircle.

What insurance actually wants

• Photo + serial + model + purchase price + date. That's the table.
• High-value items individually: jewelry, watches, art, firearms, electronics over ~$1,000. Most policies require scheduled riders for these; an inventory makes the rider easy.
• Receipts where possible — Paperless-ngx (see Self-Hosted Document Management) is the OSS default for receipt OCR + tagging.
• Off-site copy — your inventory must survive the fire that destroys the items. Cloud sync, restic / B2 backup, or a thumb drive at a relative's house.
• Walkthrough video — a single 5-minute phone video opening every drawer + closet is more useful than a half-finished spreadsheet. Date it, store it off-site, redo annually.

License / pricing

• HomeZada: paid + free; free tier capped on items/docs.
• Encircle: paid; pricier; pro-flavored.
• Sortly: paid + free; free at 100 items.
• Stuff, Dataimy, Snipe-IT, InvenTree: OSS, free, self-host.
• NestEgg: free with optional in-app purchases.

Pick this if…

• Default whole-home + insurance-ready, willing to pay: HomeZada.
• You want what insurance adjusters use: Encircle.
• Photo catalog with barcodes, modest scale: Sortly free or paid.
• Self-host, OSS: Stuff for a household; Snipe-IT if you want maturity; InvenTree if you also track parts.
• Lazy-but-defensible: the 5-minute walkthrough video + photos in iCloud + an off-site backup.
• Just-bought-the-house, doing it once: HomeZada free tier or Sortly free.