What is Frappe?

Frappe is a full-stack, open-source software company. That single description carries four distinct ideas, and anyone evaluating Frappe benefits from holding all four in mind from the start:

• Applications - Frappe has a portfolio of open source applications that help businesses manage their entire business operations. Some of the flagship applications include ERPNext (an ERP), Frappe HR (an HRMS), Frappe CRM (a CRM), Helpdesk (a support ticketing software), Insights (an analytics tool), etc.
• Developer platform: All Frappe applications are built on a shared foundation called the Frappe Framework. In fact, Frappe Framework was built even before any Frappe application came to life. Apart from Frappe Framework, there is Frappe UI (a component library to build modern interfaces) and Frappe Builder (a low-code, no-code website builder). Frappe is also launching a full-stack app builder (Frappe Studio) soon.
• Cloud platform - Frappe also builds and runs Frappe Cloud, the managed infrastructure those applications run on. The company that writes the software also operates the platform it lives on, which is unusual and has practical consequences for support and reliability.
• Community - Around both sits an open-source ecosystem of partners, developers, and contributors. The source code is public, and a global network of certified partners implements and supports it.

What makes it different

Firstly, all Frappe's products are open source: the source code is publicly available, and you are free to use, modify, and self-host it. That is a genuine and unusual form of ownership - your business is not dependent on a vendor's permission to access or move your own system.

The other thing that sets Frappe apart is Frappe Framework, the low-code, no-code web applications framework behind all it's products. That's what makes the portfolio more than the sum of its parts. A Frappe ERP, a Frappe CRM, and a Frappe HR system are not three separate products bolted together; they are built on the same framework, run on the same platform, and share the same data model, login, and permission system. For your business, this is the difference between integrating systems and simply using them together - a point we return to throughout this guide.

How big is Frappe?

Frappe is an established company with a large global footprint, though it is deliberately not marketed on the scale of the incumbents it competes with. Some numbers to calibrate against:

• 20,000+ customers on Frappe Cloud, with an estimated 3–5× that number self-hosting or white-labelling the software.
• 50,000+ GitHub stars across Frappe's repositories - a strong signal of developer trust and community health.
• A large and active developer community with more than 30,000 developers building on and contributing to the Frappe Framework.
• 180+ channel partners across 50 countries, providing local implementation and support.

Because Frappe is open source, an exact customer count is genuinely unknowable - anyone can download the code and run it without ever telling us. The figures above are what we can see and verify, and we'd rather give you a defensible number than an inflated one.

Why this matters for your evaluation

The portfolio-on-one-platform design, the partner-led delivery model, and the open-source foundation are the three ways Frappe differs most from the business software you have likely evaluated before. They are not marketing distinctions; each one changes how you buy, what you own, and what your costs and risks look like over five years.

The rest of this section explains the company behind the software so that, by the time you reach the evaluation criteria that matter to your role - security, scalability, compliance, cost, implementation - you understand not just what Frappe offers, but how it is built to deliver it.