Seatsurfing
Open-source desk and space booking for hybrid offices and coworking floors
oss-osi-approved full guide featuredOverview
Seatsurfing helps organizations book desks and spaces. Flexible-workspace operators evaluate it for hot-desk maps, presence planning, and utilization experiments without a full commercial workplace suite.
At a glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Categories | booking-scheduling, facility-operations |
| Deployment | self-hosted |
| License class | oss-osi-approved (GPL-3.0-only) |
| Cost model | free-self-hosted |
| Implementation difficulty | moderate |
| Maintenance burden | medium |
| Maturity | stable |
| Verification | partially-verified (2026-07-17) |
Cost reality
Free self-hosted software; operator provides hosting and support.
Pricing and free-tier limits change frequently; re-check official pricing before budget decisions.
Tasks reduced or augmented
Software does not replace community or ops staff. It may reduce or augment:
- Replacing whiteboard/spreadsheet desk claims
- Collecting utilization signals for layout changes
- Coordinating hybrid attendance peaks
Human oversight still needed
- Floor plan accuracy
- Fair-use rules
- Member privacy for location data
Data held
-
bookings
-
locations/spaces
-
user accounts
-
occupancy metrics
-
Personal data: yes
-
Payment data: no / not primary
Risks
| Area | Notes |
|---|---|
| Vendor lock-in | Evaluate export formats and API completeness before deep customization. |
| Security | Apply updates promptly; restrict admin access; enable TLS. |
| Compliance | Operator remains responsible for privacy and local regulatory obligations. |
| Licensing | Confirm license fits commercial coworking use. |
| Operational | Plan backups, monitoring, and a restore drill before production use. |
Coworking fit
Roles: operations-manager, community-manager, facilities, technical-operator
Workflows: desk-hot-desk, day-pass-checkin, reporting-kpis
Problems: measure-utilization, improve-member-experience, replace-spreadsheets, reduce-software-cost
Smallest useful experiment
Model one floor with 20 hot desks, invite a pilot member group for two weeks, and export occupancy stats.
Typical time to first value: 1–3 days
Links
Implementation guide
See the human-written implementation guide.
Verification
- Status:
partially-verified - Last reviewed:
2026-07-17 - Sources:
Seed entry compiled from official project sites and repositories. Re-verify pricing, license text, and feature claims before production decisions. Star counts and free-tier numeric limits intentionally omitted unless verified at review time.