Flexera vs. ServiceNow SAM Pro
Flexera vs. ServiceNow SAM Pro: The best choice for optimizing software license costs
ServiceNow is a popular and widely used ITSM provider and has extended its offerings into adjacent markets such as ITAM, CRM, app development and more. Flexera is a market-leading ITAM and FinOps provider that powers ServiceNow with near real-time, enriched and normalized data and product usage details to reduce software costs and improve ITSM operations.
Differences between Flexera and ServiceNow SAM Pro
| Capability | ServiceNow | Flexera |
|---|---|---|
| Data normalization and enrichment | The aggregation-based normalization model normalizes approximately 35% of your inventory data in around 18 hours. | Flexera’s AI-enhanced and human-verified Technopedia catalog normalizes 98% of your inventory data in less than 10 minutes. |
| Product use rights analysis | ServiceNow SAM Pro enriches product entitlement data using its SAM Content Library, which includes upgrade and downgrade rights, license models and the ability to configure usage constraints. | In addition to upgrade/downgrade rights and usage limits, Flexera automatically understands and applies complex vendor use rights such as those for IBM sub-capacity licensing, product bundling, virtualization rights and non-production exceptions. This helps organizations stay compliant and reduce over-paying software licenses by hundreds of thousands to millions with use rights optimization. |
| Detailed usage data on ServiceNow applications | ServiceNow Subscription Management Application provides details on license allocations against purchases. To obtain usage details, you must request Use Verification Reports from your account manager. | Unlike ServiceNow that only shows license allocation, Flexera shows who's actually using what applications and how often. With usage details, you can:
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| Vendor verified data | Verified by Oracle (Oracle Databases, Oracle Java, Oracle Middleware) | With Flexera, you can quickly produce effective license position reports with vendor-trusted data that auditors will accept. Flexera is:
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Frequently asked questions on using Flexera over ServiceNow
Flexera significantly outperforms ServiceNow in data normalization. Using its AI-enhanced Technopedia catalog, Flexera achieves 98% coverage in under 10 minutes, compared to ServiceNow’s achievement of 35% in 18 hours. Additionally, Flexera provides deeper insights into actual application usage and vendor use rights, including IBM sub-capacity licensing and Oracle E-Business Suite, whereas ServiceNow offers more limited entitlement and usage data.
Yes. Flexera equips customers with legible data that integrates with business processes, derives value and is accessible via ServiceNow CMDB. Users can derive data insights with our Queryable API and Data Explorer features.
As mentioned in this article, Unlocking IT intelligence: CMDB’s role in risk, spend, and AI strategy, an updated and normalized CMDB can reduce risk in strategic initiatives, optimize technology spend, accelerate decision-making and strengthen governance and compliance.
Hear what our customers say
“I really like working on the Flexera tool. I had experience working on Snow License manager, USU LIMA and ServiceNow as well. As a Flexera admin, I feel the Flexera tool is very good compared to other SAM tools in terms of software raw data normalization (ARL, PURL) [and the] IT Visibility module. [It’s] easy to integrate with different SaaS-based portals. The integrations are very good and easy to connect and manage. The documentation is really good—which I feel Flexera is at top compared to others.”(Source: User Evidence Survey, June 2025)
“Flexera's depth and breadth of scope far outweighs SAM Pro in ServiceNow in recognition, optimization, and standardization. ServiceNow is relatively new to the SAM world, whereas Flexera has been around to decades. Their understanding of SAM has been superior for a long time. SAM Pro might be growing, but it is still an infant compared to Flexera.”
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