Best MDM for Apple in 2026: 8 Solutions Compared, and When Apple’s Free MDM Is Enough

Does Apple offer a free MDM? Start here

Yes. Since 14 April 2026, Apple Business includes a built-in mobile device management service at no cost.

That reframes the question. Choosing the best MDM for Apple is no longer about which platform to buy – it is about whether a paid platform still earns its place beside what Apple now gives away. This comparison is built to answer that. Eight solutions are judged on published pricing, platform scope and Declarative Device Management support, and each section marks the point where Apple’s built-in tooling stops being enough for a growing estate.

Apple Business replaced three separate products on that date: Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials and Apple Business Connect. Apple’s own wording was unambiguous: “Apple Business Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple Business Connect will no longer be available once Apple Business launches” (Apple Newsroom, 24 March 2026). Apple School Manager was not part of that consolidation and remains a separate, active service.

Apple’s built-in MDM is a real MDM. Apple describes it as offering “built-in mobile device management (MDM), facilitating a comprehensive view of an organization’s Apple devices, settings, and more from a single interface”, with Blueprints for preconfigured settings and zero-touch deployment. It enrols devices, applies configuration profiles, distributes apps, and enforces a baseline of restrictions. Apple Business launched in more than 200 countries and regions, considerably wider than the platforms it replaced. For a small, single-platform, low-complexity Apple fleet, that may be the whole requirement.

If you are still working out what changed, Apple maintains a transition page: Apple Business Manager is now Apple Business.

Where it stops being enough is worth naming plainly, because most comparison articles skip it:

• A second operating system. Apple’s MDM manages Apple devices. The moment a Windows laptop or an Android handheld enters the estate, Apple’s tooling cannot see it.
• Depth of policy. Broad restrictions are covered. Granular, conditional and role-scoped policy is where third-party platforms earn their price.
• Operational tooling around the MDM. Remote troubleshooting, endpoint security, patch orchestration, identity and conditional access are separate disciplines. Apple ships a management service, not an IT operations suite.
• Support and accountability. A commercial contract buys a named escalation path.

Apple’s built-in MDM against a third-party platform

Apple column sourced from Apple’s own announcement and documentation. The third-party column reflects the eight vendors compared in this article as verified on 11 August 2026; it is not a claim about every Apple MDM on the market.

If none of the four triggers above apply to you, start with Apple Business and revisit later. If two or more apply, the rest of this article is the comparison you need.

Read next: What Apple Business is, and what its built-in MDM does

Best Apple MDM by use case

The best MDM for Apple devices is not the same answer for every organisation, and most comparison articles obscure that by ranking. The single biggest determinant is whether your estate is Apple-only or mixed; everything else is secondary to it.

How much does Apple MDM cost?

There is no single answer, because these eight vendors do not price on the same unit. That is the most useful thing to understand before comparing any two numbers, and it is the reason most Apple MDM solution comparisons put a price column next to a vendor name and quietly mislead.

Published rates, read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 11 August 2026:

Two of the eight have a genuinely free tier: Mosyle up to 30 devices and ManageEngine up to 25. Alongside Apple’s own free built-in MDM, that gives a small Apple-only team three no-cost starting points.

8 key factors to look for in an Apple MDM

Criteria are only useful if you know what to check. Each factor below names what to actually ask.

1. Apple Business and Automated Device Enrollment compatibility

Automated Device Enrollment lets a device enrol itself into management during first-boot setup, with no admin touching it. A device bought through an Apple Business–linked reseller is assigned to your MDM server, and on first power-on it contacts Apple, receives that server’s address and enrols before the user reaches the setup screen.

All eight vendors here document ADE support, so treat it as table stakes rather than a differentiator. What varies is what happens around it:

• Whether Apple Business is required. Addigy is explicit that it is not: “you do not need Apple Business Manager (ABM) to use Addigy,” though zero-touch deployment and supervision do depend on it. If some of your devices were bought through channels that never touch Apple Business, ask each vendor how enrolment works without it.
• What the device receives on enrolment. This is where platforms genuinely differ. Iru routes devices to a configuration set during enrolment based on device type, department or a custom attribute. Mosyle creates and authenticates the local user account as part of the same sequence. Both go beyond simply getting the device enrolled.

Ask: what breaks if a device was not purchased through an Apple Business–linked reseller?

Also Read: How Automated Device Enrollment works

2. Declarative Device Management support

Declarative Device Management is Apple’s modern management model. Rather than the server pushing commands and waiting for responses, the device holds its own configuration and maintains it autonomously, which makes policy application faster and more reliable, particularly for OS updates.

Four of the eight vendors here document DDM support publicly. Four do not. Addigy publishes the most specific detail, naming the OS versions on which DDM enforcement actually applies: macOS 14 and later, iOS 17 and later, iPadOS 17 and later, with older devices falling back to traditional MDM mechanisms.

Ask: which OS versions does your DDM support cover, and what happens on devices below that floor?

Also Read: What Apple declarative device management changes for IT

3. App lifecycle management

Distribution is the easy part. The questions that separate platforms are what happens after: silent updates, version pinning, rollback, licence reclamation when someone leaves, and how apps behave on shared and BYOD devices.

Ask: can you pin an app to a specific version, and can you roll one back after a bad release?

4. Policy granularity

Every platform can restrict the App Store. Fewer can apply a restriction to one department, on one device type, during working hours only, with a documented exception path.

Ask: show me a policy scoped to a group, a platform, and a condition at the same time.

5. Cross-platform scope

This is the single biggest fork in the decision. Addigy, Mosyle and SimpleMDM manage Apple devices only. Scalefusion, ManageEngine, JumpCloud and Iru manage Apple alongside other platforms. Jamf sits between the two Apple-first, with lightweight Android management available through Jamf for Mobile.

An Apple-only tool is not a weakness if you run an Apple-only estate. It becomes one the day procurement buys something else.

Ask: what is our device roadmap for the next three years, and does this tool cover it?

6. Deployment effort and day-to-day usability

The console your team uses daily matters more than a feature matrix suggests. Trial it with a real policy and a real device, not a demo tenant.

Ask: how long from signing up to a compliant device in a user’s hands?

7. Compliance-supporting features

Note the framing. A management platform does not deliver compliance; it supports the controls and evidence your compliance programme requires: device encryption enforcement, patch level reporting, configuration drift detection and audit-ready logs. Obligations under frameworks such as HIPAA in healthcare or FERPA in education sit with your organisation, not with a vendor.

Ask: what evidence can this platform export for an auditor, and in what format?

8. Support and documentation

Documentation quality is a proxy for product maturity, and it is free to evaluate before you buy. Read the vendor’s public docs for the exact workflow you care about most.

Ask: what is the escalation path, and is support included or priced separately?

How we selected these solutions

• Inclusion was based on presence in the live US search results for Apple MDM buying queries in August 2026, not on partnership or familiarity.
• Every price was read from the vendor’s own published pricing page on 11 August 2026 and is quoted with its billing terms and minimums. Where a vendor publishes no price, this article says so rather than estimating.
• Every platform scope claim was read from the vendor’s own product pages on the same date.
• Every “watch for” note traces to the vendor’s own published material. We do not publish negative claims about named competitors that we cannot source, and that standard applies to Scalefusion’s entry too, which carries a real constraint like the rest.
• What we did not do: we did not run head-to-head performance testing, and we did not evaluate support responsiveness. Those require a trial in your own environment.
• Ratings: we do not reproduce per-vendor review scores, because they change continuously and a snapshot goes stale. For current ratings, see G2’s mobile device management category.

Best MDM for Apple: how the 8 options compare

“Not stated” means the vendor does not document DDM support on its public product pages as of 11 August 2026. It is not a statement that the product lacks the capability.

Top MDM Solutions for Apple: the 8 platforms compared

The eight Apple MDM solutions below are covered in the same order throughout this guide. Each entry states what the platform manages, how it is priced, and whether it publicly documents Declarative Device Management support. Where a vendor does not publish a price, that is noted rather than estimated.

1. Scalefusion

Scalefusion manages Apple devices alongside Windows, Android, Linux and ChromeOS from one console, which makes it a fit for estates where Apple is significant but not the whole picture.

Key capabilities:

• Enrolment through Apple Business and Automated Device Enrollment, with multiple enrolment methods for corporate-owned and personally owned devices.
• OS updates enforced through Declarative Device Management, so the device holds and maintains its own update state rather than waiting on server commands.
• Custom payload support – administrators can push any Apple MDM payload beyond those exposed in the dashboard to iOS, macOS or tvOS devices, which matters when a configuration exists in Apple’s specification but not yet in a vendor’s UI.
• Remote troubleshooting, including Remote Terminal for macOS for command-line access to a managed Mac without a screen-sharing session.
• Kiosk and shared-device modes, including iPad kiosk and shared Apple device configurations for frontline and Education deployments.
• Adjacent capabilities as separate licences – OneIdP for conditional access and single sign-on, Veltar for endpoint security.

Strengths: one console across six platforms, so Apple policy and Windows policy are authored in the same place rather than in two tools with two policy models. Published per-device pricing across four tiers, which is not the norm in this category. Apple TV management is included rather than sold as a separate product.

Watch for: billing is annual only, with a 10-device minimum – there is no month-to-month option. And the $2.00 entry price covers UEM alone; OneIdP for identity and Veltar for endpoint security are priced separately, with the bundled Scalefusion 360 suite at $12.42 per device per month.

Pricing: Essential $2.00, Growth $3.50, Business $5.00, Enterprise $6.00 per device per month, billed annually, 10-device minimum. Scalefusion 360 suite $12.42 per device per month.

Best for: organisations running Apple alongside at least one other platform that want a single management console rather than a specialist tool per OS.

2. Jamf

Jamf is the longest-established Apple-focused management platform and the deepest on macOS specifically.

Key capabilities:

• The widest Apple platform coverage here – macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS and visionOS.
• Blueprints, Jamf’s Declarative Device Management model, where a configuration is defined once and scoped across device types. Jamf documents 46 components spanning configuration payloads and restrictions for macOS and iPadOS, with quick-start templates for common cases such as passcode policy, external disk management and Safari extensions.
• Zero-touch deployment for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, including BYOD scenarios.
• A deep Apple-specific policy and scripting model, which is what large Mac estates typically hire Jamf for.

Strengths: the most Apple depth of any platform here, and the largest Apple administrator community – which in practice means most macOS problems already have a documented answer somewhere public.

A naming collision worth knowing about. Three different products in this space now use the word Blueprints for their configuration objects: Jamf Pro, Iru, and Apple Business itself — Apple’s announcement describes “new Blueprints to easily set up devices with preconfigured settings and apps.” They are three separate things. When reading vendor documentation or a community thread, check which Blueprints is meant.

Watch for: Jamf publishes no pricing at any tier – every plan routes to “Contact Us”, so cost cannot be compared without a sales conversation. Note also that Jamf is no longer strictly Apple-only: Jamf for Mobile now includes Manager for Android, though this is lightweight enrolment oriented around deploying Jamf Trust rather than full Android Enterprise management. Jamf’s own framing is “keeping Apple at the centre of their mobility strategy.”

Pricing: not published.

Best for: large, Apple-centric organisations with dedicated Mac administrators, where Apple depth outweighs platform breadth and a procurement process can absorb a quote cycle.

Comparing directly? Jamf Pro alternatives and competitors

3. Iru (formerly Kandji)

Iru – the company and product formerly known as Kandji – manages Apple devices alongside Windows and Android.

Key capabilities:

• Management across macOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Vision Pro, plus Windows and Android.
• Blueprints – configuration sets combining profiles, apps and scripts, applied to a device as a unit.
• Tag-based routing during Automated Device Enrollment, assigning the right Blueprint automatically by device type, department or a custom attribute. This is the most granular enrolment-time targeting documented by any vendor in this comparison.
• Security baselines mapped to published control frameworks – Iru documents Blueprint configurations aligned to CIS Benchmarks and NIST 800-53 controls, so a device can arrive encrypted, firewalled and screen-locked from first boot.
• A macOS agent that extends what Apple’s MDM framework alone can do.

Strengths: a well-regarded macOS automation model, now paired with genuine multi-platform coverage rather than Apple alone. The enrolment-time routing is a real operational advantage for organisations with many device profiles across departments.

Watch for: no published pricing – every plan is quote-based. And the rebrand from Kandji is recent, so a large amount of existing documentation, community discussion and third-party comparison content still refers to the product by its former name. Budget time for that when researching.

Pricing: not published.

Best for: Mac-heavy organisations that want strong macOS automation but need Windows and Android coverage in the same platform.

4. Addigy

Addigy is an Apple-only platform combining MDM with remote monitoring and management, widely used by managed service providers.

Key capabilities:

• Management of Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
• DDM-based OS update enforcement, with the scope stated precisely: major and minor system updates can be enforced and scheduled on macOS 14 and later, iOS 17 and later, and iPadOS 17 and later. Devices below those versions fall back to traditional MDM update mechanisms.
• MDM and RMM in one platform, rather than device management and remote monitoring as separate tools.
• Enrolment without Apple Business – manual and BYOD enrolment are supported directly, though zero-touch deployment and advanced supervision still require it.
• A separately licensed security suite at a higher per-Mac tier.
• Multi-tenant tooling aimed at managed service providers running many client estates.

Strengths: the clearest public DDM documentation of any vendor here – it names the OS floors and the fallback behaviour rather than claiming support in the abstract. That specificity is itself a signal about how the product is documented generally.

Watch for: the $8.25 published rate is per Mac. iOS management is a separate line priced on request, so an iPhone or iPad fleet has no published price to compare. Addigy manages Apple devices only.

Pricing: Apple MDM from $8.25 per Mac per month; Security Suite from $16 per Mac per month; iOS management on request.

Best for: MSPs and Apple-only organisations that want MDM and RMM in one platform and value published DDM detail.

5. Mosyle

Mosyle is Apple-only and the most aggressively priced platform in this comparison, with a genuinely free tier.

Key capabilities:

• Management across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS and visionOS, with Apple Watch and Apple TV carrying no additional licence or fee.
• Automated Device Enrollment – Mosyle states support for all configurations available under ADE.
• Zero-touch setup that goes past enrolment, including creating and authenticating the local user account and enforcing security compliance controls from the device’s first use rather than after first login.
• A free production tier for fleets up to 30 devices, not a time-limited trial.
• Identity and endpoint security bundled into the Fuse tiers rather than sold as separate products.

Strengths: the lowest published per-device pricing here, and one of only two vendors offering a free production tier. Bundling identity and security into Fuse means the headline price is closer to the all-in price than it is with vendors that licence those separately – Scalefusion included.

Watch for: paid tiers require a 30-licence minimum, billed annually – below 30 devices the free tier is the only option. Mosyle manages Apple devices only, so a second operating system means a second tool. Mosyle does not document DDM support on its public pages.

Pricing: Business FREE up to 30 devices; Business PREMIUM $1.00 per device per month; Fuse for macOS $3.00; Fuse for iOS, iPadOS and visionOS $1.50. Paid tiers: 30-licence minimum, billed annually.

Best for: cost-sensitive Apple-only organisations, and small teams that can run entirely inside the free tier.

6. JumpCloud

JumpCloud approaches device management from the identity side – it is a directory platform with MDM attached, rather than an MDM with identity bolted on.

Key capabilities:

• MDM for macOS, iOS and iPadOS alongside Windows, Linux and Android.
• Direct integration with Apple Business or Apple School Manager for Automated Device Enrollment – relevant for Education institutions, since Apple School Manager was not part of the April 2026 consolidation and remains separate.
• Account-driven enrolment for iOS and iPadOS using a Managed Apple Account, so a user enrols their own device without downloading a profile from a link or scanning a QR code.
• Single sign-on, MFA and conditional access in the same platform as the device management, rather than as an integration.

Strengths: if identity and device management are one problem in your organisation, they are one product here rather than two contracts and a connector. Account-driven enrolment is a strong fit for BYOD, where asking a user to install a profile is often where enrolment stalls.

Watch for: pricing is per user, not per device – at $9 per user per month, cost tracks headcount rather than device count, which is favourable for multi-device users and unfavourable for shared-device or single-device fleets. Compare it against per-device pricing carefully. Platform Essentials is capped at 300 users, and JumpCloud does not document DDM support publicly.

Pricing: Device Management $9 per user per month billed annually, $11 monthly. Packaged tiers quote-based.

Best for: organisations where identity is the organising principle and users typically carry more than one device.

7. ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus

ManageEngine offers the broadest platform coverage in this comparison and a free edition for small fleets.

Key capabilities:

• The widest OS coverage in this comparison – iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and visionOS, plus Android, Windows and Chrome.
• Documented DDM support, described as compatibility with “Apple’s recommended approach for modern enterprise management” – one of only four vendors here to state it publicly.
• Apple Business and Automated Device Enrollment, with zero-touch enrolment for devices purchased through Apple or an authorised reseller.
• Cloud or on-premises deployment, with on-premises available on annual or perpetual licensing.
• A free edition covering up to 25 devices with full feature access.

Strengths: the broadest platform coverage here by some margin, and one of only two vendors with a free production tier. The on-premises option matters in regulated or air-gapped environments where cloud-only tooling is ruled out – a consideration in Healthcare and parts of Construction & Infrastructure that most competitors on this list cannot meet at all.

Watch for: pricing is sold as tiered bundles by device count, not per device, so there is no per-device rate to compare and costs step up at tier boundaries. The entry tier starts at 25 devices.

Pricing: free edition up to 25 devices. Standard cloud from $645 per year (25 devices) to $39,195 (10,000 devices); Professional cloud from $1,195 to $71,995 per year. On-premises annual and perpetual licensing available.

Best for: organisations needing Apple, Android, Windows and Chrome in one tool, or requiring an on-premises deployment option.

8. SimpleMDM

SimpleMDM is a deliberately narrow Apple MDM that competes on published pricing and speed to value.

Key capabilities:

• Management of macOS, iOS and iPadOS.
• Automated enrolment through Apple Business for company-owned devices, plus enrolment by link for BYOD and standard manual enrolment.
• Munki integration for macOS app deployment included at no extra cost, which is unusual – it gives Mac admins an open-source packaging and deployment path rather than requiring everything to route through the vendor’s own app catalogue.
• No contract, with monthly and annual billing both published.

Strengths: transparent pricing, no contract, and a short path from sign-up to a managed device. The scope is deliberately narrow and the product does not claim otherwise – which for a small Apple estate is a feature rather than a limitation.

Watch for: tvOS is not among the platforms SimpleMDM lists publicly – it names macOS, iOS and iPadOS. If Apple TV management matters to you, confirm directly before shortlisting. SimpleMDM manages Apple devices only, and does not document DDM support on its public pages. Enterprise pricing is quote-based.

Pricing: $2.50 per device per month billed annually, $3.00 monthly. Enterprise on request.

Best for: small to mid-sized Apple estates of Macs, iPhones and iPads that want published pricing and minimal administrative overhead.

Apple Business and Apple’s built-in MDM: when it’s enough, and when it isn’t

The section at the top of this article answers the headline question. This one is for teams already weighing the decision seriously.

What changed on 14 April 2026. Apple Business replaced Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials and Apple Business Connect. Where Apple Business Manager was an enrolment and app-distribution service that required a third-party MDM, Apple Business includes one. That is a structural change, not a rename – and it is why a 2025-vintage comparison of Apple MDM tools is now out of date on its central assumption.

Apple School Manager was not part of this. Education institutions on Apple School Manager should not assume their service was consolidated. It was not.

Where Apple’s built-in MDM holds up: enrolment, configuration profiles, app distribution and baseline restrictions on an Apple-only fleet.

Where organisations outgrow it – the two triggers we see most often:

1. A second operating system arrives. This is the most common trigger and the least avoidable. Apple’s tooling manages Apple devices.
2. Policy needs conditions. Broad restrictions are one thing; policy scoped by group, device type, location or compliance state is another, and that is where third-party platforms are built to operate.

Two further considerations that are less about capability than accountability: commercial platforms provide a support contract and an escalation path, and they consolidate adjacent disciplines – patching, endpoint security, identity, remote support that Apple leaves to you to assemble.

A reasonable sequence for a small Apple-only team: start on Apple Business, document what you cannot do, and revisit when the list has two entries on it.

Migrating between Apple MDM providers

Migration used to be the reason organisations stayed on tools they had outgrown. That has changed, and the change is worth understanding before it factors into a decision.

Apple supports migrating devices to a different management service, and documents the process directly (Migrate managed devices to another device management service). The conditions are specific and worth knowing before a vendor conversation, because they determine how much of a project this is.

What Apple’s documentation establishes:

• You must own the device and it must be enrolled through Automated Device Enrollment. That is the baseline requirement. One exception now exists: Macs running macOS 26 or later support a migration that unenrols from Automated Device Enrollment and re-enrols using profile-based enrolment.
• Managed apps are preserved on iPhone and iPad. Apple’s stated benefit is no data loss and a faster migration, because devices do not re-download apps they already have – historically one of the most disruptive parts of switching.
• Handle the content token before you move. Apple’s guidance is to remove the content token from the current management service before migrating, and if volume-purchased apps are part of the deployment, not to set a migration deadline longer than 30 days.
• Migration runs on a deadline you set. Administrators set an enrolment deadline and can see pending migrations. Users receive escalating notifications as it approaches – daily, then hourly in the final 24 hours, then at sixty, thirty, ten and one minute.

What Apple’s process does not do for you:

• Policy does not transfer. Configuration profiles, restrictions and app assignments are rebuilt in the new platform, not exported and imported. Budget for authoring, not migrating – this is the largest single cost of switching.
• Certificates need reissuing. Push certificates and any identity certificates are established against the new service.
• Sequencing is yours to plan. Run both platforms in parallel over a pilot group before moving the fleet.

The practical implication for this comparison: switching cost is lower than it was, so being on the wrong Apple MDM is a more fixable problem than it used to be. It is not zero, and the work that remains is mostly policy authoring rather than device handling.

For platform-specific procedures, see the relevant vendor documentation – help.scalefusion.com covers the Scalefusion side.

Why choose Scalefusion for Apple MDM?

Scalefusion is the right answer to a specific question, and not to every question on this page.

It fits when Apple is significant but not exclusive. Apple-only platforms – Addigy, Mosyle, SimpleMDM— are strong within their scope. Scalefusion’s argument is that most organisations do not stay single-platform, and running one console across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, Windows, Android, Linux and ChromeOS avoids authoring the same policy twice in two different tools.

On Apple specifically, Scalefusion enrols through Apple Business and Automated Device Enrollment, applies Declarative Device Management for OS update enforcement, distributes and patches applications, provides Remote Terminal for macOS troubleshooting, and manages Apple TV alongside Macs and iPhones rather than as a separate product.

Where identity and endpoint security matter, OneIdP adds conditional access and single sign-on, and Veltar adds endpoint security both as separately licensed add-ons, or bundled in the Scalefusion 360 suite.

Where it is not the right fit: an organisation running Apple exclusively, with dedicated Mac administrators and deep macOS scripting requirements, will find more Apple-specific depth in Jamf. And a team wanting month-to-month billing will find Scalefusion’s annual-only terms restrictive.

See the full capability detail on the Scalefusion Apple device management page.

Get started with Apple device management

Use Scalefusion to enrol Apple devices through Apple Business, enforce OS updates with Declarative Device Management, and manage macOS, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS alongside Windows and Android in one console – so your IT team writes each policy once instead of once per platform.

Start a free trial · See Apple MDM pricing

Methodology and verification

Last verified: 11 August 2026.

Pricing, platform scope and Declarative Device Management support for all eight vendors were read directly from each vendor’s own published pricing and product pages on that date. Where a vendor does not publish a price or does not document a capability, this article records that rather than estimating or inferring. Apple Business and Apple School Manager details are taken from Apple’s own announcements and deployment documentation.

Vendor selection was based on presence in live US search results for Apple MDM buying queries in August 2026. This article does not include head-to-head performance testing or support responsiveness evaluation; both require a trial in your own environment.

Scalefusion publishes this comparison and is included in it. The constraint noted against Scalefusion is stated on the same basis as those noted against every other vendor.

FAQs

1. What is Apple MDM?

Apple MDM is mobile device management for Apple hardware – macOS, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS. It uses the management framework Apple builds into its operating systems, letting an IT team enrol devices, apply configuration profiles, distribute applications, enforce security settings and, where necessary, lock or wipe a device remotely. Since April 2026 Apple has provided its own MDM service inside Apple Business, alongside the third-party platforms compared in this article.

2. Does Apple offer a free MDM?

Yes. Apple Business, launched on 14 April 2026, includes a built-in device management service at no cost. It handles enrolment, configuration profiles, app distribution and baseline restrictions for Apple devices. Organisations typically outgrow it when a second operating system enters the estate or when policy needs to be scoped by group, condition or compliance state.

3. How much does Apple MDM cost?

Published entry prices among the vendors compared here range from free to $9 per user per month. Mosyle offers a free tier up to 30 devices and ManageEngine up to 25; Scalefusion starts at $2.00 per device per month, SimpleMDM at $2.50, Addigy at $8.25 per Mac, and JumpCloud at $9.00 per user. Jamf and Iru publish no pricing and quote on request. Prices verified 11 August 2026.

4. What is the best MDM for Apple devices?

There is no single best Apple MDM – the right answer depends on whether your estate is Apple-only or mixed. For Apple-only organisations wanting maximum macOS depth, Jamf and Addigy are the strongest candidates. For organisations running Apple alongside Windows or Android, Scalefusion and ManageEngine manage both from one console. For small Apple-only fleets on a tight budget, Mosyle’s free tier or Apple’s own built-in MDM may be sufficient.

5. Which Apple MDM is best for Mac management?

For dedicated macOS depth, Jamf and Addigy are built specifically around it – Addigy combines MDM with remote monitoring and publishes the clearest detail on Declarative Device Management support. Where Macs sit alongside Windows or Android machines, Scalefusion and ManageEngine manage macOS within a single cross-platform console. For a Mac-only comparison, see our Mac MDM solutions guide; for iPhone and iPad estates specifically, see iOS MDM solutions.

6. What’s the difference between Apple MDM and UEM?

Apple MDM manages Apple devices using Apple’s management framework. Unified endpoint management, or UEM, manages endpoints across operating systems – Apple, Windows, Android, Linux and ChromeOS – from one console, usually adding application, identity and security management. Every Apple MDM is a subset of what a UEM does; the distinction matters when a second operating system enters the estate.

7. Can Apple MDM manage BYOD devices?

Yes, through enrolment methods designed for personally owned hardware. Account-driven enrolment lets a user enrol using a Managed Apple Account without an administrator handling the device, and user enrolment separates work data from personal data on the same device. Management scope is deliberately narrower than on corporate-owned devices – an organisation can manage and remove its own applications and data without controlling the personal side.

8. What MDM does Apple use?

Apple does not publish which MDM it uses to manage its own corporate devices. What Apple provides to organisations is the management framework built into macOS, iOS, iPadOS and tvOS, which every third-party platform in this comparison builds on, plus its own management service inside Apple Business since 14 April 2026. A question about what MDM Apple uses is usually asking about one of those two things.

9. Who are the top MDM providers for Apple devices?

The top MDM solutions for Apple compared here are Scalefusion, Jamf, Iru (formerly Kandji), Addigy, Mosyle, JumpCloud, ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus and SimpleMDM. Addigy, Mosyle and SimpleMDM manage Apple devices exclusively. Scalefusion, JumpCloud and ManageEngine also manage Windows and Android, which matters if a second operating system is on the roadmap. Jamf and Iru quote on request rather than publishing a per-device price. Selection criteria and verification dates are set out in the methodology section above.