Salesforce alternatives: 3 open-source picks
Salesforce costs $25/mo — $300 a year. These 3 alternatives replace it for $0, led by Twenty, EspoCRM and Monica. All 3 are open source. License, stars and last commit checked by hand on 2026-08-29. No trials, no crippled tiers.
A modern, Notion-flavored CRM built in the open as the community answer to Salesforce.
licenseAGPL-3.0
runsyour server
setupnot verified by us yet — check the repo README
facts verified 2026-08-29
Full-featured CRM: leads, opportunities, email integration, workflows — light enough for a $5 VPS.
licenseAGPL-3.0
runsyour server
setupnot verified by us yet — check the repo README
facts verified 2026-08-29
Personal CRM to remember everything about friends, family and contacts.
licenseAGPL-3.0
runsyour server
setupnot verified by us yet — check the repo README
facts verified 2026-08-29
What each one is, in full: Twenty · EspoCRM · Monica
last updated 2026-08-29 · no votes, no pay-to-list · just what's real
how to choose a Salesforce alternative
Easiest to get running
EspoCRM — a one-click install, no server to maintain.
Most proven
Twenty, with 35,000 GitHub stars — the largest community of the 3, which usually means more answers when something breaks.
what you give up by leaving Salesforce
- Every integration: marketing automation, support cases, quoting, billing, BI tooling, and the hundred connectors vendors ship for Salesforce and nothing else
- Multi-user permissions, sharing rules, field-level security, and audit trails that survive a compliance review
- Reporting, forecasting and dashboards that leadership already knows how to read
- The admin ecosystem: consultants, AppExchange, and a hiring pool that already knows the object model
- Historical data with lineage, which is the actual asset in any CRM older than a year
None of the picks above covers all of it. The full verdict says which gaps matter.
Salesforce alternatives at a glance
| tool | license | running it | platforms | stars | active |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twenty | AGPL-3.0 | docker to self-host | self-hosted, web | 35,000 | 2026-08 |
| EspoCRM | AGPL-3.0 | one-click install | self-hosted, web | 2,000 | 2026-08 |
| Monica | AGPL-3.0 | one-click install | self-hosted, web | 22,000 | 2026-08 |
why people still pay for Salesforce
Because the CRM is the seam the whole revenue org is stitched along. Marketing scores leads into it, support reads accounts out of it, finance reconciles against it, and the board deck is generated from its reports. Ripping it out means rebuilding all of that at once with no downtime, while the sales team is mid-quarter. That risk is worth more per year than the license, which is exactly why the license costs what it does. A solo consultant tracking forty relationships is in a completely different situation and is mostly paying for guilt. If none of that applies to you, any pick above saves $300 a year.
questions about switching from Salesforce
Is there an open-source alternative to Salesforce?
Yes: Twenty, EspoCRM, Monica. Every tool on this page is open source: no trials, no crippled tiers.
Can open source really replace Salesforce?
Our verdict is YES. Twenty (35k stars), Monica (22k stars), EspoCRM (2k stars) are mature open-source replacements for Salesforce — self-host with docker and stop paying $25/mo. The full verdict, and what you give up by switching, is at caniopensourceit.online/salesforce.
What is the easiest open-source Salesforce alternative to set up?
EspoCRM — a one-click install, no server to maintain.
What is the most popular open-source Salesforce alternative?
By GitHub stars, Twenty (35,000). Monica is next with 22,000.
