The customer list is the one file a company cannot lose, which is exactly why the CRM industry has always charged rent on it. Every name and every deal stage lives in a database you can export but never quite own.
Twenty is that same database, with the export button turned into a Docker command.
The best open source HubSpot alternative for most small teams is Twenty: AGPL-3.0 licensed at its core, free to self-host with no seat limit, and $9 per user a month on its cloud Pro plan, billed yearly (checked Nov 4, 2026). EspoCRM is the pick if you want a mature PHP CRM, SuiteCRM if you need the full Salesforce-style module set, and Odoo if the CRM is the first of several business apps you plan to run.
What Twenty actually is
Twenty is a self-hostable CRM built around objects, views and workflows, with an AI chat layered on top in 2026. The code is mostly AGPL-3.0, with a few Enterprise-marked files under a commercial licence and the SDK and UI library under MIT (licence). The repo has about 60,400 GitHub stars and calls itself “the #1 Open Source CRM on GitHub” (repo).
Version 2.55.0 shipped on November 3, 2026 (release). It adds private records and an AI chat that builds widgets from your own data. The notes warn that “Five breaking changes ship with this release”, so self-hosters should read that section before upgrading.
Twenty's prices on Nov 4, 2026: self-hosting the open source core is free; cloud Pro is $9 per user a month and Organization is $39, both billed yearly; Enterprise starts at $50,000 a year. There is no permanent free cloud plan, only a 30-day trial.
HubSpot's Starter seat lists at $20 a month and its Professional seat at $90 billed yearly plus a $1,500 onboarding fee. Twenty's cloud seat is $9 and its self-hosted seat is $0. The customer data is the same either way.
What HubSpot charges now
HubSpot prices per seat, per hub, with a monthly allowance of HubSpot Credits attached to every tier. On Nov 4, 2026 hubspot.com/pricing/sales lists the Free tools at $0 for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts; Starter at $20 per seat a month, with a limited-time discount to $7 a seat billed annually, and 500 credits; Professional at $90 per seat a month billed annually ($100 monthly) with 3,000 credits and a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500; and Enterprise at $150 per seat a month with 5,000 credits and a $3,500 onboarding fee.
HubSpot is a public company valued near eleven to twelve billion dollars on the stock market at the end of October 2026. The newer rival, Attio, reportedly raised fifty-two million dollars in a Series B led by GV in August 2025. Attio's pricing page, viewed from Europe on Nov 4, 2026, lists Free for up to 3 seats, Plus at €31 per user a month billed yearly and Pro at €74, each with its own credit allowance.
The open source HubSpot alternatives
Of the 560 CRM tools in the AppClap catalog (Nov 4, 2026), 34 are open source and 85 can be self-hosted. Five of them replace HubSpot's CRM for a small sales team.
Twenty
Twenty is a modern CRM with custom objects, kanban and table views, workflows and email sync. It is free to self-host and $9 per user a month on cloud Pro, billed yearly (checked Nov 4, 2026). The core is AGPL-3.0 and it runs in Docker. It is best for a startup that wants Attio's feel without Attio's bill. The honest drawback: a release every few days means breaking changes land often, and 2.55 ships five of them.
EspoCRM
EspoCRM is a PHP CRM with leads, opportunities, cases, email and a no-code layout editor. Self-hosted it is free; the project also sells a hosted cloud and paid extensions, which we did not price this run. The licence is AGPL-3.0, the repo has about 3,500 stars, and version 10.0.11 shipped on October 23, 2026 (repo). It is best for a team on a plain LAMP server. The drawback: the interface looks like a CRM from 2018.
SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM is the open source fork of SugarCRM's community edition, with the full account, opportunity, quote and campaign module set. It is free to self-host under AGPL-3.0; SuiteCRM 8.10.2 shipped on July 31, 2026 (repo), and the original SuiteCRM 7 repo carries about 5,800 stars. It is best for a company that needs the module set a Salesforce admin would recognise. The drawback: the same weight, and a PHP stack that wants a sysadmin.
Krayin
Krayin is a Laravel-based CRM with leads, pipelines, quotes and email. It is free, MIT licensed, and the repo has about 24,100 stars (repo). Krayin is best for a Laravel shop that wants to extend the CRM in a framework it already knows. The drawback: the community is smaller than Twenty's or Odoo's, and the add-on marketplace is smaller still.
Odoo CRM
Odoo is a suite of business apps, and its CRM is one module of a community edition licensed LGPL-3.0 with about 55,500 stars on the main repo (repo). The community edition is free to self-host; Odoo's paid plans bundle hosting and the enterprise modules, and we did not re-check their price this run. It is best for a company that wants invoicing, inventory and the CRM in one database. The drawback: you adopt all of Odoo's conventions, and leaving later is a migration.
| Tool | Licence | Self-hosted price | Hosted option | Stars (Nov 4, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twenty | AGPL-3.0 core, some MIT and Enterprise files | $0 | Pro $9, Organization $39 a user/mo yearly | ~60,400 |
| EspoCRM | AGPL-3.0 | $0 | Cloud sold, not priced here | ~3,500 |
| SuiteCRM | AGPL-3.0 | $0 | Partners | ~5,800 (v7 repo) |
| Krayin | MIT | $0 | None from the project | ~24,100 |
| Odoo CRM | LGPL-3.0 (community) | $0 | Paid plans, not priced here | ~55,500 |
| HubSpot | Proprietary | n/a | Free (2 users), Starter $20, Pro $90, Enterprise $150 a seat/mo | n/a |
Two more worth a look: Monica, an AGPL-3.0 personal CRM, and Dolibarr, a GPL-3.0 ERP and CRM.
Twenty CRM vs HubSpot
Twenty and HubSpot differ most on who holds the data and what a seat costs. HubSpot runs only on HubSpot's servers; Twenty runs on yours or on Twenty's cloud. A HubSpot Starter seat lists at $20 a month; a Twenty cloud seat is $9 and a self-hosted seat is $0 (checked Nov 4, 2026). HubSpot wins on breadth: marketing email, landing pages, a help desk and a CMS live in the same account. Twenty is the CRM alone, and that is the point.
Is HubSpot free forever?
HubSpot's free CRM tools are free with no time limit, but they stop at 2 users and 1,000 contacts (checked Nov 4, 2026 on hubspot.com/pricing/crm). A third person on the team, or a thousand-and-first contact, means a Starter seat at $20 a month list price. Twenty, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM, Krayin and Odoo are free to self-host with no user cap; the server is the bill.
What you actually take on
HubSpot's price buys a CRM nobody on your team has to run. The database is backed up, the email sync keeps working, and an agency can set up your pipeline for a fee. For a sales team with no engineer, that is still a fair trade at $20 a seat.
The self-hosted path moves those jobs to you. A Twenty or EspoCRM install is a database holding every customer you have, and it needs backups you have restored once and a reading of the release notes before each upgrade. If the customer list is the one file your company cannot lose, that is a reason to own it carefully, not a reason to rent it.
- 1Does someone on the team already run a database and a Docker host?
- 2Are you paying HubSpot for more than three seats, or about to?
- 3Have you restored a backup of your CRM in the last year?
- 4If HubSpot changes its credit allowances again, would you rather read the email or not receive it?
This series keeps walking down a hallway of paid-app doors, from dictation through the login, the mailbox and the drawing board. The CRM was the third door, back in August with Comp AI, and we are back at it because Twenty has turned a demo into a product that ships every week. We keep writing these at AppClap because a search for software should put the tool you can own next to the famous one, with the price on the page. Our HubSpot alternatives and Attio alternatives pages list everything we track, and if you would rather describe the job, start from a CRM my team can self-host without paying per seat. Thirty seconds on the question is worth it: do you want to rent the customer list, or own it?
