Best Personal CRM App (2026): Free Options for iPhone and Android

TL;DR:

• Best free plan: Mesh (the app formerly called Clay) is free for up to 1,000 contacts and now runs on iPhone and Android. It asks for a credit card even on the free plan.
• Free and private: Monica costs nothing if you host it yourself. Its hosted sign-up is closed right now, and native phone apps are promised only after its v3 rebuild.
• For a big LinkedIn network: Dex, from $12 a month on annual billing. There's a 6-day trial and no free plan.
• For a sales pipeline: folk, from $24 per member a month. It's a team CRM, so most individuals will be paying for features they won't touch.
• Free DIY: your phone's Contacts app plus Reminders or Google Tasks works if you'll actually type the notes.
• Codot (ours) is for people who never keep a CRM up to date. You say one sentence after meeting someone, and it saves the person, the follow-up task and the date.

Disclosure: Codot is our product. Everything about the other apps comes from their own pricing pages, home pages and US App Store or Google Play listings, checked on November 3, 2026. We haven't run a side-by-side test of these apps, so we compare what each one says it does and what it costs.

A personal CRM is a contacts app that remembers context: how you met someone, what they told you, what you owe them and when to get back in touch. The category has moved around a lot this year. Clay renamed itself Mesh and launched on Android in August, Monica closed new hosted sign-ups while it rebuilds, and several roundups still list prices and names from 2024. This page sorts out what's current.

Which personal CRM app fits which person?

Sources: Mesh pricing, Mesh on Google Play, Dex pricing, Dex on the App Store, Monica, folk pricing. All as of November 3, 2026.

Mesh: the most generous free personal CRM

Mesh is the free option most people should look at first. The Personal plan covers 1,000 contacts and still includes reconnect reminders, birthday notifications and alerts when someone changes job or city. Pro at $10 a month removes the contact cap and adds CSV import. Two things to know before signing up: the free plan asks for a credit card, and the App Store sells Pro in-app at $19.99 a month or $119.99 a year, so buying on the web is cheaper.

The Android app arrived in August 2026 (TechCrunch), which fixes the biggest complaint in older reviews. Mesh works best when your network already lives in your inbox and on LinkedIn, because most of its value comes from what it pulls in automatically.

Dex: for people who network on LinkedIn every week

Dex has no free plan. Premium is $12 a month billed yearly or $20 billed monthly, and Professional is $20 a month yearly or $34 monthly; both come with a 6-day trial. The plan difference that matters is LinkedIn sync, capped at 2,500 connections on Premium and 9,000 on Professional. Voice mode starts at the Professional plan.

Dex suits recruiters, salespeople and anyone with a weekly keep-in-touch habit. If you'd open the app on Monday and work through a list of people you haven't spoken to in three months, the price is fair. If you wouldn't, the reminders pile up unread.

Monica: the free personal CRM for friends and family

Monica is open source and costs nothing to run on your own server with Docker. It's the one tool here built more for friends and family than for networking: it tracks the things people told you and the dates that matter to them, and it doesn't do LinkedIn sync or enrichment.

As of November 3, 2026, Monica's site says registration for the hosted version is closed. The team is rebuilding the app as v3, expected before the end of 2026, and native iOS and Android apps come after that. Today on a phone you use the web app. So "Monica personal CRM" in practice means a self-hosted web app, which is a good fit if you enjoy running a server and a poor one if your conversations end on a pavement.

folk: when your "personal" CRM is really a sales pipeline

folk shows up in a lot of personal CRM lists, but its pricing is per team member: Standard is $24 a month billed yearly ($30 monthly) and Premium is $48. You get a 2-week trial with no card. If you're tracking deals with stages, it's a reasonable choice. For remembering your friend's new job, it's far more tool than you need.

The free DIY setup: Contacts plus reminders

You can build a passable personal CRM with what's already on your phone. On iPhone, put context in the contact's Notes field ("met at the March design meetup, two kids, moving to Lisbon") and create a dated reminder for each follow-up. On Android, Google Contacts has a notes field too, and Google Tasks or Google Calendar handles the reminders.

The weakness is that it's two apps with no link between them. The reminder says "email Lena" and the reason you're emailing her sits in another app. It also only works if you type the notes, which is the step most people skip after a busy day. For a list of 20 people you care about, though, this costs nothing and is honestly enough.

Codot: a personal CRM you don't have to maintain

Codot is a voice-first personal assistant, and while the personal CRM is one part of it, the same technology powers voice calorie tracker apps that let you log meals by talking. You say what happened in plain language, and it creates whatever the sentence implies: a contact note, a task, a calendar event. The same app also triages Gmail and Outlook and drafts replies to important emails, sends a daily briefing and runs scheduled automations.

Here's what that looks like. You're walking out of the conference hall at 5:40, badge still around your neck, and you open Codot from the lock screen widget. You say: "Met Lena at the conference, she runs ops at a logistics startup, follow up next Tuesday about the pilot." Codot shows a card for Lena with her company and role and how you met, plus a task for Tuesday to follow up on the pilot. Tap to confirm. On Tuesday morning, the follow-up is in your daily briefing. In three weeks, when you can't remember her surname, you ask "who was the ops person from the logistics startup?" and Codot finds her from the details you gave it.

Contact cards hold name, company, title, location, how close you are, likes and preferences, important dates and notes on how you met. Follow-ups become dated tasks, and events go into Google Calendar (and, on iPhone, Apple Calendar).

There are limits. Codot doesn't sync LinkedIn, doesn't watch for job changes and doesn't enrich profiles with public data. It knows the people you tell it about, so it won't build a 2,000-person database for you. It's also a personal tool rather than a business CRM, with no sales pipeline, quotes, invoicing or shared team records. Codot runs on iPhone, Apple Watch, Android and the web; the Apple Watch app and lock screen widget are on the Apple side. The daily briefing and email triage are iPhone only; on Android you get tasks, reminders, notes, the CRM and routines.

Networking or friends: how we'd choose

We'd decide on one question first: will you keep this up to date by hand?

• You want your existing network pulled in for you: Mesh, free up to 1,000 contacts. Pay for Dex only if you work your LinkedIn network every week.
• You care about privacy and like running servers: self-hosted Monica, accepting the lack of a phone app until v3.
• Your list is small and you already type notes: Contacts plus Reminders or Google Tasks. It's free and it works.
• You run deals with a team: folk, or a proper sales CRM.
• You forget to log people at all: Codot, because the logging is one sentence you say on the way out. You can run it next to Mesh: let Mesh hold the big network and use Codot for the conversations you just had and the promises you made.

If you're a founder tracking investors and early customers, our personal CRM guide for founders goes into what to capture per person. If you forget people more than most, this piece on a voice CRM for ADHD covers that side. To set up capture from the lock screen, see how to put a to-do list on your iPhone lock screen.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free personal CRM app?

As of November 3, 2026, Mesh has the biggest free plan among hosted apps (1,000 contacts, iPhone and Android, credit card required). Monica is free if you host it yourself. Codot's free plan includes the personal CRM, tasks, calendar, notes and habits; reminders at a set time, daily briefings, scheduled automations and email triage need Codot Max ($12.99 a month, 20x the free plan's usage), with a 7-day Max trial for new accounts. Your phone's Contacts app plus a reminders app is the zero-cost fallback.

Is there a personal CRM app for Android?

Yes. Mesh launched on Android in August 2026, Dex and folk have Android apps, and Codot is on Google Play. Monica has no native app yet; you use its web app in a phone browser.

Is Monica personal CRM still free?

The code is free to self-host. The hosted version is a paid subscription, and its sign-up was closed on November 3, 2026 while the team builds v3.

How is Codot different from Dex or Mesh?

Dex and Mesh import your network from LinkedIn, email and calendar and remind you to keep in touch. Codot starts from what you say after meeting someone: it creates the contact note, the dated follow-up and the calendar entry from one sentence, and answers questions about people later. It doesn't sync LinkedIn or track job changes.

Can I use a personal CRM for friends instead of networking?

Yes. Monica was built for that, and Codot handles it the same way it handles work contacts ("Sam's birthday is June 12, he just started climbing"). Networking-first apps like Dex lean on LinkedIn data, which matters less for friends.

If the last follow-up you forgot was one you said out loud, try saying the next one to Codot as you leave the room. Get Codot on the App Store or on Google Play.