folk vs Twenty
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentTwenty compared with folk
folk is the relationship-first CRM for people who work networks rather than pipelines, with strong contact enrichment and a lovely interface. Twenty is a general-purpose object database with a CRM on top. Pick folk for relationship and partnership management where the contact is the unit; pick Twenty when you need a real schema, an API, and the option to self-host.
Choose folk if
Small relationship-driven teams (1 to 20 people): agencies chasing new logos, founders doing sales themselves, VC and BD teams managing deal flow and partnerships, recruiters mapping candidates, anyone whose pipeline starts on LinkedIn and closes over email and coffee.
Choose Twenty if
Technically comfortable startups and small businesses that want to own their CRM data, need an unusual data model without paying enterprise prices for custom objects, and are happy to trade a large integration marketplace for an open codebase, a real API, and a $9 seat.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | folk | Twenty |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $24/member/mo (Standard, billed annually; $30 monthly) (14 days trial) | $0 self-hosted, or $9 per user per month for managed cloud (Pro) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per-member subscription across three tiers (Standard, Premium, Enterprise) with 20% off annual billing; enrichment credits, messages, magic fields, account syncs, and AI-assistant runs are metered per plan with custom allocations on Enterprise. | Open-source software that is free to self-host, plus a managed cloud sold per user per month on three tiers, with a small annual workflow credit allowance as the only metered element. |
| Free plan | No | Self-hosting is free with no licence cost, no seat limit enforced by the vendor, and the same feature set as the cloud product; you supply the infrastructure and the operations. |
| Free trial | 14 days with all premium features, no credit card required | 30 days on cloud, no credit card required |
| Best for | Small relationship-driven teams (1 to 20 people): agencies chasing new logos, founders doing sales themselves, VC and BD teams managing deal flow and partnerships, recruiters mapping candidates, anyone whose pipeline starts on LinkedIn and closes over email and coffee. | Technically comfortable startups and small businesses that want to own their CRM data, need an unusual data model without paying enterprise prices for custom objects, and are happy to trade a large integration marketplace for an open codebase, a real API, and a $9 seat. |
| Setup time | Hours: install folkX, connect a mailbox, import contacts (CSV or LinkedIn capture), pick a template. A team is realistically productive on day one, with Premium features like sequences and dashboards configured over the first week. | Cloud: a working workspace in under an hour, including email and calendar sync. Self-hosted: half a day for a competent engineer using Docker Compose, longer if you are wiring managed Postgres, Redis, object storage, and OAuth credentials properly. |
| Learning curve | Low by design; the contact-book-plus-kanban model needs no CRM background. The only real ramp is learning to budget the meters (enrichment, messages, AI runs) across a team. | Low for daily use because the table and kanban views are familiar, and moderate for whoever designs the schema. Building objects, relations, and workflows is light data modelling, and the quality of the result depends entirely on that person. |
| Platforms | Web app, folkX Chrome extension, iOS app, REST API (Premium) | Web, Self-hosted via Docker Compose or Kubernetes, MCP server for AI assistants |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type I (per vendor site), GDPR, Google security assessment passed (for restricted-scope Gmail access) | GDPR, SOC 2 (cloud); confirm current attestation status with the vendor before signing |
| Founded | 2020 | 2023 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Paris, France |
| Ownership | Venture-backed (incubated at eFounders, now Hexa) | Venture-backed, Y Combinator alumnus (S23) |
Strengths and limitations
folk
Strengths
- The LinkedIn-to-CRM capture loop via folkX is the smoothest in the category; for network-driven sellers it removes the single biggest source of CRM rot.
- Waterfall enrichment built into the entry tier means captured contacts arrive actionable (with emails), not as name-only stubs.
- WhatsApp sync alongside email and calendar reflects how relationship deals actually happen in 2026, and few competitors touch it.
- The four AI assistants target real drudgery (follow-up timing, recaps, research, triggered sends) with quotas generous enough to matter on Premium.
Limitations
- Hard functional ceiling: no telephony, shallow automation beyond the Workflow Assistant, basic reporting, and custom objects only arriving at Premium make folk a first CRM, not a destination platform.
- Nearly everything is metered (enrichment, messages, magic fields, AI runs, account syncs), so the sticker price understates cost for power users and comparing against flat-price rivals takes real math.
- Sequences, dashboards, API, deals, and full interaction history all sit behind Premium, leaving Standard thinner than its marketing suggests for a working sales team.
- The workflow depends on Chrome plus the folkX extension; environments that restrict extensions, or LinkedIn's periodic hostility to scrapers, are structural risks to the core loop.
Twenty
Strengths
- Unlimited custom objects, fields, and records on the $9 tier, which no packaged CRM at that price comes close to matching.
- Genuinely open source with the full stack on GitHub, so self-hosting is a real option and vendor lock-in is close to zero.
- A native MCP server on every cloud workspace, making the CRM readable and writable by Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor without middleware.
- REST and GraphQL APIs plus webhooks on every plan rather than gated behind an upper tier.
Limitations
- No native calling, SMS, or call recording anywhere in the product, so phone-driven sales teams need a separate tool entirely.
- No built-in mass email marketing, nurture campaigns, or landing pages; Twenty is a system of record, not a growth platform.
- The integration ecosystem is small compared with Pipedrive, HubSpot, or Zoho, and most connections are made through the API, webhooks, or middleware rather than one-click apps.
- Reporting is comparatively thin: views, filters, and dashboards exist, but there is no forecasting engine of the depth a sales manager gets from Pipedrive or Zoho.
Pricing compared
folk
Per-member subscription across three tiers (Standard, Premium, Enterprise) with 20% off annual billing; enrichment credits, messages, magic fields, account syncs, and AI-assistant runs are metered per plan with custom allocations on Enterprise.
- Standard$24
- Premium$48
- EnterpriseFrom $80
At $24 to $48 per member, folk prices above bare-bones contact managers and below full revenue platforms, which is exactly where it belongs. For a five-person agency, Premium at roughly $240 a month replaces a capture extension, an enrichment tool, a light sequencer, and the CRM itself, and the bundled AI assistants are more useful in practice than most CRM AI at this price. The caveats are the meters (enrichment-hungry or high-send teams will feel the caps and should price Enterprise) and the ceiling: none of the spend builds toward advanced automation or reporting, so fast-growing teams may pay twice, once for folk now and once for the migration to a heavier platform later.
Twenty
Open-source software that is free to self-host, plus a managed cloud sold per user per month on three tiers, with a small annual workflow credit allowance as the only metered element.
- Self-hosted$0
- Pro (cloud)$9
- Organization (cloud)$19
- EnterpriseFrom $50,000
At $9 a seat for unlimited custom objects, unlimited records, workflows, a full API, and a native MCP server, Twenty is the best capability-per-dollar in this category by a wide margin, and it is not close. Bigin at $7 caps you at 50,000 records and ten custom fields per module; Pipedrive charges $39 for the tier where automation lives; Attio starts at $29. What you are giving up is maturity: no dialer, no marketing engine, a thin connector ecosystem, and a young company still changing quickly. If your team can absorb that, the open-source option removes lock-in entirely, and self-hosting turns the licence line item into an infrastructure line item you control.
Editorial verdict on each
folk
folk is the best CRM on the market for the first mile of relationship selling: nothing else moves a person from LinkedIn profile to enriched, followed-up-with contact as smoothly, and the AI assistants do maintenance work most CRM AI only demos. It is equally clear about what it is not: no phone system, shallow automation, metered everything, and a ceiling that ambitious teams will hit. Agencies, founders, VCs, and partnership teams under 20 people should shortlist it without hesitation; teams planning to be 50-person revenue orgs should weigh whether to start on Attio and skip the migration folk's own simplicity makes eventually necessary.
Read the full folk profileTwenty
Twenty is the most interesting CRM in this directory and one of the cheapest, which is a rare combination. Unlimited custom objects and records at $9 a seat, a full API, a native MCP server, and a genuinely open codebase add up to a product that removes the two things buyers hate most about CRM: arbitrary limits used as upsell levers, and lock-in. Buy it if you have someone comfortable with a data model and you either want to own the data or want a flexible schema without Attio pricing. Do not buy it if you sell by phone, need marketing automation in the same subscription, or want a marketplace full of one-click integrations. And be honest about self-hosting: free of licence, not free of work.
Read the full Twenty profilefolk profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Twenty last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.