# Twenty

> Twenty is an open-source CRM built as a modern alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot, offering unlimited custom objects, fields, views, and no-code workflows on every plan, with a REST and GraphQL API, a native MCP server for AI assistants, and a TypeScript apps framework; it is available free as self-hosted software under an open licence or as managed cloud from $9 per user per month, and it raised a $38M Series A in November 2025.

- Category: Sales CRM (https://saastracker.org/categories/crm)
- Website: https://twenty.com
- Starting price: $0 self-hosted, or $9 per user per month for managed cloud (Pro)
- Free plan: 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: 30 days on cloud, no credit card required
- Founded: 2023, HQ: Paris, France, Ownership: Venture-backed, Y Combinator alumnus (S23)
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/twenty

## Overview

Twenty was started in 2023 in Paris by Félix Malfait and Charles Bochet with a straightforward thesis: CRM is a solved problem that is still sold as a hostage situation, and an open-source product with a good interface could take the market back. The bet worked well enough to attract a $5M seed in November 2024 led by Runa Capital with executives from HubSpot, Front, and Pipedrive participating, and then a $38M Series A a year later. The GitHub repository has tens of thousands of stars, which for a CRM is unusual and tells you who the early audience is.

The product is a records-and-objects CRM rather than a pipeline-first one. Out of the box you get people, companies, opportunities, notes, and tasks, but the important thing is that every one of those is just an object in a schema you control, and creating new objects with their own fields, relations, and views costs nothing and is not gated by tier. That is a materially different posture from Zoho, Bigin, or Pipedrive, all of which ration custom fields as a way of pushing you up the price ladder.

For a small business the real decision is cloud versus self-hosted. Cloud Pro is $9 per user per month, which is among the cheapest serious CRM seats available and includes unlimited custom objects, workflows, the MCP server, and full API access. Self-hosting is free of licence cost and gives you total data ownership, but it is a genuine operational commitment: a Postgres database, a Redis instance, a worker process, object storage, email and calendar OAuth credentials you register yourself, and an upgrade cadence you have to keep pace with on a product still shipping breaking changes.

The gaps are the ones you would expect from a young product. There is no native dialer, no built-in mass-email marketing engine, and the integration marketplace is nothing like Pipedrive's or HubSpot's; you connect things through the API, webhooks, Zapier-style middleware, or the apps framework. If your buying criteria include a long list of one-click connectors, Twenty will disappoint. If they include owning your data and shaping your own schema, very little else at $9 competes.

## How it works

1. You either sign up for the managed cloud (30-day trial, no card required) or deploy the open-source stack yourself with Docker Compose or a Kubernetes chart. Both run the same code; the cloud is the same software operated for you.

2. Data lands by CSV import or through the API, and Twenty documents bulk paths for datasets in the tens of thousands of records. Email and calendar sync then backfills the relationship history: messages and meetings are threaded onto the people and company records automatically, so the CRM populates itself rather than waiting for reps to log activity.

3. You shape the schema from Settings: new objects, new fields, new relations, new views, all no-code and unmetered. Views can be tables or kanban boards, so an opportunities object becomes a pipeline simply by choosing a board view grouped by stage.

4. Automation runs through a workflow engine you build in the interface or in code, triggered by record events, schedules, or webhooks. Every cloud workspace ships an MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor can read and write CRM data in natural language, and the TypeScript apps framework lets developers ship custom React components, server-side functions, and AI agents into the workspace.

## Best for

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.

## Not the right fit for

- Non-technical small businesses with nobody to lean on; even the cloud version rewards people who think in objects and relations, and the self-hosted path is a real infrastructure job.
- Teams that buy on integration breadth, because Twenty has an API and an apps framework where Pipedrive and HubSpot have marketplaces with hundreds of one-click connectors.
- Phone-heavy sales floors, since there is no native dialer, call recording, or local presence anywhere in the product.
- Marketing-led companies that want campaigns, landing pages, and nurture sequences in the CRM subscription; Twenty is a system of record, not a marketing platform.
- Buyers who need a stable, slow-moving product with a long support history; Twenty is a young company shipping quickly, and self-hosters carry the upgrade burden themselves.

## Features

### Data model and customization

The reason to choose Twenty over a cheaper packaged CRM.

- **Unlimited custom objects**: Create as many objects as your business needs (properties, vessels, grants, cohorts, whatever you actually sell) with no tier gate and no per-object charge.
- **Unlimited custom fields and relations**: Fields and one-to-many or many-to-many relations are unmetered on every plan, which is unusual in a category that rations custom fields by tier.
- **Unlimited records**: No contact ceiling or record cap on any plan, so database growth does not force a tier upgrade the way it does on monday CRM or Bigin.
- **Custom views: table and kanban**: Any object can be viewed as a spreadsheet-style table or a kanban board grouped by a field, which is how opportunities become a pipeline.
- **Filters, sorts, and saved views**: Saved views per object with filtering and sorting, shared across the workspace so a team works from the same definitions.
- **Command menu and keyboard-first navigation**: A command palette and keyboard shortcuts throughout, which is the design touch that makes the product feel closer to Linear than to a legacy CRM.

### Communication and relationship data

The CRM populates itself instead of asking reps to log activity.

- **Email sync**: Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes sync so message threads attach to the right person and company records automatically.
- **Calendar sync**: Meetings from connected calendars are threaded onto records, giving a real interaction history without manual entry.
- **Notes and tasks**: First-class objects that relate to any record, with their own views and filters rather than being buried inside a contact.
- **Timeline view per record**: A chronological activity feed on each person and company assembled from synced email, calendar, notes, and tasks.
- **Multi-language interface**: More than thirty interface languages are supported on every plan.

### Automation, AI, and apps

Where the 2025 and 2026 releases put their effort.

- **No-code workflow builder**: Workflows built in the interface from record triggers, schedules, and webhooks, included on every plan rather than reserved for higher tiers.
- **Code steps in workflows**: Serverless functions can run inside a workflow, so logic too complex for a no-code builder stays in the same system instead of moving to middleware.
- **Native MCP server**: Every cloud workspace exposes a Model Context Protocol endpoint, letting Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor read and write CRM data in natural language. Few CRMs at any price ship this natively.
- **AI agents**: Agents built through the apps framework can act on CRM data and make decisions inside workflows, drawing on the workflow credit allowance.
- **TypeScript apps framework**: Build custom React components, server-side logic, and deployable extensions against the same schema, then ship them across workspaces. This is the extensibility story that replaces a marketplace.
- **Workflow credits**: Cloud Pro includes an annual workflow credit allowance (published at 50 credits a year), which is the one genuinely metered element in the pricing.

### API, deployment, and data ownership

The open-source argument, stated concretely.

- **REST and GraphQL APIs**: Both are available on every plan, covering standard and custom objects, with a schema that updates as you change the data model.
- **Webhooks**: Outbound events on record changes, included at all tiers, which is how most integrations are wired in practice.
- **Self-hosting under an open licence**: The full source is on GitHub and can be deployed with Docker Compose or Kubernetes; there is no licence cost and no seat count enforced by the vendor.
- **Managed cloud on the same code**: The hosted product runs the same software, so moving between self-hosted and cloud is a data migration rather than a product change.
- **Complete CSV and API export**: Every object exports to CSV and the API reads everything, so there is no meaningful lock-in even before you consider self-hosting.

### Security and administration

Reasonable for the price, with the serious controls on the Organization tier.

- **Two-factor authentication**: Available on every plan including Pro, rather than being an enterprise upsell.
- **Row-level permissions**: Record-level access control sits on the Organization tier at $19 per user per month.
- **SAML and OIDC SSO**: Enterprise identity providers are supported from the Organization tier; Google and Microsoft login work on Pro.
- **Custom domain**: Organization-tier workspaces can run on your own domain rather than a Twenty subdomain.
- **SCIM and IP allow-listing**: Directory provisioning and network restrictions are Enterprise features, alongside single-tenant isolation.

## Use cases

- **Seed-stage startup with a non-standard sales motion**: The company sells into a market where the unit is not a company and a deal, and every packaged CRM either forces a wrong shape or charges enterprise money for custom objects. Outcome: Custom objects and relations are unmetered at $9 a seat, so the schema matches the business on day one, and the API and MCP server let the founders query it from Claude rather than building reports.
- **Agency or consultancy that must own client data**: Client contracts or a regulator require that customer data stays on infrastructure the company controls, which rules out most SaaS CRMs outright. Outcome: Self-hosted Twenty runs in the company's own cloud account with no licence cost, and the same product is available as managed cloud later if the operational burden stops being worth it.
- **Technical operator replacing a spreadsheet**: Pipeline lives in a shared sheet because every CRM evaluated felt heavier than the problem, and the team resents data entry. Outcome: Email and calendar sync populate records automatically, the table view feels like the spreadsheet they left, and workflows handle the follow-up nudges nobody was doing.
- **Team building AI tooling on top of the CRM**: The company wants an assistant that can read pipeline and update records, and the incumbent CRM either has no MCP support or reserves API access for expensive tiers. Outcome: The native MCP server exposes the whole workspace to Claude or ChatGPT immediately, and the TypeScript apps framework lets the team ship agents that act inside the CRM rather than beside it.

## Pricing

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 licence cost, plus your own infrastructure. Full source on GitHub under an open licence; Unlimited records, custom objects, fields, and views; REST and GraphQL APIs and webhooks; Docker Compose or Kubernetes deployment; No vendor-enforced seat count. Free of licence fees, not free of cost: budget for Postgres, Redis, a worker, object storage, and someone to run upgrades.
- **Pro (cloud)**: $9 per user per month. Unlimited custom objects, fields, views, and records; No-code workflows plus custom apps and AI agents; Native MCP server, REST and GraphQL APIs, webhooks; Email and calendar sync, 30-plus languages, two-factor auth; 50 workflow credits per year, standard support. The tier nearly every small team should be on. Almost nothing important is withheld from it.
- **Organization (cloud)**: $19 per user per month. Everything in Pro; Row-level permissions; SAML and OIDC single sign-on; Custom domain; Priority support. You are buying access control and identity, not CRM capability.
- **Enterprise**: From $50,000 per year. Everything in Organization; Single-tenant isolation; IP allow-listing and SCIM provisioning; Dedicated support with an SLA. Out of scope for the small businesses this directory covers; noted here only so the ladder is clear.

Billing notes:

- The cloud pricing page publishes a single per-user rate per tier rather than separate monthly and annual prices, so there is no annual discount to negotiate.
- Custom objects, custom fields, records, API access, and webhooks are unmetered on every plan including Pro, which is the opposite of how most CRMs in this price band package.
- Workflow credits are the only metered element, published as 50 per year on Pro; heavy automation users should confirm the top-up mechanics before committing.
- Self-hosting has no licence cost but real operating cost: a managed Postgres instance, Redis, a worker process, and object storage typically land in the $40 to $100 a month range on a small cloud account, before any of your own time.
- The Enterprise floor of $50,000 a year is a very long way above the Organization tier, so plan to stay self-serve.

Value assessment: 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.

## 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.
- Email and calendar sync build the relationship history automatically, so the database stays useful even when reps do not log activity.
- Interface quality is unusually high for open-source software: keyboard-first, fast, and closer in feel to Linear than to a legacy CRM.
- Well funded for its stage, with $43M raised including a $38M Series A in November 2025, which materially lowers the odds of the project stalling.

## 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.
- Self-hosting is a real operational commitment, including database, cache, worker, object storage, OAuth credentials, and keeping pace with a fast release cadence.
- The product is young and moving quickly, which means occasional breaking changes and a support history far shorter than any incumbent's.

## Comparisons

- **Twenty vs Attio**: Attio is the closest commercial equivalent: modern, object-flexible, email-derived records, workflow automation, and AI agents, from $29 a seat with metered AI credits. Twenty does much of the same for $9 or free self-hosted, but with a thinner integration ecosystem and less polished reporting. Choose Attio if you want the flexible modern CRM without operational risk; choose Twenty if data ownership, price, or an open codebase matters more than maturity.
- **Twenty vs EspoCRM**: Both are open-source CRMs you can self-host, but they come from different eras. EspoCRM is a mature PHP application with a deep entity manager, BPM workflows, portals, and a formula language, at €12.90 a user on cloud. Twenty is newer, far better looking, and API-first with a native MCP server. Take EspoCRM for functional depth and a decade of stability; take Twenty for interface quality and modern developer ergonomics.
- **Twenty vs Vtiger CRM**: Vtiger's open-source lineage is much older and its commercial product bundles sales, marketing, help desk, projects, and inventory with native telephony from $12 a user. Twenty does none of that breadth and is far better at being a clean, extensible system of record. Buy Vtiger if you want one vendor covering support and calling; buy Twenty if you want a CRM primitive you can build on.
- **Twenty vs Pipedrive**: Pipedrive is the opinionated, finished sales product: activity-based selling, a pipeline reps adopt immediately, and a large app marketplace, with automation and email sync starting at $39 a seat. Twenty asks you to design your own model but charges $9 and imposes no record or field limits. Conventional deal-by-deal teams will be productive faster in Pipedrive; teams with an unusual model or a data-ownership requirement will get more from Twenty.
- **Twenty vs 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.

## Implementation

- Setup time: 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 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.
- Onboarding: Entirely self-serve on Pro and Organization, with public documentation, a 30-day cloud trial, and an active community. There is no mandatory implementation fee, and self-hosters onboard themselves from the repository docs.
- Migration: CSV import handles datasets in the tens of thousands of records, and the API covers bulk loading beyond that. Email and calendar history rebuilds from the moment you connect a mailbox rather than backfilling years of archive. Getting out is unusually easy: every object exports to CSV, the REST and GraphQL APIs read everything including custom objects, and self-hosters have direct database access. Moving between the cloud and a self-hosted instance is a data migration on identical software.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web, Self-hosted via Docker Compose or Kubernetes, MCP server for AI assistants
- API: REST and GraphQL APIs on every plan covering standard and custom objects, plus webhooks and a TypeScript apps framework for server-side functions and custom React components. Self-hosted deployments set their own rate limits since you operate the infrastructure.
- Compliance: GDPR, SOC 2 (cloud); confirm current attestation status with the vendor before signing
- Data residency: Self-hosting puts data wherever you deploy it; the managed cloud publishes its own hosting arrangements and Enterprise offers single-tenant isolation.
- SSO: Google and Microsoft login on Pro; SAML and OIDC single sign-on from the Organization tier; SCIM provisioning on Enterprise.
- Security notes: Two-factor authentication is available on every plan. Row-level permissions and custom domains start at Organization, and IP allow-listing plus single-tenant isolation are Enterprise features. Because the source is public, security review is something you can perform yourself rather than take on trust.

## Support

- Channels: Standard support on Pro, Priority support on Organization, Dedicated support with an SLA on Enterprise, Community support for self-hosters
- Documentation: Public documentation covering deployment, the data model, workflows, the REST and GraphQL APIs, the apps framework, and MCP configuration.
- Community: Active GitHub repository with tens of thousands of stars and a large Discord community, which is the practical support channel for self-hosted deployments.

## Company

- Founded: 2023
- Founders: Félix Malfait, Charles Bochet
- Headquarters: Paris, France
- Ownership: Venture-backed, Y Combinator alumnus (S23)
- Employees: Small team, not publicly disclosed
- Funding: Approximately $43M raised across two rounds: a $5M seed in November 2024 led by Runa Capital, and a $38M Series A in November 2025.

Funding history:

- Seed (2024): $5M. Led by Runa Capital with more than 50 investors including executives from HubSpot, Front, Pipedrive, Y Combinator, and Automattic.
- Series A (2025): $38M. Raised in November 2025, bringing total funding to roughly $43M.

Timeline:

- 2023: Founded in Paris by Félix Malfait and Charles Bochet; goes through Y Combinator in the S23 batch with an open-source CRM.
- 2024: Raises a $5M seed led by Runa Capital, with operators from HubSpot, Front, and Pipedrive participating; the GitHub project grows into one of the most-starred CRM repositories.
- 2025: Ships the workflow engine, custom objects at scale, and the managed cloud tiers, then raises a $38M Series A in November.
- 2026: Adds the native MCP server to every cloud workspace and the TypeScript apps framework for custom components, server-side functions, and AI agents.

## Integrations

Gmail and Google Calendar sync, Microsoft 365 mail and calendar sync, Native MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor, REST API, GraphQL API, Webhooks, Zapier and Make via API, TypeScript apps framework for custom extensions

## FAQ

### What is Twenty?

Twenty is an open-source CRM built as an alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot. It gives you unlimited custom objects, fields, views, and records, a no-code workflow engine, REST and GraphQL APIs, and a native MCP server, either free as self-hosted software or as managed cloud from $9 per user per month.

### How much does Twenty cost?

Self-hosting is free of licence cost. Managed cloud is $9 per user per month for Pro, $19 for Organization, and from $50,000 a year for Enterprise. There is a 30-day cloud trial with no credit card, and no separate annual versus monthly rate is published.

### What does the entry tier withhold?

Remarkably little. Pro at $9 includes unlimited custom objects and records, workflows, email and calendar sync, the MCP server, and full API access. Organization at $19 adds row-level permissions, SAML and OIDC SSO, a custom domain, and priority support. You are paying the upgrade for access control, not for CRM capability.

### Is self-hosting Twenty actually free?

The software is, the operation is not. A production deployment needs Postgres, Redis, a worker process, object storage, and OAuth credentials you register yourself, which typically costs $40 to $100 a month on a small cloud account before any of your own time. You also carry the upgrade burden on a product that is still shipping quickly. For most small teams the $9 cloud seat is cheaper all-in than self-hosting.

### Are there record or contact limits?

No. Unlimited records are included on every plan, including Pro, which is a meaningful contrast with monday CRM (1,000 contacts on Basic), Bigin (50,000 records on Express), or EngageBay's contact-based tiers. Database growth never forces a Twenty upgrade.

### Does Twenty support custom objects and a flexible data model?

Yes, and this is the main reason to choose it. Custom objects, fields, and relations are created no-code from Settings and are unmetered on every plan. Most CRMs at this price ration custom fields per module; Twenty does not ration them at all.

### Does Twenty include email sending, sequences, or calling?

Email and calendar sync are included so correspondence threads onto records, but there is no mass-email marketing engine, no multi-step nurture sequences, and no native dialer, SMS, or call recording. Outbound sequencing and telephony are separate tools you connect through the API.

### What is the MCP server for?

Every cloud workspace exposes a Model Context Protocol endpoint, so AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor can read and write your CRM data in natural language without middleware. Very few CRMs at any price ship this natively, and it is the most practically useful thing Twenty added in 2026.

### How good is the reporting and forecasting?

Adequate rather than strong. You get saved views, filters, kanban grouping, and dashboards, which cover most small-team questions. There is no forecasting engine with pipeline coverage analysis and weighted projections of the kind Pipedrive or Zoho provide, so revenue-forecast-driven managers will find it thin.

### Can I get my data out?

Yes, more cleanly than almost anything else in the category. Every object exports to CSV, the REST and GraphQL APIs read everything including custom objects, and self-hosted deployments give you direct database access. Moving between the cloud and self-hosted is a data migration on identical software rather than a platform change.

### What size of team is Twenty genuinely built for?

Two to roughly fifty people, with a technical bias. It works best for startups and small businesses that have at least one person comfortable designing objects and relations, want to own their data, and do not need calling, marketing automation, or a large connector marketplace. Non-technical teams that want the CRM to arrive with a working sales process should look at Pipedrive or Bigin instead.

## Editorial verdict

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.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology