Best Free CRM Software in 2026: Free Plans and Open-Source CRMs by Team Size

The best free CRM software depends on how many people need it and who will run it. HubSpot's free CRM suits the widest range of small teams, Zoho CRM's free edition suits teams that may later grow into Zoho's other apps, and EspoCRM and SuiteCRM suit anyone who would rather host a CRM at no licence cost.

This guide sorts thirteen free CRMs into three groups: hosted free plans, free starts for technical teams and open-source CRMs you run yourself. A section on the best CRM software by team size follows, along with a short list of popular CRMs that offer a trial but no free plan. Free-plan limits are described in general terms, because vendors change them. Check the pricing page before you commit.

What "free CRM" means

Three different things get called free, and they cost you different things:

• A free hosted plan. The vendor runs the software and gives you a capped version at no charge. The caps are usually on users, records or features, and the price you pay later is the upgrade.
• Free to self-host. An open-source CRM has no licence fee, but you pay for a server, backups, upgrades and someone's time. Some projects sell managed hosting for teams that would rather not.
• A free trial. A time-limited test of the paid product. It tells you whether you like the tool, but it is not a free CRM.

How we picked

Each CRM here tracks contacts, companies and deals through a sales process and is either free to use on a hosted plan or free to self-host. For open-source CRMs Enlisted checks the licence, GitHub activity and self-hosting support. For hosted products it reads the published pricing model and the free plan's limits. CRMs aimed at other jobs, such as nonprofit constituent management, prospect-data platforms or personal contact managers, were left out. See how Enlisted ranks tools, or browse the whole CRM category.

Best free CRM software with a hosted free plan

These five run in the vendor's cloud and need no server of your own. They are the quickest way to start, and all of them are closed source with no self-hosted edition, apart from the on-premise edition Bitrix24 sells separately.

1. HubSpot: best free CRM for the widest range of small teams

HubSpot is a customer platform built around a CRM, with a free CRM tier and separate Marketing, Sales and Service hubs on top. The free CRM covers contact records, deal pipelines, tasks, a reporting dashboard, email tracking, live chat and lead-capture forms, and HubSpot's own page says it has no expiration date.

The limits are on the number of users and contacts, and the step up is priced by hub and per seat. That makes HubSpot easy to start on and a bigger decision later. If you outgrow it or want to leave, see the HubSpot alternatives guide.

• Best for: small teams that want a polished free CRM with a clear path to marketing and service tools.
• Watch out for: the free tier is capped, and the paid tiers jump in cost, so check the HubSpot CRM page for current limits.

2. Zoho CRM: best free edition for teams that may join the Zoho suite

Zoho CRM is a cloud CRM from Zoho for leads, contacts and deals, with a free edition for a very small team. Zoho's page lists contact management, follow-up reminders, workflow automation, email templates, reports, an API and mobile apps in the free edition, and labels it free forever.

Paid editions, named Standard, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate, add capacity and features per user. Zoho CRM sits inside a wider suite, so it connects naturally to Zoho's other apps, and its AI features come under the Zia brand. See the Zoho CRM pricing page for edition limits.

• Best for: very small teams that want workflow automation in a free plan and may adopt other Zoho apps.
• Watch out for: the free edition covers only a handful of users. See Zoho CRM alternatives if you outgrow it.

3. Bitrix24: best free option when you want CRM, tasks and chat in one place

Bitrix24 is a business suite that puts CRM, task management and team collaboration in one product, with a free tier. The free plan on its pricing page covers basic CRM for deals and contacts, tasks with Kanban and Gantt views, shared calendars, and chat and video calls, for one or two users with limited storage.

Its paid plans are priced per organization with a cap on users rather than per user, which can suit a team that has grown past a handful of seats. The page also lists an on-premise edition with separate pricing, so there is a route to running it on your own servers. Enlisted lists no self-hosted option in its own data, so confirm what that edition includes with the vendor.

• Best for: very small teams that want CRM, tasks and internal chat in one free tool.
• Watch out for: the free plan is limited to a tiny team and limited storage, and the CRM is basic compared with a dedicated product.

4. Capsule: best simple free CRM for contacts and one pipeline

Capsule is a hosted CRM built to be simple, keeping contacts in one place and tracking sales opportunities through a pipeline. It is aimed at small businesses that find larger CRMs more complicated than they need.

Capsule's pricing page lists a free plan limited to a couple of users and a capped number of contacts, with one sales pipeline and a handful of custom fields. Paid tiers named Starter, Growth, Advanced and Ultimate are charged per user and come with a free trial, and a marketing add-on is sold separately.

• Best for: freelancers and tiny teams that need contact records and a single sales pipeline.
• Watch out for: the free plan is tight on contacts, pipelines and fields, so check that it fits before importing your data.

5. Vtiger: best free plan that includes a help desk and basic marketing

Vtiger is a hosted CRM suite covering sales, marketing and customer support. Its free plan, called One Pilot, lists lead and contact management, a sales pipeline, basic email and phone integration, project management, a help desk with email-to-case and a mobile app, plus a small monthly email allowance for marketing automation.

The free plan is capped on users, records and storage. Paid plans add things such as AI features, multiple pipelines and deal playbooks on Growth, and forecasting, a process designer and live chat on Professional. See Vtiger alternatives if you want to compare.

• Best for: small businesses that want sales, a simple help desk and light marketing in one free tool.
• Watch out for: a wide product means more screens to learn, and the free plan's caps arrive sooner than the feature list suggests.

Best free CRM for startups and technical teams

These two suit teams where someone is comfortable shaping the data model or writing code.

6. Attio: best for teams that want to design their own data model

Attio is a hosted CRM with a customizable data model, where companies, people, deals and custom records are structured to match how a team sells. It is built for startups and growth teams, and adds enrichment, call recording, workflows and AI agents.

You can start free and move to paid plans such as Pro when you need more. It is a good first CRM for a team that has outgrown spreadsheets and expects its process to change. See Attio alternatives.

• Best for: early-stage teams that want flexible objects and a free place to begin.
• Watch out for: it is closed source and hosted only, so there is no self-hosted route.

7. Twenty: best open-source CRM you can extend as code

Twenty is an open-source CRM presented as an open alternative to Salesforce, with objects, views, workflows and agents that can be extended in code. A CLI scaffolds apps where you define objects, fields and views and publish them to your workspace.

You can self-host with Docker Compose at no licence cost, or use the vendor's hosted workspace, which Enlisted lists as paid with a trial. The licence is listed as Other, so read the repository's licence file before you build on it.

• Best for: engineering-led teams that want to version their CRM alongside the rest of their software.
• Watch out for: the free route means self-hosting, and it assumes developer time. For an enterprise comparison, read the Salesforce alternatives guide.

Best open-source CRM software to self-host

Open-source CRMs have no seat limits and no vendor caps. In exchange you handle hosting, security and upgrades, so budget for both.

8. EspoCRM: best all-round open-source CRM for small teams

EspoCRM is a free, open-source CRM for leads, contacts, opportunities, marketing campaigns and support cases in one web application. It is released under AGPL-3.0 and has been developed since 2014, with a single-page front end on a PHP REST API.

It includes sales automation, email campaigns, a calendar, kanban views, a customer portal and document storage, and its data model can be customized. The open-source edition is free to self-host, and the vendor's cloud plans are priced per user with minimum seat counts. See the EspoCRM site.

• Best for: small teams that want one self-hosted tool for sales, campaigns and cases.
• Watch out for: cloud plans have minimum seat counts, so a very small team will usually self-host.

9. SuiteCRM: best open-source CRM for a module-heavy setup

SuiteCRM is an open-source CRM written in PHP that manages accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, quotes, contracts, cases, documents, reports and workflows. It supports multiple languages and currencies and has an extensions directory.

The software is free with no per-user fees under AGPL-3.0, and the project sells managed hosting and support. Its README describes SuiteCRM 7 as the mature, stable line and SuiteCRM 8 as the newer version that was still catching up on features. Visit suitecrm.com for editions.

• Best for: teams that want quotes, contracts and cases in a CRM they can host and extend.
• Watch out for: pick the generation deliberately, and plan for hosting and upgrade work.

10. Frappe CRM: best simple open-source CRM with no user limit

Frappe CRM is an open-source CRM for sales teams, built on the Frappe framework. It is meant to be simple and customizable, with a Vue interface and a Python back end. The authors built it because many CRMs seemed too complex, too generic or locked behind steep pricing, and it places no limit on users.

It covers lead and deal management in a clean interface and, as a Frappe app, can be combined with other Frappe products. Self-hosting is free under AGPL-3.0, and managed hosting on Frappe Cloud is priced by site and server rather than per user. See the Frappe CRM site.

• Best for: a small sales team that does not want per-user costs and needs a CRM that stays easy to use.
• Watch out for: it is focused on leads and deals, so marketing automation needs another tool.

11. Krayin CRM: best MIT-licensed CRM for Laravel developers

Krayin CRM is a free, open-source CRM built with Laravel and Vue.js, covering the customer lifecycle from lead capture to customers and sales. Its README lists an admin panel, a dashboard, custom attributes, a modular architecture and email parsing through SendGrid.

The licence is MIT, installation instructions include Docker, and the project offers managed cloud hosting priced by server resources rather than by seat. That makes it a natural base for agencies and developers who want to customize a CRM on a familiar stack. See the Krayin site.

• Best for: developers and agencies that want a permissively licensed CRM on Laravel.
• Watch out for: the feature set is narrower than the larger CRMs here, so check it against your process.

12. Odoo: best when you want one free app now and more business apps later

Odoo is a bundle of browser-based, open-source business apps covering CRM, eCommerce, accounting, inventory, projects, point of sale and HR. Odoo's pricing page lists a One App Free plan on its hosted service, with one app for unlimited users, so a team can run CRM free and add apps later.

The higher plan includes all apps and allows on-premise hosting. GitHub lists the licence as Other, so check the repository for exact terms. Odoo's site is odoo.com, and the NetSuite alternatives guide covers the ERP side.

• Best for: companies that want CRM first and may add invoicing, inventory or HR on the same platform.
• Watch out for: the free plan covers one app plus its dependencies, and an all-in-one system takes longer to set up than a single-purpose CRM.

13. Dolibarr: best free ERP and CRM for freelancers and small organizations

Dolibarr is an open-source ERP and CRM package that manages contacts, quotes, invoices, orders, stock, accounting and more. It is a PHP web application released under GPL-3.0 or later, aimed at small, medium and large companies, foundations and freelancers.

Setup can go several ways: a packaged installer for Windows, Debian and Ubuntu, or Red Hat family distributions, a Docker image, or a manual install on Apache or Nginx backed by MariaDB, MySQL or PostgreSQL. Commercial support is available from partners. See dolibarr.org.

• Best for: freelancers and small organizations that want CRM, quotes and invoicing in one free package.
• Watch out for: it leans toward back-office work, so a team that lives in a sales pipeline may find a dedicated CRM faster.

Best CRM software by team size

The best CRM software changes with the number of people logging in. This table maps the picks above to team size:

Popular CRMs with a trial but no free plan

If a tool you have heard of is missing, it probably does not have a free plan. Pipedrive, Freshsales, Close, Copper and Less Annoying CRM are all paid products with free trials, according to Enlisted's data. Salesforce is mostly paid per user, though its own site lists a free suite for a very small team on its free CRM page. Apollo.io does have a free plan, but it is a prospecting and data platform rather than a pipeline CRM.

How to choose free CRM software

A short checklist saves a painful migration later:

1. Count the people. Hosted free plans cap users, so a team of five may fit one tool and not another.
2. Decide who runs it. If nobody can maintain a server, choose a hosted plan or an open-source project that sells hosting, such as SuiteCRM or Frappe CRM.
3. List the one feature you cannot lose. It might be a second pipeline, email tracking, forecasting or a help desk. Check which plan carries it.
4. Test the export. Confirm you can export contacts, deals and notes in a standard format before you load real data.
5. Plan the upgrade path. Look at what the next paid tier costs and what it adds, so growth does not surprise you.

If your needs are heading toward a larger platform, the Salesforce alternatives guide compares mid-market and enterprise options.