The best free CRMs for networking in 2026

Eight free plans with the exact number that ends each one, and the five well-known tools in this category that have no free plan at all.

By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.

The short version

The best free CRM for networking in 2026 is Happenstance, whose free plan is the whole product rather than a sample of it, with Mesh the best free keep-in-touch tool and Attio the best free plan for a small team. Free means five different things: a permanent plan with a stated cap, a free tier of a sales product you'll outgrow, a countdown dressed as a plan, free only if you run the server yourself, and usage limits with no cap on the people you know. Five of the best-known tools in this category have no free plan at all.

Free means five different things here

Sorting this category is mostly a vocabulary problem. Five arrangements all get called free, and four of them let you network for a year without paying.

A permanent plan with a stated cap. Mesh at 1,000 connections, Contacts+ at one connected account and 1,000 records, HubSpot at 1,000 records and two users, Attio at three seats and 50,000 records, Cloze at contact management plus an email inbox. The cap is what you pay instead of money. Work out how many months it buys you.

A free tier of a product sold to sales teams. HubSpot and Attio are generous because free is the top of a funnel that ends in seats. That's a fair trade if you want a full CRM. It does mean the shape of the tool is deals, not relationships.

A countdown dressed as a plan. Dex, folk, Covve, Nimble, and Streak. Seven to fourteen days, then a bill.

Free if you run the server. Monica is open source and self-hosting costs nothing but your own hardware and your own patching. Your hosting provider may still want money.

Usage limits instead of a cap. The fifth arrangement meters volume rather than how many people you are allowed to know. Happenstance is free. The free plan is the whole product, with usage limits on chat and web searches beyond your network. Pro raises the limits: unlimited web searches and results, higher chat limits, and CSV export.

Every free tier, with the number that ends it

Free CRM plans for networking compared on data sources, what the free plan includes, its hard limit, reminders, and the first paid price
	How it fills itself	What the free plan gives you	Hard limit on free	Reminders	Paid starts at
Happenstance	Seven connected accounts, including inbox and calendar history	The whole product: chat, search, unlimited connected accounts, friends, and groups	Usage limits on chat and on web searches beyond your network	No	$30/mo, $24/mo billed yearly
Mesh	Imports from email, calendar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, iMessage	Reconnect prompts, reminders, birthday notifications, unlimited life updates	1,000 connections	Yes, plus birthdays	$10/mo Pro
Attio	Email and calendar logged automatically	A full CRM: records, pipelines, workflows, one email account per user	3 seats, 50,000 records, 200 emails a month	Tasks and workflows	$35/user/mo annual, $44 monthly
HubSpot	Gmail or Outlook connection, forms, live chat, imports	Smart CRM database, tasks, notes, meeting scheduling, live chat	1,000 records, 2 users, no time limit	Yes, tasks with due dates	Starter $20/seat/mo list, discounted to $7 for new customers
Contacts+	Google, iCloud, and Outlook address book sync	Sync, automatic duplicate merging, backup, notes, tags, follow-up reminders	1 account, 1,000 records, daily sync, no card scanning	Yes, with due dates	$9.99/mo or $119.88/yr
Cloze	Email, calls, files, notes, messages, and calendar, automatically	Contact management and an email inbox, for as long as you like	Not published	Yes, on paid plans	$17/user/mo annual, $19.99 month-to-month
Monica	You type it in	The full open source application, self-hosted, unlimited	Your own server; there's no free hosted tier	Yes, unlimited	$9/mo or $90/yr hosted
Notion	You type it in	Unlimited pages and databases for one person	5 MB uploads, 7-day page history, 30-day data retention, 10 guests	Build it yourself	$10/member/mo yearly, $12 monthly

The picks

Best free CRM for networking overall: Happenstance, because the free plan is the product rather than a sample of it.
Best free plan with reminders: Mesh.
Best free tier for a small team: Attio, at three seats and 50,000 records.
Best free plan if you'll run the server: Monica.
Best free fix for a duplicated address book: Contacts+.
Best free build-your-own: Notion.
Free plan you'll outgrow fastest: HubSpot, at 1,000 records and two users.

The free plans worth using

Happenstance: the free plan that is the product

Best for: Anyone who wants to search the network they already have without a record cap, a seat cap, or a countdown.
What free gets you: Everything the paid plan does, with limits on volume rather than on capability. Connect Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, all of them, then ask in plain sentences: "Who do I know at Stripe?" or "Which of my connections has raised a seed round?" Friends and groups are unlimited and free, and the largest groups make 380,000+ people searchable for every member. The API, MCP server, ChatGPT app, and Claude integrations are on the free plan too.
Pair it with: Mesh, if you also want reminders and notes per person. Happenstance is the search layer beside it.
Price: Free; Pro $30 per month, $24 per month billed yearlyChecked August 2026
Choose it if: the free plans elsewhere keep stopping at the number of people you know. 500,000+ people use it, and no credit card starts it.

Start free, or read the plan limits in full.

Mesh: the free keep-in-touch plan

Best for: A networker who wants nudges and automatic upkeep at no cost, with a network in the low thousands.
What free gets you: A free plan that both fills itself and reminds you. Mesh imports people from email, calendar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and iMessage, then runs Reconnect prompts, reminders, and birthday notifications on top, with unlimited life updates covering job changes, moves, and news mentions. No other free plan does all three.
Where free stops: One thousand connections, which a single Gmail account can exceed on its own, and the Pro ceiling is not published, so you can't tell in advance what $10 a month buys you. It was Clay.earth until 2026.
Price: Personal free up to 1,000 connections; Pro $10 per month; Team $40 per seat per month; Enterprise customChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: you want a free tool that tells you when to reach out, and you can live inside four figures of people.

Attio: the most generous free tier for a team

Best for: Two or three people who want a shared CRM without a bill, and who think in records and pipelines.
What free gets you: Scale. Three seats, 50,000 records, one email account per user, 200 outbound emails a month, 50 GB of storage, and monthly workspace credits, on a product built for revenue teams rather than cut down for a free tier. Email and calls log themselves, and it ships an MCP server, an API, and integrations with Slack, Clay, Linear, Notion, and Stripe.
Where free stops: The shape. Attio is a sales CRM, so it organizes deals and pipeline rather than relationships, and it has no concept of who you know well. Two hundred emails a month is a low outbound ceiling, and the next tier is $35 per user per month billed annually.
Price: Free (3 seats, 50,000 records); Plus $35 per user per month billed annually or $44 monthly; Pro $79 or $99; Enterprise customChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: a small team needs one shared system and would rather grow into a real CRM than out of a personal one.

HubSpot: the free tier with the shortest runway

Best for: Someone who wants a recognizable CRM with tasks, notes, meeting links, and live chat at no cost.
What free gets you: A lot of software for nothing. HubSpot's free tools include the Smart CRM database, tasks with due dates, notes, meeting scheduling, live chat, and email tracking, with Gmail and Outlook connection, and no time limit on any of it.
Where free stops: One thousand records and two users. For a networker that's the tightest ceiling here, and passing it means Starter, which lists at $20 per seat per month. The $7 Starter price is a limited-time new-customer discount off that list.
Price: Free (1,000 records, 2 users, no time limit); Starter $20 per seat per month list, currently discounted to $7 for new customersChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: you want a full sales CRM later and the first thousand records are only the beginning of the plan.

Contacts+: free for one messy address book

Best for: Someone whose Google, iCloud, and Outlook lists disagree with each other and who wants one clean copy.
What free gets you: It fixes a specific problem for nothing. The free plan syncs one account, merges duplicates automatically, backs up what it finds, and adds notes, tags, and follow-up reminders with due dates and calendar sync, across web, iOS, and Android.
Where free stops: Almost everything scales on the paid tier. Free is one connected account, 1,000 records, daily rather than live sync, and no business card scanning, which is the feature Contacts+ is best known for. Five accounts need Premium.
Price: Free (1 account, 1,000 records); Premium $9.99 per month or $119.88 per year; Teams $12.99 per user per monthChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: the job is deduplication rather than networking, in which case free may be all you ever need.

Monica: free if you run it yourself

Best for: People who would rather host their relationship data than rent it, and who don't mind maintaining a server.
What free gets you: The whole open source application, with unlimited connections, notes, reminders, activities, and journal entries, and as many users as your own infrastructure allows. Nothing is metered because nobody else is paying for the hosting.
Where free stops: Hosting is the price. There is no free hosted tier: the managed plan is $9 a month or $90 a year with a 30-day trial. And every record goes in by hand, since nothing on the plan describes an inbox, calendar, or LinkedIn sync.
Price: Self-hosted free; hosted $9 per month or $90 per year, flat rather than per seat; 30-day trial, no card requiredChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: privacy is the requirement and a server isn't a chore, in which case it is the only unlimited free option here.

Cloze: the free plan with automatic logging

Best for: Someone who wants email and meetings logged against people automatically and will live inside a narrow free tier.
What free gets you: Automatic capture. Cloze organizes mail by person, company, project, and deal, logs calls, links files and notes to the right person, and carries meeting context from your calendar, all without data entry. Its free plan covers contact management and an email inbox and lasts as long as you want it to.
Where free stops: Definition and direction. Cloze doesn't itemize what else the free plan includes, and its site, at ai.cloze.com, is written for real estate brokerages.
Price: Free (contact management and email inbox); Cloze Pro $17 per user per month billed annually or $19.99 month-to-month; Business from $21; 14-day trial on paidChecked August 2026
Consider it only if: automatic logging matters more than a modern interface, and a real estate flavor throughout the marketing doesn't put you off.

Who do I know who has worked at a Series B fintech?

Example

Ran 3 searches

14 people in your network have worked at a Series B fintech; five are at Ramp.

Example results for “Who do I know who has worked at a Series B fintech?”
Person	Thinking	Mutuals
LO Lucas OrtegaStaff Engineer at Ramp	Joined Ramp's platform team in 2021; two years at Plaid before that.
SM Sana MalikFormer Product Manager at Brex	Product at Brex 2019 to 2022, now heading product at a lending startup.
EN Erik NyströmData Scientist, ex-Mercury	Data science at Mercury 2020 to 2023; LinkedIn post, April: 'Now building risk models at Tidewater.'

An example of the answer this question returns. The people and the counts are illustrative; what a search returns depends on the accounts each person has connected.What a free plan looks like when the limit is on volume rather than on how many people you are allowed to know.

Five tools with no free plan at all

None of these has a free plan.

Dex. Seven-day trial, no card required. Premium $12 a month after that, and the LinkedIn sync is capped at 2,500 connections on that tier.
folk. Two-week trial, then $30 a month billed monthly or $24 billed annually.
Covve. Fourteen-day trial, then $12 per seat per month or $119 a year.
Nimble. Fourteen-day trial, then a single plan at $24.90 per seat per month billed annually, $29.90 monthly.
Streak. No free CRM plan. Pro is $49 per user per month billed annually, $59 monthly.

Building your own, with tools you already have

For a few hundred people, you don't need a product.

Notion is free forever for one person with unlimited pages and databases, so a row per person and a page of notes underneath costs nothing. The free plan caps uploads at 5 MB, page history at seven days, and data retention at 30 days. Google Contacts isn't sold or priced at all, comes with a Google Account, holds 25,000 records or 20 MB excluding photos, and gives every record a notes field, with no reminders of any kind. A spreadsheet remains the fastest thing to start and the fastest thing to abandon.

All three share one flaw, which is the reason free products keep getting bought: nothing updates unless you update it. If your last two attempts died of data entry, the thing to look for in a free plan is whether the tool fills itself, rather than how large the cap is.

Which free plan should you start on

You have a large network and want to search it: Happenstance. Nothing here caps the number of people you may know.
You want to be reminded to reach out: Mesh, until you pass 1,000 connections.
Two or three of you are sharing a system: Attio.
You want a CRM you will grow into: HubSpot free, knowing the ceiling is 1,000 records.
Your problem is duplicates across three accounts: Contacts+ free.
You don't want a vendor holding the data: Monica self-hosted.
You are pooling a founder group or a community: Happenstance groups, which are free and unlimited, and each member keeps their own privacy.

If you want the paid options as well, the personal CRM guide covers the same tools without the free filter, and the networking guide ranks them on network size and search instead.

Free plan contents, caps and prices are from each vendor's own pricing page. HubSpot's $7 Starter figure is a limited-time new-customer discount off a $20 per seat list price, so the list price is what appears in the table.

What a free plan does with your data

Email is read as headers only. Message content and attachments never reach our servers. Yes. Your connections are searchable only by you, the friends you accept, and the groups you join, and sharing is always mutual. Your public profile shows a constellation of named people you know by default, which you can turn off anytime. We never share, sell, or use your data to train AI models. Happenstance is SOC 2 certified and DTI Trust Level 2; the full list of what is stored and for how long is on the security page.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a truly free CRM for networking?

Yes. Happenstance, Mesh, Attio, HubSpot, Contacts+, Cloze, and Notion all run permanent free plans with published limits. Dex, folk, Covve, Nimble, and Streak have trials of seven to fourteen days and no free plan behind them.

What's the best free personal CRM?

Mesh, if you want reminders. Its free Personal plan covers 1,000 connections, imports people from email, calendar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and iMessage, and adds Reconnect prompts, reminders, and birthday notifications. Happenstance is the better free choice if the job is searching a network rather than tending one, since it has no cap on the network you connect.

Does Dex have a free plan?

No. Dex offers a seven-day free trial with no credit card, and after that the cheapest plan is Premium at $12 a month, which syncs up to 2,500 LinkedIn connections. Professional is $20 and Enterprise is $40, with 40 percent off annual billing.

What are the limits on HubSpot's free CRM?

HubSpot's free tools allow 1,000 records and up to 2 users, with no time limit, plus a cap of 1 million records across other standard object types. Beyond that you move to Starter, which lists at $20 per seat per month and is currently discounted to $7 for new customers under a limited-time offer.

Is Attio free for a small team?

Attio's free plan covers up to 3 seats and 50,000 records, one email account per user, and 200 outbound emails a month. It's a full CRM rather than a personal one, so it comes with pipelines, workflows, and automatic email and calendar logging. Plus is $35 per user per month billed annually, $44 monthly.

Is Notion a good free CRM for networking?

It's a good free database and a poor free CRM. Notion's free plan gives one person unlimited pages and databases, so a row per person costs nothing, but the free tier limits uploads to 5 MB, page history to seven days, and data retention to 30 days. Nothing syncs, so the record is only as current as your typing.

What's the catch with free CRMs?

Usually one of three. A record cap you hit within a year, a seat cap that breaks the moment someone joins you, or a free tier that excludes the feature you came for, such as business card scanning at Contacts+ or API access on most sales CRMs. Read the number, then work out how long it buys you.

Is Happenstance really free?

Yes. The free plan is the whole product, Sidedoor included, with unlimited connected accounts, friends, and groups, and usage limits on chat and on web searches beyond your own network. Pro is $30 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, and it raises those limits. There's no record cap and no seat cap on groups.

Can a free CRM connect to Gmail?

Several can. HubSpot's free tier connects Gmail and Outlook for logging and tracking, Attio's free plan syncs one email account per user, Cloze's free plan includes an email inbox, and Happenstance connects Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar on the free plan, reading email as headers only rather than message content.

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