Twenty

Twenty is an open-source CRM built for technical teams who want a Salesforce alternative they can extend in TypeScript instead of clicking around a low-code admin panel. We rate it 84/100 — the best-designed open-source CRM on the market today, ideal for engineering-led startups under 50 reps, but not yet ready to replace Salesforce or HubSpot at the enterprise tier.

What is Twenty?

Twenty was founded in 2023 in Paris by Charles Bochet, Félix Malfait and Thomas Colas des Francs, and admitted to Y Combinator’s S23 batch. The mission, in their own words on the launch Hacker News thread, is to fix the two things that make most CRMs miserable: they are unpleasant to use, and they fight engineering teams instead of working with them. The codebase is fully open under a Funding-OSS license, written in TypeScript on top of NestJS, React, PostgreSQL and Redis, and lives at twentyhq/twenty.

The shape of Twenty is closer to Notion or Linear than to Salesforce. Every record — companies, people, deals, tickets — is just an object you define yourself, with custom fields, custom views, and custom workflows. As of April 25, 2026, the project has crossed 44,000 GitHub stars, raised a $5M seed in November 2024 led by Runa Capital, and on April 21, 2026 shipped Twenty 2.0, the largest release in the project’s history. 2.0 reframes Twenty as a platform: you scaffold your own CRM with npx create-twenty-app, define objects and views as code, and ship them with npx twenty deploy.

Key Features of Twenty

• CRM-as-code SDK: Define objects, fields, views, layouts and widgets in TypeScript with defineObject(), then deploy with one CLI command. The 2.0 SDK is split into subpaths so Logic Functions ship with bundles roughly 700× smaller than 1.x equivalents.
• Native MCP server & AI agents: Every Cloud workspace exposes a Model Context Protocol endpoint. Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor over OAuth and they can read, write and analyze CRM records in natural language. You can also build “AI skills” that fire on workflow events.
• Custom objects & fields without code: If you don’t want to write TypeScript, the GUI lets you add custom objects and 17+ field types (text, currency, relations, multi-select, rich text) and they immediately appear in the GraphQL and REST APIs.
• Visual workflow builder: Drag-and-drop automations for tasks, emails, record updates and Slack notifications, with serverless Logic Functions for anything custom.
• Email and calendar sync: Native two-way sync with Gmail and Google Calendar, so reps stop living in two tabs. Microsoft 365 sync is in beta as of 2.0.
• GraphQL + REST APIs and webhooks: Every object you create is automatically exposed via both API styles, with row-level permissions. This is what makes Twenty actually pleasant for developers compared to Salesforce’s SOQL.
• One-line self-hosting: A single docker-compose up brings up Twenty, Postgres, Redis and worker processes. The self-host guide takes about ten minutes on a $20 VPS.
• App marketplace (new in 2.0): Publish and share custom apps — objects, views and workflows packaged together — the same way you would publish an npm package.

What Users Say About Twenty

Sentiment is consistently positive among engineers and consistently cautious among non-technical sales teams. The “Twenty: A Modern Open-Source CRM” Hacker News thread drew hundreds of upvotes, with the top comments praising the code quality, the install-in-under-five-minutes experience, and the “finally a CRM that doesn’t look like SAP” design language. On the Product Hunt 2.0 launch the post earned 349 upvotes, hit #2 Product of the Day on April 21, 2026, and commenters specifically called out the MCP server and the SDK split.

The criticism is honest and worth taking seriously. The most consistent complaint across r/CRM, Reddit and dev.to write-ups like “My Experience with Modern Open-Source CRM” is that there is no native mobile app — the web UI is responsive but not really usable on a phone. Other recurring pain points: the workflow engine still lacks foreach loops and conditional branches at GA, native integrations are limited compared to HubSpot (no Outreach, no Apollo, no Gong yet), reporting is thin, and a few paying Cloud customers on Trustpilot have flagged that support response times can stretch to several days. Multi-tenancy for agencies managing multiple client CRMs is also missing.

Twenty Pricing

Twenty is one of the cleanest pricing pages in the CRM category — three tiers, no “contact us for pricing” trick, and a self-hosted option that genuinely costs $0.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Self-hosted	$0 forever	Every feature, unlimited users, no telemetry. You bring the server (~$20–100/month VPS) and the operator.
Cloud Free	$0/user/month	Up to 3 users and 1,000 records. Good for evaluating.
Cloud Pro	$9/user/month (yearly)	Unlimited records, custom objects, AI agents, MCP server, email and calendar sync.
Organization	$19/user/month	Adds SAML SSO, audit logs, advanced permissions and priority support.

Who Should Use Twenty?

Best for: Engineering-led startups and B2B SaaS teams of 8–50 people who want full data ownership, a CRM their developers actually like extending, and a real path to self-host on Docker. Also a great fit for agencies and indie hackers who need a CRM but balk at $50–150/seat HubSpot or Salesforce contracts. Strong choice if you plan to wire your CRM into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor through MCP.

Not ideal for: Sales teams that need a polished mobile app, mid-market or enterprise orgs that require Outreach/Apollo/Gong integrations on day one, or non-technical organizations that won’t hire someone to maintain a self-hosted Postgres. If multi-tenancy or sub-second deal-stage reporting is a hard requirement, Twenty is not there yet.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Best-in-class design language — the only open-source CRM that doesn’t look like a 2010 ERP.
• True open source under a Funding-OSS license, with self-host that is genuinely free of feature gates.
• CRM-as-code SDK is unique in the category and version-controllable like the rest of your stack.
• Native MCP server makes Twenty arguably the most AI-assistant-ready CRM shipping today.
• Cloud Pro at $9/user/month is roughly 5× cheaper than HubSpot Sales Hub Pro and 10× cheaper than Salesforce Enterprise.

Cons:

• No native iOS or Android app — a real dealbreaker for outside sales teams.
• Workflow engine still lacks loops and conditional branches at GA.
• Native integrations catalogue (Outreach, Apollo, Gong, Intercom) is thin compared to HubSpot.
• Reporting and dashboards are functional but limited — no pivot tables, no funnel-conversion charts.
• Cloud support response times have been reported as slow under load.

Alternatives to Twenty

Twenty’s closest peers are Attio, HubSpot and Salesforce. Attio is the closest design competitor — equally clean and modern — but it is closed-source and starts at $34/user/month with no self-host option. HubSpot has the deepest integration catalogue and a real mobile app but quickly climbs above $50/user/month for paid features. Salesforce remains the gold standard for enterprises that need every feature ever built and have admins to operate it. Open-source alternatives like Plane for project management or NocoDB for spreadsheet-as-database overlap functionally but are not real CRM replacements.

Verdict: Is Twenty Worth It?

If your team writes code and you want a CRM that fits in your version-controlled stack, Twenty is the most exciting thing happening in the category in 2026. It is not as feature-complete as HubSpot or Salesforce, and it is not for everyone — but at $9/user/month for Cloud Pro and $0 self-hosted, the price-to-quality ratio is unbeatable in its segment. We rate it 84/100: very good with meaningful gaps (mobile, integrations) that the team is closing fast. If you tried Twenty in 2024 and found it thin, the 2.0 release on April 21, 2026 is the version worth re-evaluating.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Twenty CRM free?

Yes. The self-hosted version is fully free under an open-source license, with no feature gates or seat limits. The Cloud Free plan covers up to 3 users and 1,000 records. Paid Cloud Pro starts at $9/user/month billed yearly.

Is Twenty open source?

Yes. The complete codebase is on GitHub at twentyhq/twenty with 44,000+ stars as of April 2026. Twenty uses a Funding-OSS license that allows commercial self-hosting.

What platforms does Twenty support?

Twenty is a web application that runs in any modern browser on macOS, Windows and Linux. There is no native iOS or Android app yet — the responsive web UI is the only mobile option.

How does Twenty compare to HubSpot?

Twenty wins on price ($9/user/month vs $50+ for HubSpot Sales Hub Pro), code quality, self-host option and MCP/AI integration. HubSpot wins on integrations catalogue, native mobile apps, marketing automation depth and reporting. For technical teams under 50 reps, Twenty is usually the better fit; for marketing-led teams above 50 reps, HubSpot still wins.

Can I connect Claude or ChatGPT to Twenty?

Yes. As of Twenty 2.0 (April 2026), every Cloud workspace exposes a native Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. You can connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-compatible AI assistant via OAuth and let it read and write your CRM data in natural language.

How long does it take to self-host Twenty?

Roughly ten minutes on a $20/month VPS using the official Docker Compose file. You will need a domain, a Postgres-friendly host, and someone comfortable running docker compose up -d and managing routine updates.