Who wrote this: We build iOS apps, and one of the seven below — Clinch — is ours. It is listed with the same fields as everything else, including a "watch out". There are no affiliate links on this page; we earn nothing whichever option you pick.
Most CRMs described as free are not. They are the entry point of a subscription, sized so that the thing you will actually need — reporting, automation, more than a handful of records — sits one tier up. That is a legitimate business model, but it is worth knowing which kind of free you are looking at before you put a year of customer history into it.
There are three honest kinds. Genuinely free software with no paid tier at all. A free tier of a commercial product, which is a funnel. And open-source software you host yourself, which is free of charge but not free of work.
All three are below, labelled, with the catch on each stated rather than buried.
At a glance
| Option | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Clinch (ours) | A real sales pipeline with no tier held back | Free, no paid tier at all |
| HubSpot free CRM | A free tier you can genuinely grow a business on | Free tier, paid hubs above it |
| Zoho CRM free edition | A small group who need shared records at no cost | Free edition, paid tiers above |
| Streak free tier | Running a pipeline without leaving Gmail | Free tier plus subscription |
| Monica | A personal CRM you own outright | Open source and self-hosted, or paid hosting |
| Notion or Airtable | Building exactly the CRM you want, yourself | Free tier plus subscription |
| Apple Contacts and Reminders | Proving whether you need a CRM at all | Free, included with iOS |
The options in detail
Clinch
Ours- Best for
- A real sales pipeline with no tier held back
- Highlights
- Every feature is in the free app — there is no upgrade to sell you
- No account and no server, so there is no bill for us to start charging
- Full pipeline, activity logging and seven reports, not a cut-down version
- CSV export built in, so leaving costs you nothing either
- Pricing
- Free, no paid tier at all
- Watch out
- Single-user, iPhone and iPad only, and no shared pipelines or manager view. Free because it has no server to pay for — which is exactly why it cannot offer collaboration.
HubSpot free CRM
- Best for
- A free tier you can genuinely grow a business on
- Highlights
- The most capable free tier in the category by a distance
- Contact management, deals and email tracking at no cost
- Room for a team without paying immediately
- Migrating up later needs no data move
- Pricing
- Free tier, paid hubs above it
- Watch out
- It is the top of a funnel and behaves like one. The reporting, automation and sequences most people eventually want are on paid hubs, and the step up is expensive.
Zoho CRM free edition
- Best for
- A small group who need shared records at no cost
- Highlights
- A free edition intended for very small teams, not one person
- Leads, deals and contacts with real pipeline reporting
- Mobile apps on both platforms
- Upgrade path is cheap compared with the rest of the category
- Pricing
- Free edition, paid tiers above
- Watch out
- The free edition caps users and holds back most customisation, and the interface carries the weight of a product built for large teams.
Streak free tier
- Best for
- Running a pipeline without leaving Gmail
- Highlights
- The pipeline sits in the inbox, so it stays current by default
- Free tier aimed at individuals rather than a countdown
- Email tracking included at no cost
- Nothing new to open, which is most of the battle
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- Gmail only, and the free tier limits pipelines and tracked emails. If your mail moves, your CRM moves with it.
Monica
- Best for
- A personal CRM you own outright
- Highlights
- Open source, so the data and the software are genuinely yours
- Built around relationships and reminders rather than deals
- No vendor that can change the terms on you
- Hosted option available if you would rather not run a server
- Pricing
- Open source and self-hosted, or paid hosting
- Watch out
- Self-hosting is real work — a server, updates and backups are now your job. It is also a personal CRM rather than a sales one, so there is no pipeline or forecast.
Notion or Airtable
- Best for
- Building exactly the CRM you want, yourself
- Highlights
- Model your pipeline however your business actually works
- Generous free tiers for a single user
- Templates cover most of the setup
- Doubles as everything else you keep in there
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- You are the one maintaining it. There is no next-step logic, no forecast and no rot detection unless you build and then keep building it — and mobile is slow for quick logging.
Apple Contacts and Reminders
- Best for
- Proving whether you need a CRM at all
- Highlights
- Zero setup, zero cost, already syncing
- Follow-ups via Reminders work genuinely well
- Siri capture is faster than any third-party app
- Worth trying first before paying for anything
- Pricing
- Free, included with iOS
- Watch out
- No deal values, no stages, no forecast and no way to see what has gone quiet. Fine for a handful of conversations, useless as a pipeline.
What is still missing
The pattern across this category is that "free" almost always means one of two things: a funnel you will eventually pay to escape, or a database you have to build and maintain yourself.
The third option — software that is simply finished and free — is rare because most CRMs have a server to pay for. Clinch is free for exactly that reason: there is no server, so there is no running cost to recover, and nothing is held back for a tier that does not exist. The price of that is the thing it cannot do, which is let anybody else see your pipeline.
If you need a team on it, HubSpot's free tier is the honest starting point. If you want to own the software outright and do not mind running it, Monica is the one. If you want a pipeline on your phone with no bill and no account, that is what Clinch is.
Common questions
Is there a genuinely free CRM with no paid tier?
Very few. Clinch has no paid tier at all — every feature is in the free app — because it has no server to pay for. Most other free CRMs are the entry tier of a subscription product.
What is the catch with free CRM tiers?
Usually record limits, user limits, or the absence of reporting and automation. None of that is dishonest, but it does mean the free tier is designed around the moment you outgrow it. Check what the next tier costs before you commit your data.
Are open-source CRMs actually free?
Free of licence cost, not free of effort. Self-hosting something like Monica or EspoCRM means you run the server, apply the updates and own the backups. If you would pay someone to do that, the maths often favours a hosted product.
Can I use a spreadsheet instead?
For a handful of deals, genuinely yes, and it beats an unused CRM. It stops working when you need to know what has gone quiet, what your weighted forecast is, or which stage deals die in — none of which a spreadsheet will tell you unless you build it.
Will a free CRM keep my data private?
Read the privacy policy rather than the marketing. A hosted CRM necessarily holds your customer list on its servers. Clinch never receives it — data stays on the device and syncs through your own iCloud only if you turn that on.