Monica is an open source personal CRM you can self-host — a Dex and Clay alternative that remembers the people who matter, keeping contacts, conversations, important dates, and shared history in one private place you own.

What is Monica?

Monica is an open source personal relationship management (PRM) system — a personal CRM for your private life rather than a sales team. It stores the people you know and the details that matter: how you met, family ties, past conversations, birthdays, and the small things you want to remember before you see them again.

What is Monica best for?

Monica is best for people who want to be more intentional about staying in touch — with friends, family, and professional contacts — without handing that data to a social network or a service that mines it. It suits privacy-minded users who want full ownership of their relationship history in one calm, ad-free place.

What can Monica do?

Store rich contact records — relationships, how you met, jobs, family members, pets, and personal details
Log activities and interactions: calls, meals, trips, and the gist of conversations
Set reminders for birthdays, anniversaries, and follow-ups
Keep a private journal and notes tied to the people involved
Track gift ideas, debts owed, and per-contact tasks
Organize with multiple vaults, labels, and favorites
Attach documents and photos, with the interface available in 27 languages
Sync address books over CardDAV and push events to your calendar via CalDAV

Where does Monica fall short?

No native mobile app. Monica is a web app that’s only partially responsive, so entering data on a phone is awkward — a real friction point for a tool you’d reach for on the go.
Everything is manual. There’s no email, calendar-pull, or LinkedIn integration and no automatic contact import, so every interaction is typed in by hand. That’s deliberate (Monica never scans your inbox), but it takes discipline.
It’s a personal tool, not a business CRM. There’s no sales pipeline, lead management, or team collaboration. If you need a shared pipeline, an open source business CRM like EspoCRM is a better fit.

Is Monica free?

Yes — self-hosting Monica is completely free with no feature or contact limits; you only pay for your own server. The hosted cloud at monicahq.com has a free tier capped at 10 contacts and a Premium plan at $9/month (or $90/year) that covers hosting, automatic updates, and backups, so you’re paying for convenience, not the software.

What does Monica replace?

Monica is a self-hosted alternative to paid personal CRMs like Dex and Clay. It does the same remember-your-relationships job — contacts, reminders, and interaction history — but you host it yourself, keep the data private, and skip the subscription and contact caps.

FAQ

Is Monica open source? Yes. Monica is licensed under AGPL-3.0, so the full source is public and free to self-host. The AGPL adds a condition: if you run a modified version as a network service, you must share your changes.

Can I self-host Monica for free? Yes — the self-hosted edition is free with no contact limits, and you only pay for the server. It runs through Docker or a PHP 8.1+ environment backed by MySQL 8+ or MariaDB.

Is Monica a good Dex or Clay alternative? For privacy-minded people who want to own their data, yes. But Monica has no automatic contact enrichment, email sync, or mobile app — if those features are what you’re after, Dex or Clay may serve you better.

What do I need to run Monica? A server with Docker (or a PHP 8.1+ setup), a MySQL 8+ / MariaDB 10.3+ database, and an SMTP server so reminder and notification emails can go out.