Free alternatives to Salesforce
People leave Salesforce for two reasons: the bill and the burden. There is no free plan, the edition a real sales team needs sits well above the entry price, and running it well often means paying an admin or a consultant on top. For a small or mid-sized team, that is a lot of money and overhead for what is, at heart, a place to track contacts and deals. The good news is that the free CRMs below cover that core job without a per-seat contract.
Facts checked as of July 2026Read our Salesforce review
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Twenty
Best Free Alternative ToSalesforceA modern open source CRM you own outright, with no per-seat cost when self-hosted.
Twenty is the cleanest break from Salesforce's per-seat model: self-host the AGPL-3.0 core and you pay nothing, with no cap on users or contacts (as of July 2026). It covers the core Salesforce job, contacts, companies, custom objects, pipeline, and workflows, without the platform tax.
- Free plan, paid from $9/month (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Open source (AGPL-3.0 (core), commercial license for Enterprise-marked files)
United States- Best for:
- Startups and technical teams that want to own their CRM and never pay per seat again.
- The catch:
- Free means self-hosting with Docker and PostgreSQL, and the hosted cloud is trial-only before $9 per user per month. It has far fewer integrations than Salesforce's marketplace.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Free forever when self-hosted, versus no free plan at all on Salesforce
- Advantage: No per-seat fee, so adding users costs nothing on the self-hosted version
- Advantage: Modern, fast interface next to Salesforce's dense, admin-heavy screens
- Advantage: You own your data in your own database rather than renting the platform
- Tradeoff: Far smaller integration catalogue than Salesforce's AppExchange
- Tradeoff: Requires a server and technical upkeep that Salesforce handles for you
A hosted CRM with a genuine free-forever plan for up to three users and no server to run.
Zoho CRM gives a small team a real, hosted CRM for free, which is the thing Salesforce refuses to do. Up to three users get leads, deals, workflows, reports, and mobile apps at no cost (as of July 2026), and the paid tiers stay far below Salesforce as you grow.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- India
India- Best for:
- Small teams that want Salesforce-style functionality in the browser without a per-seat bill or a server.
- The catch:
- The free plan stops at three users, and Zoho localises its paid pricing so we could not confirm a first-party US figure. The interface is dense.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Free for up to 3 users forever, versus a 30-day trial and no free plan
- Advantage: Hosted with nothing to install, unlike a full Salesforce deployment
- Advantage: Paid tiers cost a fraction of the equivalent Salesforce edition
- Tradeoff: Free plan caps at 3 users, so a larger team pays sooner
- Tradeoff: Less customisation and marketplace depth than Salesforce at the top end
The friendliest free CRM to learn, with forms and email tracking built in.
HubSpot is the gentle on-ramp Salesforce never was: a free CRM a non-technical team can use on day one, with contacts, deals, forms, and email tracking (as of July 2026). It is the easiest way to leave a heavy Salesforce setup without a steep relearning curve.
- Free plan, paid from $20/month (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- Marketing-led small teams that want an easy, hosted free CRM wired to forms and email.
- The catch:
- New free accounts cap at 1,000 contacts and two users, and the jump to the Professional tiers is steep, so a growing team pays before long.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Genuinely free to start, versus Salesforce's trial-only entry
- Advantage: Much gentler learning curve than Salesforce's admin-heavy platform
- Advantage: Forms, email tracking, and marketing tools included free
- Tradeoff: Free plan capped at 1,000 contacts and 2 users
- Tradeoff: The Professional tiers climb into the hundreds of dollars a month, like Salesforce
A free plan with no cap on user count, bundling CRM with tasks and chat.
Bitrix24 solves the seat problem that pushes teams off Salesforce: its free plan puts no limit on the number of users (as of July 2026). A whole team can move onto it for nothing, with CRM, tasks, and chat in one workspace, capped mainly by 5 GB of storage.
- Free plan, paid from $49/month (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- Teams that need every seat on a CRM for free after balking at Salesforce's per-user cost.
- The catch:
- The free plan limits storage to 5 GB and locks sales automation and telephony, and the all-in-one interface can feel busy.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Unlimited users on the free plan, versus Salesforce's per-seat billing
- Advantage: Bundles project management and chat alongside the CRM
- Advantage: Flat per-organisation paid pricing can undercut per-seat Salesforce editions
- Tradeoff: 5 GB storage cap on the free plan fills quickly
- Worth knowing: Busier, less focused than a dedicated sales CRM
A clean open source CRM you self-host for free, with workflows and custom entities.
EspoCRM is the lightweight self-hosted answer to Salesforce: free under AGPL-3.0, with a workflow engine and custom entities that cover most of what a mid-sized team actually uses (as of July 2026). It is more modern than SuiteCRM and more established than Twenty.
- Free plan, paid from $15/month (as of July 2026)
- Czech Republic
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
Czech Republic- Best for:
- Teams with some technical help that want an ownable, customisable CRM without per-seat fees.
- The catch:
- Free means running a PHP and MySQL stack yourself, and the hosted cloud starts at $15 per user with a three-user minimum.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Free and open source when self-hosted, versus paid-only Salesforce
- Advantage: Custom entities and workflows without Salesforce's licensing cost
- Advantage: You own the data and pay no per-seat fee
- Tradeoff: Fewer ready-made integrations than Salesforce's marketplace
- Tradeoff: Requires self-hosting and maintenance Salesforce handles for you
The open source CRM that comes closest to Salesforce's feature breadth, with no per-user fees.
SuiteCRM is the free CRM for teams that need Salesforce-level breadth: sales, marketing, cases, quotes, and contracts, all in one AGPL-3.0 package with no licence fees (as of July 2026). It is the natural landing spot for a business leaving an expensive Salesforce or SugarCRM setup.
- Free plan, paid from £50/month (as of July 2026)
- United Kingdom
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
United Kingdom- Best for:
- Businesses that need enterprise CRM modules like quotes and cases on their own infrastructure.
- The catch:
- It is the heaviest tool here to run and dated to look at, and genuinely free means doing the hosting yourself.
Compared to Salesforce
- Advantage: Matches much of Salesforce's feature breadth for zero licence cost
- Advantage: No per-user fees, unlike every paid Salesforce edition
- Advantage: Quotes, contracts, and cases included out of the box
- Tradeoff: Heavier to run and more dated than Salesforce's polished interface
- Tradeoff: Needs real technical capacity to host and maintain
How to choose
Decide first whether you can host your own server. If you can, Twenty gives you a modern CRM you own outright with no per-seat cost, and SuiteCRM matches more of Salesforce's enterprise breadth for teams that need quotes and cases. If you want a hosted plan with no setup, Zoho CRM is free for up to three users and HubSpot is the gentlest to learn, while Bitrix24 is the one to try if you need to put a whole team on it for free. None of these will match Salesforce's ceiling, so if you genuinely need thousands of seats and deep platform customisation, that ceiling is what you are paying for.