Best Open Source CRM 2026: What Each One Needs to Run

The best open source CRM for most teams is EspoCRM. It needs nothing beyond a database and PHP, and it shipped a release in September 2026. All eight here run on the same $14 to $22 a month server, so the bill is not what separates them. The work is. Three need no extra services at all. One needs six.

Odoo wins if your sales work has to touch invoicing and stock. Twenty wins if your team lives in a modern interface and can run Redis alongside it.

The field is eight: Odoo, SuiteCRM, EspoCRM, Twenty, Vtiger, Krayin, Frappe CRM and Atomic CRM. Every other guide ranks them on features. We ranked them on what each one needs underneath it because that is what decides whether the CRM you choose is still running in six months.

Every requirement figure below comes from the project’s own documentation or its own repository, checked on 3 September 2026, with the source named in each entry. We build Selfhost.dev, which is where two of these eight run as one-click templates, so read our numbers knowing that and check them against the pricing calculator rather than taking them from us.

Key Facts

• EspoCRM is the best open source CRM for most teams. It runs on a database and PHP with no other required services.
• Odoo is the better choice when sales has to reach invoicing and stock. It needs PostgreSQL 16 and Python 3.12.
• Odoo, EspoCRM and Krayin need nothing beyond a database and a language runtime. No Redis, no worker, no scheduler.
• Frappe CRM has the most moving parts of any standalone CRM here. It needs Redis, a scheduler, a background worker, and nginx with Supervisor in production.
• Every licence here is free. No server is. A 4 GB server costs $14 a month and an 8 GB server costs $22, on Selfhost.dev in our EU locations.
• Twenty, Krayin and Vtiger are the only three that publish a RAM requirement, at 2 GB, 3 GB and 4 GB. The other five publish none.
• SuiteCRM and Atomic CRM are the only two with no official Docker image. The other six ship one.
• SuiteCRM, Vtiger and Frappe each contradict their own licence inside their own repositories.
• Vtiger is the only project here that has not released in over a year. Version 8.4.0 is dated 9 July 2025.
• Every requirement figure was verified on September 2026 against each project’s own documentation or repository.

Open source CRM vs paid CRM: why do teams switch?

$25 per user per month is where Salesforce Sales Cloud starts, which makes a team of five $125 a month and a team of twenty $500. An open source CRM on your own server costs $14 or $22 a month at either headcount, because you are paying for a machine rather than for seats.

That is Salesforce’s cheapest paid tier, listed on its own Sales Cloud pricing page in September 2026. The next tier up is $100 per user per month, so a twenty-person team on Pro Suite is $2,000 a month. The server does not move.

That is the arithmetic that starts most of these searches. The second reason is control: the customer database sits on infrastructure you choose, which for anyone facing GDPR or an internal audit often settles the question on its own.

What changes with open source is not whether you pay. It is what you pay for, and whether the number moves when the team grows. A flat server bill and a per-seat subscription are not the same product at the same price, which is the same pattern we cover in what makes a hosting bill unpredictable and in our comparison of what seven platforms actually cost.

Before you compare tools, get the other number. A CRM server is one of the cheapest things you will run, and it helps to know what it costs before you weigh it against a subscription. See what a $14 server covers, no signup.

Which open source CRM tools are worth comparing in 2026?

Eight are worth comparing, and they divide by what each needs underneath it. Odoo, EspoCRM and Krayin need only a database and a language runtime. SuiteCRM and Vtiger add a mandatory cron job. Twenty adds Redis and a worker. Frappe CRM adds Redis, a scheduler, a worker and nginx with Supervisor. Atomic CRM needs the whole Supabase stack.

The longer that list, the more there is to keep running.

Every figure comes from the project’s own documentation or repository, checked in September 2026.

Odoo and Twenty run as one-click templates on Selfhost.dev, which means the extra services in that column arrive already installed and connected. Twenty needs an app, a background worker, its own Postgres and its own Redis, and Deploying Twenty on Selfhost.dev brings all four up on a server we patch and run, with domains and SSL handled. Deploying Odoo on Selfhost.dev works the same way. Both are heavier than the rest of this list, so they want the larger server; the $5 signup credit covers about a week of it.

The rest install on any server that meets the requirements above, and all but SuiteCRM and Atomic CRM ship an official Docker image to install from.

The 8 Best Open Source CRMs, Compared on What They Need

EspoCRM

What it is. A CRM for contacts, deals, cases and marketing, written in PHP.

Who it suits. Teams who want customer management and not a business suite.

What it needs to run. MySQL 8.0 or later, MariaDB 10.3 or later, or PostgreSQL 15 or later, with PHP 8.3 to 8.5. No required services beyond that. A cron entry drives scheduled jobs. The official Docker image is espocrm/espocrm. EspoCRM publishes no RAM requirement.

The honest drawback. Its most-commented issues are PostgreSQL compatibility problems, which is the newest of its three supported databases. On MySQL or MariaDB, this is not a concern.

One surprising thing. Official API client libraries ship in seven languages, including Rust, Go and Zig, which is unusually broad for a CRM.

Krayin

What it is. A Laravel CRM for lead and pipeline management, from Webkul.

Who it suits. Teams already writing PHP who want to extend the CRM as a normal Laravel package.

What it needs to run. MySQL 8.0.32 or later or MariaDB 10.3 or later, with PHP 8.3 or later. Nothing else is required: the default configuration uses file caching, file sessions and synchronous queues, so Redis is optional. It is MIT licensed. Documented minimum RAM is 3 GB. One command starts it: docker run -d -p 80:80 webkul/krayin:latest.

The honest drawback. The two most-commented issues in its tracker are installation failures, and the community is smaller than SuiteCRM’s or Odoo’s.

One surprising thing. It ships AI agent skills inside the repository, with directories for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex, and publishes a machine-readable agents.txt.

Odoo Community

What it is. The free edition of the Odoo business suite, with a kanban sales pipeline.

Who it suits. Businesses whose sales process has to reach invoicing, inventory or projects.

What it needs to run. PostgreSQL 16 or later and Python 3.12 or later. No Redis, no message broker. Optional extras are wkhtmltopdf for PDF reports and pgvector for its AI features. The official image is odoo:19.0. Odoo publishes no minimum RAM, only a worker formula, so you size it by guesswork. On Selfhost.dev Odoo is one click on an 8 GB server, with Postgres, the OS, the proxy and SSL handled.

The honest drawback. Version upgrades dominate its most-commented issues, and some features, including VoIP, are held back for the paid Enterprise edition.

One surprising thing. It exposes three ports by default. Port 8072 is a dedicated live-chat worker that starts automatically.

SuiteCRM

What it is. A fork of SugarCRM Community Edition, with cases, workflows and campaigns built in.

Who it suits. Larger B2B teams who want enterprise features with no per-seat fee.

What it needs to run. MySQL 8.0 or 8.4, MariaDB 10.6 through 11.8, or SQL Server 2019 and later, with PHP 8.1 to 8.4 on Apache 2.4 or IIS 10. Cron is mandatory, not optional: workflows, emails and schedulers do not run without it. There is no official Docker image and no compose file. SuiteCRM publishes no RAM requirement.

The honest drawback. Email configuration is the single largest complaint in its tracker, and its most-commented open issue about TLS has been open since 2016.

One surprising thing. Its composer.json declares GPL-3.0 while its LICENSE.txt and its own documentation both say AGPL-3.0. The two licences impose different obligations.

Vtiger

What it is. A long-established open source PHP CRM with sales, marketing and inventory modules.

Who it suits. Teams who want a mature PHP CRM and are comfortable with a slower release cycle.

What it needs to run. MySQL 5.1 or later on InnoDB, with PHP 8.1 or later on Apache. A cron service is required for the scheduler. Documented hardware is 4 GB of RAM and 250 GB of disk. A Docker image exists at vtigercrm/vtigercrm-8.3.0, but the code repository contains no Dockerfile or compose file.

The honest drawback. The latest release, 8.4.0, is dated 9 July 2025, making it 14 months old as of September 2026 and by far the oldest in this field. Email problems are the dominant theme in its issue tracker.

One surprising thing. Its official repository is on GitLab, not GitHub. The GitHub repository named in most guides is a mirror holding older SugarCRM-licensed code, and it carries three different licence labels across one project.

Twenty

What it is. A modern open source CRM with a spreadsheet-like interface, built as an answer to Salesforce.

Who it suits. Technical teams who want a fast interface and can run four containers.

What it needs to run. PostgreSQL 16 and Node.js 24.5, plus Redis and a background worker. The official compose file starts four containers: the server, the worker, Postgres and Redis. Twenty documents a 2 GB floor.

Doing it yourself means standing up a Postgres, a Redis, a worker and a reverse proxy before anyone sees a login screen, then keeping all four alive. On Selfhost.dev Twenty is one click on an 8 GB server, with the four containers wired and SSL handled.

The honest drawback. It is the youngest project here, so reporting and automation are still catching up with the older platforms. A small number of files carry a separate enterprise licence, so check which edition you are running before production.

One surprising thing. It targets Node.js 24.5, where most open source projects pin an older long-term-support release.

Frappe CRM

What it is. The CRM app of the Frappe framework, sharing a database with ERPNext.

Who it suits. Companies who want the pipeline in the same system as accounting and stock.

What it needs to run. MariaDB 10.6.6 or later, Python 3.10 or later and Node.js 18 or later, plus Redis for cache, queue and sockets, a scheduler, a background worker, and nginx with Supervisor in production. The bench command-line tool is required. It publishes no RAM requirement. The image is ghcr.io/frappe/crm.

The honest drawback. This is the most moving parts of any CRM here except Atomic CRM, which needs the whole Supabase stack. Its most-commented issues are Docker build failures caused by version mismatches between its own base image and its own framework.

One surprising thing. Three pieces of the same umbrella carry three different licences: the framework is MIT, ERPNext is GPL-3.0 and the CRM is AGPL-3.0.

Atomic CRM

What it is. A React and Supabase CRM template from Marmelab, designed to be forked and customised.

Who it suits. React teams who want a starting point rather than a finished product.

What it needs to run. PostgreSQL 15, delivered through the full Supabase local stack, which bundles PostgREST, GoTrue authentication, Realtime, Storage and Edge Functions. Node.js 22 and Docker are required, and the toolchain includes Make and the Supabase CLI. There is no published Docker image and no compose file. It publishes no RAM requirement.

The honest drawback. It is the least frequently released here after Vtiger, at six months, and internationalisation is its most requested missing feature.

One surprising thing. Version 1.5.0 replaced its entire admin interface framework, swapping React Admin for shadcn-admin-kit.

What about ERPNext, OroCRM, YetiForce and other open source CRMs?

Seven more come up often. Each is a real option, and each is off this list for a specific reason.

• ERPNext is the ERP that Frappe CRM sits beside, so it is covered above rather than as a separate entry.
• OroCRM is built for long B2B sales cycles and needs a Symfony developer, which puts it beyond the teams this page is written for.
• YetiForce ships under a licence that restricts commercial use without a paid agreement.
• Axelor is a low-code platform with a CRM module, rather than a CRM.
• CiviCRM is built for nonprofits and membership organisations, which is a different job.
• Corteza and Flectra are maintained, but appear in far fewer real deployments than the eight above.
• X2CRM is still available, but its open source edition sees much less activity than the alternatives here.

Is a free open source CRM actually free to run?

The software is free. Running it is not. The server is $14 a month for 4 GB or $22 for 8 GB, on Selfhost.dev Cost-Optimized machines in our EU locations, billed hourly and unchanged when you add users. Every CRM here that publishes a requirement fits one of those two sizes: Twenty asks for 2 GB, Krayin 3 GB, Vtiger 4 GB.

What that number hides is the reason this page ranks them on requirements. Hosting them costs the same. Running them does not.

EspoCRM, Krayin and Odoo need a database and a language runtime. That is one machine, one database, and nothing to keep an eye on. SuiteCRM and Vtiger add a cron job, which is one line and one more thing that fails silently when it stops.

Twenty needs Redis and a background worker, so four processes have to stay healthy instead of two. Frappe CRM needs Redis, a scheduler, a worker, and nginx with Supervisor in production, which is five moving parts and a bespoke command-line tool to manage them. Atomic CRM needs the entire Supabase stack, which is six services to run a CRM for a sales team.

Five of the eight publish no server RAM requirement at all. Two of those, SuiteCRM and EspoCRM, document a PHP memory_limit instead, 64MB and 256MB, which is a per-process cap and tells you nothing about the machine. The 4 GB and 8 GB figures circulating for ERPNext come from forum posts, not from Frappe’s own documentation, which states none.

None of that appears on the price of the server. It appears in who spends their Thursday afternoon on it when something stops. That is the same finding we reached costing out Supabase, where the real cost was never the server.

You do not have to guess which size you need. Most of this list runs on the $14 server, and the heavier two on the next size up. Price both against your own hours, no signup and no card.

Which Is the Best Open Source CRM System for Your Team?

Choose EspoCRM unless one of five conditions applies. It needs the least underneath it, runs on three different databases, and released in September 2026. Those five conditions are the only reasons to pick differently, and each one points at a specific alternative.

If your sales process has to reach invoicing, stock or projects, choose Odoo. One installation covers all of it, and the CRM alone is free with no user cap.

If you already run an ERP or want one, choose Frappe CRM. Accept that it is five moving parts, and budget for the bench toolchain.

If your team writes PHP and wants to extend the CRM as code, choose Krayin. MIT licensed, one Docker command, no extra services.

If the interface matters more than anything and you can run Redis, choose Twenty. It is the best-looking option here and the youngest.

If you need enterprise features like cases and campaigns without a licence fee, choose SuiteCRM, and plan a day for email configuration.

The fastest way to settle this is to run your top two. A Selfhost.dev server to test them on starts at $14 a month, and the $5 signup credit covers about ten days of it. Deploy one on Selfhost.dev and load your own data, no card needed.

What do you give up by self-hosting a CRM?

You give up three things: vendor support, automatic upgrades, and someone else’s responsibility for your data. Nobody is on call when the database fills up. Nobody applies the security patch to the application. Nobody restores last Tuesday unless you set up the backup that makes it possible.

Support becomes a forum. Every project here has an active community and none of them have an SLA.

Upgrades become a project. Odoo’s most-commented issues are version-upgrade breakages. Frappe’s are Docker build failures caused by a version mismatch between its own base image and its own framework.

Integrations become work. All eight ship a REST API, and the quality of the documentation behind it varies more than the feature lists suggest.

If your team has nobody who is comfortable in a terminal, a hosted CRM is the right answer and the rest of this page will not change that.

What does a self-hosted open source CRM actually take to run?

A server, a database, and someone to own it. Every one of these except SuiteCRM and Atomic CRM ships an official Docker image, which makes the install straightforward, but the install is the small part. Everything in the section above is the part that continues.

Every requirement in the table above is a job. Some are one-time: provision the server, install the database, wire the proxy, get SSL. Some are forever: patch, upgrade, back up, restore. A one-click template deletes the first list. Nothing deletes the second, and any vendor telling you otherwise is selling you something.

Selfhost.dev takes the server layer, and that is the half that never stops. We provision the machine, patch the OS, configure the reverse proxy, handle your domain and its SSL certificate, and give you live metrics, streaming logs and health checks that roll back a bad deploy. You run the CRM itself: you upgrade it when a new version ships, and you own the data inside it.

Odoo and Twenty deploy in one click on Selfhost.dev, the heaviest pair on this list, on the $22 server. Everything else here installs on a Selfhost.dev Project the way it would on any other server, and most of them ship an official Docker image to install from. SuiteCRM and Atomic CRM are the two that do not.

Teams that stand up a CRM usually want a shared support inbox and marketing automation next, and both Chatwoot and Mautic are in the same catalog.

If you would rather see the numbers for your own setup first, a Selfhost.dev engineer will map what you run today to a line-by-line cost, free, whether or not you move. Tell us what you run today.

The decision

Choose EspoCRM if you want a CRM and nothing else. It needs the least underneath it and is actively released.

Choose Odoo if sales has to touch invoicing or stock. One system, no user cap on the Community edition.

Choose Frappe CRM if you already run an ERP, and accept the extra moving parts.

Choose a hosted CRM if nobody on your team is comfortable in a terminal. The licence saving is not worth the time spent keeping it running.

The choice is really about how much you want to manage yourself. Pick the CRM that fits your team, then let Selfhost.dev handle the server.

Deploy Odoo or Twenty on Selfhost.dev, with $5 credit and no card needed.

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