Twenty
An open-source CRM — a self-hostable alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot
Twenty is an open-source CRM — an alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot with 51,809 GitHub stars as of June 2026 — built in TypeScript (React, NestJS, GraphQL, and PostgreSQL) that you can self-host or run in its cloud. The community edition is AGPL-3.0 licensed, so a founder can track every lead, deal, and customer relationship in one place they actually own. But a CRM only organizes the pipeline; it does not fill it. The harder half of growth is generating the leads and conversations that land in Twenty in the first place.
What Twenty is
Twenty (github.com/twentyhq/twenty) is an open-source customer relationship management (CRM) platform — a self-hostable alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot. Backed by Y Combinator (S23), it is built in TypeScript with React on the front end, NestJS and GraphQL on the back end, and PostgreSQL for storage. The community edition is licensed under AGPL-3.0, so you can run it on your own infrastructure and keep your customer data, while a separate commercial edition gates enterprise features like SSO and advanced permissions.
- A customizable CRM — contacts, companies, deals, and pipelines you can shape to your own sales motion.
- A familiar, Notion-like UI — records, kanban boards, and table views that feel modern, not enterprise-clunky.
- An API and webhooks — wire Twenty into the rest of your stack and automate record creation.
- Open-source + self-hostable under AGPL-3.0, so your pipeline and customer data stay yours.
Where Twenty fits in a founder's growth stack
Twenty is the organization layer for relationships. Once you have leads, conversations, and deals in flight, a CRM stops them from living in your inbox and your memory: you can see every contact's history, what stage each deal is in, and what to follow up on next. For a founder selling to a handful of early customers, that structure is the difference between a follow-up that happens and one that quietly slips.
But a CRM is only useful once there are relationships to manage. An empty pipeline is an empty database. The growth itself comes from the work upstream of the CRM — the content, outreach, and launches that create the leads you then track in Twenty. See the playbook in how do I get my first 100 users, and for choosing where to focus, what marketing channels should a new SaaS start with.
What Twenty doesn't do — and what to pair it with
Twenty does not generate leads, write your outreach, run your SEO, or post to social. Like OpenPanel on the analytics side and Dub on attribution, it is a focused tool: it organizes the pipeline, it doesn't create the demand that fills it. Turning a tidy CRM into actual revenue still takes execution across channels.
| Twenty organizes… | …the work that fills it |
|---|---|
| Inbound leads from search | SEO content that ranks for what your buyers look for |
| Replies from outreach | cold email and social that start the conversations |
| Deals moving through stages | the follow-ups, lifecycle emails, and campaigns that keep them moving |
This is where Ceres — the AI Growth Officer (agentceres.com) complements a CRM like Twenty. Ceres is a managed AI marketing team: specialists draft the SEO, outreach, and social that generate the leads landing in your CRM, you approve what ships, and Twenty tracks every relationship from there. The CRM organizes the pipeline; the team helps you fill it. For how AI engines factor into being discovered, see generative engine optimization.
Getting Twenty found by people already evaluating a CRM switch
Twenty's growth as a project runs mostly through developer-adjacent channels rather than paid acquisition: GitHub itself (an active README, topics tagged for CRM/open-source, and inclusion in curated "awesome" lists), a Product Hunt launch or Hacker News post at a major release, and comparison content that ranks for the exact question a buyer is typing — "twenty vs salesforce," "twenty vs hubspot," "twenty vs attio." Someone searching those terms has already decided they want a CRM; the page that answers the comparison honestly is the one that earns the trial signup.
- Get found where developers already look. A clear README, topics tagged for CRM and open-source, and a listing in curated "awesome" directories put Twenty in front of developers before a search engine does.
- Write the comparison people are already searching for. "Twenty vs Salesforce," "vs HubSpot," and "vs Attio" each target a buyer who has already narrowed their options and just needs the honest trade-offs.
- Use launch moments to compound, not just spike. A release-day Product Hunt or Hacker News post compounds with build-in-public updates in between, so the project stays visible without launching every week.
Writing comparison content that actually converts
The pattern behind programmatic SEO — one honest template applied to every real competitor — fits well here because the comparisons are genuinely different: Salesforce and HubSpot are closed, cloud-only, and priced for teams with real budget; Attio is another modern, well-funded CRM competing on the same clean-UI ground Twenty occupies. A page that's upfront about where Twenty wins (self-hosting, AGPL-3.0 licensing, owning your own data) and where it doesn't (a smaller ecosystem, more setup work) earns more trust — and more signups — than a page that oversells.
FAQ
- Is Twenty free?
- The community edition of Twenty is free and open-source under the AGPL-3.0 license, so you can self-host it at no cost and keep your own data. There is also a hosted cloud option and a commercial edition with enterprise features like SSO and advanced role-based access. Check the repo and twenty.com for current cloud pricing and what is gated.
- Is Twenty open source?
- Yes — the community edition's code is public at github.com/twentyhq/twenty under AGPL-3.0 and can be self-hosted. That is the main reason teams pick it over a closed tool like Salesforce or HubSpot when they want to own their customer data on their own infrastructure.
- How is Twenty different from Salesforce or HubSpot?
- Twenty positions itself as an open-source, self-hostable, developer-friendly alternative with a modern, Notion-like interface. Salesforce and HubSpot are powerful but closed, cloud-only, and can get expensive and heavy for a small team. Twenty's pitch is owning your data and shaping the CRM to your workflow, at the cost of running (or paying to host) it yourself.
- How does Twenty compare to Attio?
- Both are modern, well-designed CRMs built to feel less enterprise-clunky than Salesforce or HubSpot. The core difference is ownership: Twenty's community edition is open-source and AGPL-3.0 licensed, so you can self-host it and keep your data on your own infrastructure, while Attio is a closed, cloud-only product. Attio ships with more built-in polish out of the box; Twenty trades some of that for the option to run it yourself.
- Is "Twenty" the same thing as "20 CRM"?
- Yes — some people search "20 crm" simply because the product's name is the number twenty. Twenty CRM (github.com/twentyhq/twenty) is the open-source, self-hostable alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot described on this page.
- How do I fill the pipeline Twenty tracks?
- A CRM organizes leads; it doesn't create them. Pick one or two channels to start with, publish SEO content that ranks for what your buyers search, and run outreach or a launch where they already gather. The playbook is the same for any product — see how do I get my first 100 users.
You built it. Now grow it.
AgentCeres is a managed AI marketing team — specialists draft the SEO, social, and outreach that fill your links, you approve what ships. 14-day free trial, from $39/month.