By Alpit Patel and the aibrevo team · October 22, 2026 · 9 min read
Open Source CRM Compared, 2026: SuiteCRM, vtiger, Odoo, EspoCRM, Twenty and SugarCRM
Which open source CRMs are actually open source in October 2026, from each project's own site or repository: SuiteCRM and EspoCRM are AGPL-3.0, Odoo's code is LGPL-3.0 with a licensed Enterprise edition, Twenty is mostly AGPL with commercial files, vtiger's open source edition is on version 8.4.0 under a Mozilla-based licence, and SugarCRM's Community Edition is discontinued.
Key takeaways
- Checked October 22, 2026: SuiteCRM and EspoCRM publish their code under AGPL-3.0, Odoo's repository carries LGPL-3.0, Twenty is mostly AGPL-3.0 with files marked as a commercial Enterprise licence, and vtiger's open source edition is licensed under the Vtiger Public License 1.1, based on MPL 1.1.
- SugarCRM is not an open source option today. Its own repository says Community Edition is no longer developed and is a fully unsupported project, the last push was September 27, 2018, and the company's pricing page lists only paid plans from $68 per user a month.
- The free download is not the full cost. SuiteCRM managed hosting starts at 50 pounds a month and implementation at 2,520 pounds. EspoCRM cloud is $15 per user a month (3 users minimum). Twenty cloud is $9 per user a month billed yearly, with self-hosting free.
- Release freshness differs: EspoCRM 10.0.10 shipped October 14, 2026 and Twenty v2.50.0 on October 21, 2026. SuiteCRM's latest GitHub release is 7.15.2 from July 31, 2026. vtiger's open source version 8.4.0 is dated July 9, 2025.
- Self-hosting trades licence fees for work you do yourself: hosting, security, updates and backups. For a team that wants none of that, a managed CRM at $14 to $39 a seat is often the cheaper route.
Four of the six CRMs people search as “open source” publish their code under a recognised open source licence today, one is partly commercial, and one is not open source at all. We checked each project’s repository or own site on October 22, 2026: SuiteCRM and EspoCRM are AGPL-3.0, Odoo’s repository is LGPL-3.0, Twenty is mostly AGPL-3.0 with commercial files, vtiger’s open source edition is licensed under a Mozilla-based licence, and SugarCRM’s Community Edition is discontinued. This page sets out the licence, the latest release, what the vendor says it costs to run and what the free version lacks. Google Autocomplete (checked October 2026) suggests “vtiger open source”, “sugarcrm open source” and “odoo crm free”, which is why those three are here.
Method. Licence and release data come from each project’s GitHub repository and licence file; prices come from each vendor’s pricing page. Where a page did not state something, the table says so. We did not install or test any of the software.
Which CRMs are actually open source in 2026?
| CRM | Licence (source) | Latest release we could verify | Repository last pushed | Open source today? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SuiteCRM | AGPL-3.0 (GitHub) | v7.15.2, July 31, 2026 (latest GitHub release) | October 22, 2026 | Yes |
| EspoCRM | AGPL-3.0 (LICENSE file) | 10.0.10, October 14, 2026 | October 22, 2026 | Yes |
| Odoo | LGPL-3.0 (LICENSE file); Enterprise is licensed | Repository default branch is 20.0; no tagged release shown | October 22, 2026 | Community yes, Enterprise no |
| Twenty | Mostly AGPL-3.0; MIT for SDK and UI packages; files marked Enterprise are commercial | v2.50.0, October 21, 2026 | October 22, 2026 | Mostly |
| vtiger | Vtiger Public License 1.1, based on MPL 1.1 (vtiger site) | 8.4.0, July 9, 2025 (download page) | Source is a SourceForge download; no public repository linked | Yes, on-premise edition |
| SugarCRM (now SugarAI) | Not stated in the repository | Last push to the Community repository: September 27, 2018 | Discontinued | No |
Sources: GitHub repositories and licence files, vtiger.com and sugarai.com pages, all checked Oct 22, 2026. “Last pushed” is GitHub’s own timestamp. SuiteCRM’s 8.x line may be tagged separately from the “latest release” tag shown, so check the project’s download page for the version you want.
A licence label is not the same as “free to use as you like”. AGPL-3.0 obliges you to publish source changes if you run a modified version as a network service. The LGPL and MPL are lighter. If you plan to modify and resell, read the licence file itself, which we link in the sources.
Is SuiteCRM really free?
The software, yes. SuiteCRM’s pricing page says “The software is yours at no additional cost”, and the code is AGPL-3.0. The vendor sells what sits around it, and states prices in pounds.
| SuiteCRM item | Stated price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Open source software | Free to download | The CRM; you pay your own infrastructure |
| Fully managed hosting | From 50 pounds a month (600 pounds a year) | Hosting run by the vendor |
| Quick Start implementation | From 2,520 pounds, one time | Setup including one day of training |
| Self-managed implementation | Free | No assistance included |
| Community support | Free | Forums and knowledge base |
| Standard Support | 1,200 pounds for 10 hours (960 pounds with managed hosting) | Support hours |
| SuiteASSURED | From 3,350 pounds a year | Includes 10 care hours |
Source: suitecrm.com/pricing, checked Oct 22, 2026, prices at the time of writing. The page lists no feature gaps between free and paid; what the free path lacks is vendor-managed service.
Is EspoCRM free, and what do the paid plans add?
EspoCRM’s self-hosted download is free and its code is AGPL-3.0. Its cloud plans are billed per user, and the extension terms matter if you self-host.
| EspoCRM cloud plan | Per user per month | Minimum users | File storage | Records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $15.00 | 3 | 3 GB per user | 100,000 |
| Enterprise | $25.00 | 5 | 10 GB per user | 10,000,000 (more for an extra fee) |
| Ultimate | $69.00 | 10 | 400 GB | Unlimited, with a dedicated IP, private server and own domain |
Source: espocrm.com/pricing, checked Oct 22, 2026. Basic and Enterprise are billed for 6 months or 1 year. All cloud plans include 12x5 support and daily backups kept for 7 days.
The catch is on the extensions. The pricing page says the Advanced Pack and official extensions are included in cloud plans, and that if you move to your own server “you will need to purchase those extensions” to keep that functionality. So the free download is the core, and some of what the cloud plans bundle is a separate purchase when you self-host. The pricing page does not give those extension prices.
What do Twenty, Odoo and vtiger charge, and what does free leave out?
Each has a free path that is narrower than it first looks.
- Twenty. The pricing page says “Self-host the open source core for free.” Cloud Pro is $9 per user a month billed yearly, Cloud Organization is $19 per user a month and adds SSO and row-level permissions, and Enterprise starts at $50k a year with single-tenant isolation, IP allow-listing, SCIM provisioning and dedicated support with an SLA. The repository’s licence file says files marked “@license Enterprise” need a valid Enterprise subscription for production use.
- Odoo. The One App Free plan includes one app with unlimited users on Odoo Online. Standard lists $31.10 per user a month and Custom $61.00, each shown beside a higher figure ($38.90 and $76.20) that the page text does not label as yearly or monthly. Odoo Online hosting is described as free with unmetered storage up to 100 GB. Odoo’s editions page says “Odoo Community (open-source) and Odoo Enterprise (licensed)”, but the pages we read do not say which CRM features are Enterprise only, so confirm that before you commit. Our Odoo CRM free answer covers the plan structure.
- vtiger. The open source edition is on-premise and, in vtiger’s words, “not the same as a cloud-free edition.” The cloud’s free plan, One Pilot, allows up to 10 users, 3,000 records and 3 GB. The next plan, One Growth, is priced at INR 840 per user a month billed annually, with up to 15 users and 100,000 records. Professional is INR 2,100, Enterprise INR 2,940 and AI INR 3,500. These are rupee prices on vtiger’s page for this region; other regions may differ.
What does a managed open source CRM cost for 10 users?
Less than SugarCRM and more than most people expect from “free”, but still below the large vendors. Here is the arithmetic for the plans that quote a per-user price in dollars, annual cost for 10 users.
SuiteCRM’s managed hosting is a flat 600 pounds a year, with Quick Start implementation from 2,520 pounds on top, so the first year is a different shape of cost from a per-seat plan. For per-seat comparison with closed CRMs, our CRM pricing comparison lists $14 to $39 a seat for entry and second tiers at Zoho, Pipedrive and monday CRM.
Is SugarCRM open source anymore?
No. The repository for its old open source edition (sugarcrm/sugarcrm_dev) says Community Edition is no longer developed, is based on the Sugar 6.x codebase, and is “a fully unsupported project”, with bug fixes, patches and artifacts removed. Its last push was September 27, 2018. The company now goes by SugarAI, and its pricing page lists Standard+ at $68, Advanced+ at $98 and Premier+ at $155 per user per month billed annually, plus a $20 Sugar Connect+ add-on. The page mentions no open source, community or free edition.
If you are searching for “SugarCRM open source” or “SugarCRM free version”, the practical answer is that a free edition exists only as unsupported legacy code. For a maintained open source alternative, the two nearest are SuiteCRM and EspoCRM above, but we did not verify any claim about shared ancestry or compatibility.
What are the hidden costs of a free CRM?
Four, in the order they usually appear:
- Hosting. A server or a managed plan. SuiteCRM’s managed hosting starts at 50 pounds a month; EspoCRM cloud at $15 per user a month.
- Security and updates. You apply patches. Repositories show frequent activity (all four active projects were pushed on October 22, 2026), which means regular updates to keep up with. Our CRM data migration security checklist covers the access side.
- Backups. EspoCRM cloud keeps daily backups for 7 days; self-hosted, they are yours to run and test.
- Extensions and integrations. EspoCRM extensions are paid when self-hosting, Twenty’s SSO sits behind the Organization plan, and any integration you want from a larger vendor’s marketplace you build or buy.
Support is the fifth: SuiteCRM’s Standard Support is 1,200 pounds for 10 hours.
Should you use an open source CRM or a hosted one?
Choose open source when you have someone to run it, a reason to control the data location or code, or a need to customize beyond what a hosted CRM allows. Choose hosted when you want the CRM to be someone else’s job. A decision shortcut:
| Your situation | Likely fit |
|---|---|
| Developer-led team that wants an API-first, modern interface | Twenty |
| Small team that wants a classic CRM and a vendor to host it | EspoCRM cloud or SuiteCRM managed hosting |
| Business that wants CRM plus accounting, inventory and projects in one suite | Odoo |
| Team that wants an on-premise, module-rich classic CRM | vtiger open source |
| Sales team with no technical owner | A hosted CRM; see how to choose a CRM |
A starting point built from the vendor statements above, not a ranking.
When to get help
aibrevo implements Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, monday.com, Airtable and GoHighLevel. Open source CRMs such as SuiteCRM, EspoCRM, vtiger, Odoo and Twenty are not on that list, so any work on them would be quoted per project. The common request is the other direction: moving off a self-hosted CRM into one of the eight, which means mapping fields, cleaning the export and checking import limits on the destination. Book a short call or send a message with your record counts, and read the HubSpot and Zoho service pages if you are weighing a hosted target.
Sources
All checked Oct 22, 2026.
- GitHub, SuiteCRM/SuiteCRM and its v7.15.2 release: licence AGPL-3.0, release date, last push. SuiteCRM, pricing: hosting, implementation and support prices.
- GitHub, espocrm/espocrm, its 10.0.10 release and licence file: AGPL-3.0, release date. EspoCRM, pricing: cloud plans, storage, records, extensions.
- GitHub, twentyhq/twenty, licence file and v2.50.0 release: AGPL, MIT and Enterprise terms, release date. Twenty, pricing: cloud and enterprise prices.
- GitHub, odoo/odoo and its licence file: LGPL-3.0. Odoo, editions and pricing: Community and Enterprise labels, plan prices, hosting.
- vtiger, open source CRM, download page and pricing: licence, version 8.4.0, cloud plans.
- GitHub, sugarcrm/sugarcrm_dev: Community Edition no longer developed. SugarAI, pricing: plans and prices.