Personal CRMs
Dex alternatives in 2026
Dex is the most agent-forward personal CRM here: a contact timeline with keep-in-touch reminders, plus 47 MCP tools, a ChatGPT app, a CLI and a public API.
The short answer
Buy Dex if you want a mature product this afternoon and you are happy for an assistant to write straight into it. Buy Wend if the writing should be previewed, corrected and approved first, and if a fact should still name its source a year later.
Best for
People who want a proven personal CRM today and are comfortable letting an assistant write to it directly.
Wend's difference
A private graph your assistant can read, with sources under facts and approval before writes.
Check next
Pricing, data location, and the dated comparison rows below.
Wend, measured
92
people from one WhatsApp read, before you grant a single permission.
0.63s
to read 69,000 messages and find the people in them. No model call.
2.4s
for one extraction on the Mac itself, at no cost.
Measured on a real Mac running macOS 26.4.1. On-device extraction needs Apple silicon with Apple Intelligence turned on.
Why people look for Dex alternatives
All 47 MCP tools commit straight to your data. A scan of every published schema on 2026-08-06 found no provenance, propose, audit or approve language, and two tools are annotated irreversible.
Their calendar tools will modify events Dex did not create.
LinkedIn sync runs on their servers. Their privacy policy states they retain credentials or tokens for accounts without OAuth, so your session sits on their infrastructure.
The LinkedIn cap is a freshness cap: past 2,500 connections on Premium or 9,000 on Professional, your oldest contacts stop updating, and there is no higher tier.
There has been no free plan since March 2023, and their Android listing still collects one-star reviews about it.
Side by side
| Dimension | Dex | Wend |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | People who want a proven personal CRM today and are comfortable letting an assistant write to it directly. | People who already live in an AI assistant and want it to know their network |
| Pricing | $12/mo billed annually, $20/mo monthly (as of August 2026) | Free forever, or $29/mo ($290/yr) for Wendy, flat at any network size |
| Free tier | None. A 7-day trial, then a wall | Yes. Free forever, no card, unlimited people. Per-person detail covers the last year; Wendy opens all of it |
| Where your data lives | Their servers | Your Mac, with a cloud copy your agents can reach. The receipts stay on the Mac |
| Agent access | 47 MCP tools, a ChatGPT app, a CLI and a REST API. Genuinely ahead on distribution | One MCP link for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini and the rest |
| What happens when the agent writes | It is written. Contact deletion and merges are annotated irreversible | It becomes a proposal. You see what it extracted, correct it in the conversation, then approve once |
| Where a fact came from | No provenance, sources, audit or conflict language in any published tool schema (checked 2026-08-06) | Every fact links to the email, page, file or message behind it, and the agent that proposed it is recorded |
| Local Mac data | iMessage and call history through a separate sync utility | WhatsApp, Messages, Apple Mail, Contacts and Calendar, read on the Mac itself. The import sends none of your messages to a model |
| Your day | Keep-in-touch reminders and a timeline per contact, which is what it was built for | Tasks, and a day laid out around the meetings in your Google Calendar. Every block says why it is there: due tomorrow, or for someone three weeks past your usual rhythm |
| You sign in inside their app and sync runs server-side every few days | Your archive export, or a browser extension that reads pages inside your own session. We tell you the ban risk of each | |
| Price | $12/mo annual, $20/mo monthly | Free forever, or $29/mo ($290/yr) for Wendy, flat at any network size |
Competitor facts and pricing last checked August 2026, from published vendor material. Verify on their site.
Where Wend fits in
Not another app to open. Wend is the memory underneath the assistant you already use: it builds itself out of what your Mac already holds, and every fact it keeps records where it came from. Once the people are in one place, Wend plans the day around them, which is the part a planner without the graph cannot do.
Concede the connector first, because Dex is ahead there: 47 MCP tools, a ChatGPT app, an agent skill, a CLI and a public API. Agent access is commodity, and a page telling you otherwise is a year out of date.
So the question moves to the write. Your assistant can now change the record of the people you know. What keeps that memory worth trusting is whether a person saw the claim before it landed, and whether the fact says where it came from afterwards.
Measured at the write, the difference is specific. A scan of every published Dex tool schema on 2026-08-06 found no provenance, propose, audit or approve language, and dex_delete_contacts and dex_merge_contacts are annotated irreversible.
The gap holds because it is a data model, not a feature. A fact carries a source only if the source was recorded the instant the fact was created, on every write path and every import. Ship the queue next quarter and the old facts still have nothing under them.
So Wend recorded the source on its first row and on every row since, and every agent write waits in a queue you approve. Every fact has a source, and you approved it.
Dex vs Wend: FAQ
Does Dex have an MCP server?
Yes, with 47 tools over Streamable HTTP and OAuth 2.1. It is the most complete agent surface any personal CRM ships, and they are ahead of the category on distribution. The difference is what a tool call does: every Dex tool commits directly, and dex_delete_contacts is annotated irreversible.
Does Dex have a free plan?
Not since March 2023. There is a 7-day trial with no card, then a paywall, and their terms state no refunds are provided. Wend has one: free forever, no card, unlimited people, with per-person detail covering the last year. Wendy is the paid plan, flat at any network size, and nothing is deleted for non-payment.
How much does Dex cost compared to Wend?
Dex is $12/mo billed annually and $20/mo monthly, with a Professional tier at $20 and $34 (checked 2026-08-06, verify at getdex.com). Wend is free forever for the memory, and Wendy is $29/mo or $290/yr, flat at any network size. Where the data lives differs more than the prices do.
Is Dex safe for my LinkedIn account?
Their own words are the fair answer. You sign in to LinkedIn inside their app, their privacy policy states they retain credentials or tokens for accounts without OAuth, and sync then runs server-side. We found no ban-risk disclosure in their published material as of 2026-08-06. Wend's default path is the archive export, which carries no account risk.
Does Wend schedule the reaching out, or only remind me?
It schedules. Wend reads your Google Calendar on the Mac, then lays the day out around the meetings already there: time for someone going quiet, preparation before a meeting that matters, promises still open. The plan is a preview you accept or discard, and any block can be dragged. It runs in Wend for Mac rather than through your agent.
Can I move my Dex contacts to Wend?
Yes. Export as CSV and import it. A parser reads the file with no model involved, so a two-thousand-person export lands exactly as written. Tasks arrive separately, from Apple Reminders, Obsidian, Todoist or Google Tasks.
Other alternatives you might compare
A digital brain for the people in your life.
It installs on your Mac, builds the graph out of what is already there, and answers from the AI you already use. Every fact keeps its source. $29 a month, flat at any network size.
Access is invite only right now.