Head-to-head
Monica vs Dex
Two rivals, compared by somebody who sells a third tool — and says so on the page.
Short answer
This is not a comparison of two similar tools but of two opposite answers. Monica is open source, self-hosted, and costs you almost nothing but time — in exchange you maintain everything by hand. Dex costs $12 a month and largely maintains itself, in exchange your contacts run through somebody else's servers. Choose by which you have more of: time or money.
Where they differ
| Dimension | Monica | Dex |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | You. AGPL-licensed, a PHP/Laravel app on your own server. A hosted cloud edition also exists. | Dex. Hosted, with no self-hosting option. |
| Data upkeep | Entirely manual. No LinkedIn connection, no automatic capture, no fast contact capture. | Largely automatic: LinkedIn sync, job-change alerts, calendar and email integration, browser extension. |
| 3-year cost | Self-hosted about €30 (a typical $1/month VPS). Cloud about €270. | Premium $12/month, about €430 over three years. |
| Who can read it | Only you, if you self-host. That is the hardest data commitment in the category. | Dex, plus the accounts you grant standing access to. |
| Effort to start | Standing up a server, updating it, backing it up. If you cannot already do that, this costs you a weekend. | Sign up, connect accounts, done. |
| Interface | Functional but visibly older than the rest of the field. | Modern, built around working a list. |
As of 2026-08-06
Pick Monica if…
…data custody is not a preference for you but a condition, and you can run a server or want to learn. Monica is the only serious option here where genuinely nobody but you has access — open source under AGPL, around since 2017, and free forever when self-hosted. The price is manual work: every contact and every note comes from you. If your circle is private and modest, that is not a steep price. For a professional network of hundreds it is.
Pick Dex if…
…you know you will not maintain anything by hand. That is the most common reason a personal CRM is empty after six weeks, and Monica is defenceless against exactly that failure. Dex keeps the address book current without you touching it: LinkedIn sync, job-change alerts, calendar entries logged as interactions. If your network is professional and large, that is not a convenience but the precondition for the tool still being used a year from now.
And where do we sit?
Between the two, closer to Monica. We share the data position — local rather than on a server a vendor can read — but without you having to run a server. We do not have Dex-style automatic capture, and plan it only for the local calendar. If you want Monica's stance without a weekend of Linux, we are the fit.
Common questions
- Is Monica really free?
- The self-hosted edition, yes — the software costs nothing and you only pay for the server, typically around a dollar a month. The hosted cloud edition is about $9 a month.
- Can Monica connect to LinkedIn?
- No. There is no LinkedIn integration and no fast contact capture; everything is typed in. That is precisely the difference this comparison turns on.