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Endearist vs Dextr
A fair, specific comparison — written so you'd be comfortable if a Dextr engineer read it.
Fairness pledge
Dextr is the competitor we agree with. It's local-first, it processes your data on your device, it backs up to your own iCloud rather than somebody's server, it doesn't sell anything to anyone, and it charges $1.99/month or $14.99/year for unlimited contacts — with a free tier that also has unlimited contacts. That is a better price than ours for the first four-and-a-half years, and we're not going to bury that. If you are on an iPhone, you want your relationship data to stay yours, and you'd rather not think about it again, Dextr is a genuinely excellent answer and you should consider it seriously. The honest case for us over Dextr is narrow and specific: you're not only on Apple hardware, you want a journal rather than a contact list, or you want a guarantee about what happens to the company that outlives the company.
Where does my data live with Dextr versus Endearist?
Dextr: on your device, backed up through your own iCloud account. Endearist: on your device, backed up through your own cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, WebDAV) or Endearist Cloud (EU-hosted) if you'd rather we handled it. On data location the two of us are the same answer; the difference is which devices count. Dextr's local store lives on iPhone and iPad. Ours also has to be on your Mac, your Windows laptop, your Linux desktop, and your Android phone — which is a harder sync problem and the reason we ship end-to-end encryption rather than leaning on one vendor's backup.
How does each tool access AI?
Dextr uses AI for contact organisation and its card scanner, on-device where it can be. Endearist ships nothing to a model by default: Magic Buttons run client-side, and if you bring your own key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) it stays on your device. If you'd rather not manage a key, Pro Cloud Light bundles ~250 EU-routed actions/month for €4.99/month, Pro Cloud ~600 actions plus voice-note transcription for €9.99/month. Neither of us is in the business of reading your notes to improve a model, which is the part that actually matters and which most of this category cannot say.
What do Dextr and Endearist cost over three years?
Dextr: free tier with unlimited contacts; paid at $1.99/month or $14.99/year. Over 3 years on the annual plan: ~€42. Endearist Pro Lifetime: €69 once. Dextr is the cheaper product over three years and stays cheaper until roughly year five, when the lifetime licence overtakes the subscription — assuming Dextr never raises its price, which is exactly the assumption a subscription asks you to make and a one-time purchase doesn't. Endearist Free: €0, capped at 25 contacts, which is stricter than Dextr's free tier.
What doesn't Endearist do?
We don't scan business cards, we don't do Dextr's mass-text-by-tag shortcut, and we don't have its social map. The textable-contacts feature in particular is a smart piece of design that we have no answer to — if you send the same message to fifteen people at Christmas, Dextr does that in one motion and we don't. We're also not on Apple Watch.
Feature matrix
Side-by-side.
| Feature | Endearist | Dextr |
|---|---|---|
| Local-first data storage | Yes — the primary copy sits on your device, not a server. | Yes — on-device processing, encrypted iCloud backup. Same answer as ours. |
| Mobile native apps (iOS / Android) | Native on iOS and Android (Flutter). | iOS and iPadOS only — no Android. The main reason to look elsewhere. |
| Desktop native apps | Yes — native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux. | No — iPhone and iPad are the whole product. |
| Backup independent of one vendor | Your choice: Google Drive, iCloud, WebDAV, or Endearist Cloud (EU). | iCloud. Fine if you're staying on Apple; a lock-in if you ever aren't. |
| Business-card scanning | No — not in v1. | Yes — built in. |
| Mass message by tag | No — message drafting is one person at a time. | Yes — textable contacts, personalised, by tag or relationship type. Smart feature. |
| Relationship map / network visual | No — circles and cadence lists, no graph view. | Yes — a visual social map of your network. |
| Cadence reminders | Per person, set by you; gentle, no streaks. | Smart interval reminders. Comparable. |
| Journal / reflection | A real journal surface: built in, with weekly ritual and appreciation prompts. | Interaction logs per contact — a record of what happened, not a place to reflect. |
| Relationship depth (how-we-met, pets) | Deep fields: how-we-met, pets, custom pronouns, life events, debts, attachments. | Tags, events, and relationship types — broader than an address book, shallower than ours. |
| Plain-Markdown export | Plain Markdown included — readable in any editor, no app needed. | Export available; not Markdown. Verify the format before you rely on it. |
| Pricing | 25 contacts free. Then Pro Lifetime €69 once, Pro Cloud Light €4.99/mo, or Pro Cloud €9.99/mo. | Unlimited contacts free. Paid $1.99/mo or $14.99/yr — cheaper than us for ~4.5 years. |
| Open source code | Pledged source release if we ever shut down or get acquired. | No — proprietary, no published shutdown pledge. |
When to pick Dextr
When is Dextr the better choice?
Pick Dextr if your digital life is entirely Apple and you want the local-first promise without paying much for it. It is cheaper than us over any realistic horizon shorter than five years, its free tier is more generous than ours, the card scanner and the mass-text-by-tag shortcut are features we don't have, and its privacy story is one we'd sign. For a lot of people reading this, that combination ends the search, and we'd rather you found the right tool than the one that pays us. Choose us instead if any of three things is true: you own hardware that isn't Apple, and want the same data on all of it; you want a journal — somewhere to write about the relationship, not just log that it happened; or you want a written commitment about what becomes of your data if the company is acquired or shuts down. Dextr hasn't published one. After Clay was bought and rebranded, we stopped treating that as a hypothetical.
Switching
How do I switch from Dextr to Endearist?
If you're on Dextr and want to switch: export from Dextr (Settings → Export) and import the resulting file into Endearist via Settings → Import — vCard and CSV both work, and names, phone numbers, emails, tags, and relationship types carry over. Check the export before you delete anything: interaction logs are the part most likely to come out thin, and they're the part you can't reconstruct. If you're moving because you bought a non-Apple device rather than because you dislike Dextr, there's no rush — run both for a month, keep Dextr as the iPhone surface, and see whether the cross-device sync is actually worth the switch to you. We'd rather you tested that than took our word for it.
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Prices and positioning verified 2026-08-06.
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