The best Clay alternative: a private, no-AI personal CRM
Looking for a Clay (clay.earth) alternative? Elos is an open-source personal CRM that doesn't read your inbox or social feeds — no AI, end-to-end encrypted notes, and you can self-host it. A calmer, more private way to keep in touch.
Clay is a beautiful personal CRM that leans hard on automation: it plugs into your email, calendar and social accounts, then uses AI to enrich and surface contacts. That convenience has a cost — you hand a lot of your relationship data to a closed, AI-driven service. Elos takes the opposite stance. It's open source, it never reads your inbox or trains AI on your contacts, and your notes are end-to-end encrypted. You do the reaching out; Elos just makes sure you remember.
No AI, no inbox scraping
Clay's magic comes from AI reading your email and social feeds. Elos doesn't connect to or read any of that — you add what you want, and nothing is analysed by a model.
Open source vs a closed platform
Clay is proprietary; you have to trust it. Elos is 100% open source (AGPL-3.0), so the privacy claims are auditable and you can self-host.
End-to-end encrypted notes
Your private notes are encrypted in your browser — not even the Elos server can read them. Clay stores your enriched data on its servers.
Calm by design
No AI feed deciding who you should talk to. Elos reminds you about birthdays and people going cold, then gets out of the way.
Speaks your language
Elos is fully translated in 10 languages with per-language URLs — Clay is English-first.
How Elos compares
| Elos | Monica | Clay | Dex | Cloze | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open source (AGPL-3.0) | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| End-to-end encrypted notes | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| No AI reading your data | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Interface in 10 languages | ✓ | ~ | — | — | — |
| Log in without an email (Nostr) | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
Based on publicly available information; features change over time. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
Frequently asked questions
Is Elos a good alternative to Clay?
If you want a personal CRM that's private, open source and AI-free — one that doesn't read your inbox — yes. Clay is more automated and AI-driven; Elos is simpler and privacy-first.
Does Elos connect to my email and social accounts like Clay?
No, on purpose. Elos doesn't read your inbox or social feeds. You add the people and notes you care about; you can also import contacts from a .vcf file.
Is Elos free?
You can start free. Elos is open source, so you can also self-host it at no cost.