Personal CRM
Kept vs Monica
Monica is the open-source personal CRM: a web app you type into, on their servers or your own. Kept is a phone app you talk to, and the notes stay on the phone.
What Monica is
Monica calls itself the open-source personal CRM, and its line is "Remember the people you care about". Of everything on these pages it is the closest to Kept in purpose: it is about the people in your life rather than sales contacts, and it says so.
You store what is happening in someone’s life, how you know each other and their important dates, keep a history of meals, calls and trips, write journal entries, and set reminders. Fields are yours to define. Contacts come in by vCard or CSV import.
It has been open source since 2017 and can be self-hosted with Docker or a manual install, or used as a hosted subscription. It is a web application that works in a phone browser; native iOS and Android apps are planned for after version 3.
Side by side
Where the record comes from
Kept
You say it, out loud, in about nine seconds.
Monica
You type it in: contacts, notes, activities and journal entries, or a vCard or CSV import.
Filing
Kept
Kept works out who you mentioned and files each detail on their page, for you to confirm.
Monica
You choose the contact and the field. Custom fields are yours to define.
Where it lives
Kept
On your phone. Notes are not synced to our servers.
Monica
Their hosted service, or a server you run yourself.
Platforms
Kept
Android today. iPhone in App Store review.
Monica
Web, usable in a phone browser. Native apps are planned for after v3.
Open source
Kept
No.
Monica
Yes, since 2017, and self-hostable.
What the AI does
Kept
Transcribes and files. It never writes anything you send.
Monica
Nothing on its own initiative. v3 is to expose an MCP server so you can point your own assistant at your data.
Monica details checked on 3 October 2026 against their own site. Everything on this page about the other product was read off their own site on the date shown. We don’t list prices, because they change and a stale one would be misleading.
The difference that matters
Monica and Kept want the same outcome, and differ on the moment of capture. Monica assumes you will sit down and enter it. Kept assumes you won’t, and is built for the doorway instead: you talk for a few seconds on the way out and the filing is done for you.
That sounds like a convenience and it is the whole question. The lifelogging research found that what gets recorded is decided by how much the recording costs at the moment it has to happen, and that an archive is only worth what brings it back. A form is a higher bar than a sentence said out loud.
The second difference is where the data sits. Monica gives you two honest options, their servers or yours. Kept has one: the phone. There is no server copy of your notes to host, secure or migrate, and also none to open from a laptop.
Where Monica beats Kept
If you want to own the whole system, Monica is the only product here that lets you: the code is open, you can run it on your own machine, and nothing is sent to a model unless you set that up yourself. Kept is closed source and sends your audio out for transcription and the text of a note out for filing. Monica also works on a desktop with a keyboard, which Kept does not.
Don’t pick Kept if: You want open source, self-hosting, custom fields or a desktop interface, or you would rather type a careful record than say a quick one.
Why we built it this way
The design choices above aren’t preferences. Each one traces to published research, and each of these has its own page with the finding, the method and what it doesn’t show.
Recording everything produced huge archives and nothing useful
Sellen & Whittaker (2010) · Communications of the ACM
Deciding when and where you’ll do something roughly doubles the odds you do it
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006) · Implementation intentions and goal achievement
People with amnesia make almost no new close friends
Davidson et al. (2012) · Frontiers in Psychology
Other comparisons
- Kept vs Clay (now Mesh)Personal CRM
- Kept vs DexPersonal CRM
- Kept vs a Notion personal CRM templateManual template
- Kept vs RosebudAI journal
- Kept vs ReflectionAI journal
- Kept vs Day OneJournal
- Kept vs Apple NotesNotes app
- Kept vs ColevaRelationship journal
- Kept the app vs Kept Collection the journalPaper keepsake journal
If Kept is the one you want
Nine seconds of talking after you see someone. Kept files it against the right person and hands it back the day before it matters. Free for 14 days, no card needed.