Contrack vs Monica

Contrack vs Monica

Compared in October 2026: Contrack 2.0.0 and Monica 4.1.2.

Monica is one of the longest-running open-source personal CRMs. It pioneered self-hosted relationship management for friends and family, with fields for birthdays, gift ideas, family members and journal entries.

Contrack covers that same personal ground, including friends, family, birthdays, anniversaries, gift ideas, how you met, and shared household servers, while extending to your wider personal and professional network with a single-file SQLite deployment, automatic connectors, local hybrid search, a world map and a built-in MCP server.

At a glance

Area	Contrack 2.0.0	Monica 4.1.2
Stack and deployment	1 Node container and 1 SQLite file (curator.db)	PHP (Laravel), MySQL or MariaDB, plus Redis and cron for queues
Backup	One SQLite snapshot (VACUUM INTO), automatic daily backups, or one click in Settings → Backups	Database dump (mysqldump) plus application storage directory
Personal context	Friends, family, birthdays, anniversaries, custom dates, gift ideas in notes, tags, lists, @mentions	Friends, family, birthdays, gift ideas, pets, debts, journal
Professional context	Role, company, experience, education, cadence, relationship score, web research and pre-meeting briefs	Basic work fields; built primarily around family and close friends
Getting data in	Google Contacts, Gmail, Google Calendar, IMAP, ICS, vCard/CSV/JSON import, and Add from text	vCard/CSV import, CardDAV and CalDAV
Logging interactions	One composer for notes, calls, meetings and emails, plus automatic email and calendar sync	Manual logging through forms for activities, calls and notes
Keeping up	Opt-in tracking per person, custom cadence, Pulse morning page, overdue and upcoming milestones	Per-contact reminders and stay-in-touch intervals
Search	Local hybrid search (FTS5 + sqlite-vec embeddings + local cross-encoder reranker) and Notes mode	SQL keyword search across contact fields
Map	Built-in MapLibre world map with clustering, box/lasso selection, saved views and custom pin placement	None built in
AI and web enrichment	Optional provider-backed or SearXNG web research with cited sources, plus Ask Contrack	None
MCP server	Built in at /api/mcp (18 tools, personal tokens and OAuth 2.1)	None
Multi-user / household	Multiple isolated accounts on one server, with passkeys, password and magic-link sign-in	Multiple users per instance (shared or separate accounts)

Single-file SQLite vs PHP, MySQL and Redis

Running a personal tool at home or on a small VPS should not require maintaining a database server.

• Monica is a Laravel application that requires PHP, a MySQL or MariaDB server, a web server, and (for background jobs and reminders) Redis and a scheduled cron runner. Upgrading or moving hosts means coordinating database migrations and dumps across containers.
• Contrack runs as a single Node.js process over one SQLite file in WAL mode, with vector search (sqlite-vec) and full-text search (FTS5) compiled in. One docker compose up -d starts the entire stack. Backups run automatically every day as self-contained SQLite files that you can copy, verify or download from the browser (see Self-hosting).

Automated connectors and Smart Paste vs manual logging

The hardest part of any personal CRM is keeping it up to date after the first weekend.

• Monica relies mostly on manual data entry. You open a contact, fill out forms for a call or an activity, and update fields by hand as people move cities or change jobs.
• Contrack combines fast manual capture with automatic sync:
  • Connectors sync Google Contacts, Gmail, Google Calendar, any IMAP mailbox and any ICS calendar feed in the background, placing emails and meetings straight onto the matching contact's timeline (see Import, sync and export).
  • Add from text (Smart Paste) takes a pasted note, email signature, or bio, such as "Met at Sarah's wedding, loves natural wine, kids are Leo and Maya, catch up every quarter" or "Partner at Sequoia, follow up next Tuesday on seed round", and extracts the person's fields, tags, custom facts and dated past interactions in one step.
  • Contact enrichment searches the web for a person, fills in missing work history, education, location and links, and cites every source URL so you can verify or revert it with Not this person (see AI and research).
  • Duplicates are caught on import and by background scans that match nicknames, phonetic spellings, shared emails or phones, and local embeddings (see Duplicates).

Local hybrid search and MCP vs static fields

When you remember a detail about someone six months later, you rarely remember which field you typed it into.

• Monica searches contact names and structured fields with standard database queries.
• Contrack indexes every contact, note, interaction and custom fact locally using SQLite FTS5 and a local 384-dimension embedding model (bge-small-en-v1.5), then reranks candidates with a local cross-encoder (ms-marco-MiniLM-L-6-v2). Both models run on CPU inside the container with no API key:
  • Ask "Who do I know in Amsterdam?", "wine", "seed round", or switch to Notes mode and ask "Who mentioned their kids last summer?" to find the exact note and passage (see Search and Ask Contrack).
  • Connect Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor or any Model Context Protocol client to /api/mcp so your assistant can search your network, read a timeline or log a note with a follow-up while respecting read-only or read-write access (see MCP server).

Personal and professional in one place

Many people keep two separate systems: a personal address book for friends and family, and a spreadsheet or work tool for colleagues, clients and investors. Contrack is designed so both live comfortably together:

• Dates and milestones. Record a contact's Birthday, Anniversary or any custom date (such as a wedding or work anniversary) with or without a year. Pulse surfaces upcoming milestones 7 and 14 days ahead so you have time to send a note or pick up a gift.
• Selective tracking. You can hold 2,000 contacts from your phone and email without noise, and turn on Track only for the 50 friends, family members and collaborators you actively want to keep up with.
• Connected people. Mentioning @Sarah Chen inside a note on her partner's page links both timelines and lists them under Connected people on each contact page (see Contacts).
• Household and team accounts. A single self-hosted instance can host separate accounts for family members or teammates, where each account's contacts, notes and connectors stay completely isolated in the database (see Accounts and sign-in).

When Monica might still fit better

Monica has dedicated tables for a few specific life-logging items that Contrack models as notes, tags or custom attributes instead:

• Dedicated ledgers for debts ("owes me $20") and pets as separate database entities (in Contrack, these live in notes or Other details attributes).
• Built-in CardDAV server endpoints for syncing contacts back out to a phone's native address book (Contrack syncs with Google Contacts and imports or exports vCard 3.0 and 4.0 files).

Moving from Monica to Contrack

1. In Monica, open Settings → Export and export your contacts as a vCard (.vcf) file.
2. In Contrack, open Settings → Import (or press ⌘K and type Import), drop the .vcf file onto the page, and let the duplicate check merge any overlapping entries.
3. Open Pulse or Network, pick the people you want to stay in touch with, and click Track to set a monthly, quarterly or custom cadence.