Dex alternative that reads your Telegram
Dex is one of the best known personal CRMs. It pulls your contacts in from LinkedIn, email, your calendar, iMessage and WhatsApp, keeps their job titles current and reminds you to keep in touch, on every platform including phones. It does not read Telegram. Tracebrain is a personal CRM that builds itself from your conversations, in every app you have them: one living Markdown profile per person, with who they are, what was promised, birthdays and contacts. This page compares the two, with the date every fact was checked, and says when Dex is the better choice.
Both are tools for one person. For a company, the same memory is shared by the whole team: see company memory.
The comparison
Checked on 17 October 2026 against Dex's own pricing, integrations and help pages. We have not run a trial of Dex for this page, so everything about Dex below is what Dex says about itself. Prices change; read getdex.com/pricing before you decide.
| Dex | Tracebrain | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads Telegram | No | Yes, your one-to-one history, as far back as you choose |
| Contacts from one-to-one chats and groups of up to five; keeps the latest message of each chat as a snippet; does not import chat history | Reads the messages themselves; about three months at the scan, then everything new | |
| iMessage | Yes, on a Mac, in beta | Not yet: planned |
| Yes: connections, title changes, the last message | Not yet: next | |
| Email and calendar | Yes: Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar | Email yes: Gmail, Outlook, IMAP; calendar planned |
| Notes from what was said | A nightly summary per contact on the timeline, from WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn and Instagram, which you can turn off | A profile per person, one nightly note for the whole day, and tasks from the promises in it |
| Keep-in-touch reminders | Yes | No reconnect schedule; birthdays and promises from your chats |
| Job change alerts | Yes, from LinkedIn | No |
| Apps | Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Chrome extension | Web app you can add to your home screen |
| MCP for your AI assistant | Yes: contacts, notes, reminders, tags | Yes: people, days, tasks and projects |
| Export | Three CSV files: contacts, timeline, network updates | The whole vault as Markdown, any time |
| Price billed monthly | Premium $20 a month; Professional $34 | $20 a month |
| Price billed yearly | Premium $12 a month; Professional $20 | No yearly plan |
| Trial | 6 days, card required | 7 days, card required |
Dex wins on the number of places it reads, on phone and desktop apps, on LinkedIn, on reminders and on price if you pay for a year. Tracebrain wins on Telegram, on reading whole conversations rather than their last line, and on handing you the result as Markdown files.
The last message, or the whole conversation
Dex's WhatsApp help page is clear about what it keeps: the contact, the date of your last message and a short snippet of that message. It does not import your chat history, and there is no inbox for it inside Dex. LinkedIn works the same way: the last message and its date. On top of that, Dex says it can summarise your conversations each night and put the summary on each contact's timeline, with a morning email of what it wrote.
Tracebrain reads the conversation itself, both directions, and it starts from the history you choose rather than from the day you connect. What it writes is organised by what you will need later, not by date. Say a supplier tells you on Telegram that prices go up on the first of the month, and you promise to send the signed order by Friday. Tracebrain's profile of the supplier says the prices are going up on the first and that you owe the signed order by Friday, and the order goes on your task list with its day. Overnight, the day's chats from both messengers become one note: what was decided, what you promised, what was promised to you, what you paid. When the order is sent, the task is closed from the chat that settles it.
Both approaches are honest choices. Dex reads more channels a little. Tracebrain reads fewer channels completely.
Telegram
No personal CRM we checked reads Telegram, and Dex is no exception: it is not among the integrations on Dex's own site. For people whose work and friendships run through Telegram, that leaves the main inbox out of the CRM.
Tracebrain reads Telegram over your own login, the same kind of session a desktop app uses, read-only, and you can end it from Telegram's Settings, Devices at any time. The details are on the Telegram connector page, and WhatsApp's are on the WhatsApp connector page. Groups are read in both messengers, since 19 October 2026, if you choose them in the setup wizard; channels are not. Dex reads WhatsApp groups of up to five people.
Price
Billed monthly, Dex Premium and Tracebrain cost the same: $20 a month. Dex is cheaper if you commit for a year, at $12 a month, and Tracebrain has no yearly plan. Dex's Professional plan, $34 a month or $20 billed yearly, adds mail merge, Outlook, more LinkedIn connections and API access. Neither has a free plan. The trials differ by a day: six days for Dex, seven for Tracebrain, and both take a card at the start. Tracebrain's pricing page has the details and the refund terms.
Choose Dex if
- Your network lives on LinkedIn, email and your calendar more than in Telegram.
- You want reminders to keep in touch, and alerts when someone changes jobs.
- You want native apps on your phone and your desktop.
- iMessage matters to you and you use a Mac.
- You would rather pay yearly, at $12 a month.
- A last-message snippet and a short nightly summary per contact are enough, and you write the rest of the notes yourself.
Choose Tracebrain if
- Telegram is where most of your conversations happen.
- You keep forgetting what was promised in chats, in both directions.
- You want one note for the whole day and a task list written from what was said, not only notes on each contact.
- You want the result as Markdown files you can open in Obsidian and take with you.
- You are happy to use a web app on your phone.
Using both, or moving from Dex
Tracebrain does not import a contact list; it builds its people from your conversations, so a new account starts by reading the Telegram and WhatsApp history you choose. Nothing has to be moved out of Dex first. The two can run side by side: Dex for LinkedIn, email, the calendar and reminders, Tracebrain for what was said in Telegram and WhatsApp. Both connect to an AI assistant over MCP, so one assistant can ask both. If you also weighed Mesh, the former Clay, the Mesh comparison uses the same table.