Raisebook: the free, open-source investor CRM for founders

Raisebook is a free, open-source investor CRM (fundraising CRM) for startup founders. It tracks every investor through every round (stages, fit, follow-ups, meetings, notes and commitments) and ships an MCP server, so Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client can work the pipeline with you.

Start your raise at raisebook.org, free, or self-host it. Licensed under AGPL-3.0. Pricing · Docs · Compare · FAQ · llms.txt

Who it's for

Founders raising a pre-seed, seed or Series A round who have outgrown the investor spreadsheet: solo founders and small founding teams who want an investor pipeline with follow-ups and meetings, do not want to pay per seat, and do not want their investor list pooled into someone else's database. It also suits founders who work with an AI coding agent and want it to log calls and set follow-ups for them.

It is not an investor database (you bring your list), it never emails investors for you, and it is built for founders raising money, not for VC firms managing deal flow.

Free forever

Raisebook costs $0, and that will not change.

• There is no paid tier, no seat price and no feature behind a paywall. Every workspace gets every feature, with the same limits.
• The maintainer pays the running costs today. Donations, once they open, will be optional; they will pay for hosting and never buy features, priority or a different deal on your data.
• The code is AGPL-3.0, so anyone who runs a modified copy as a service has to publish their changes. A hosted fork cannot quietly turn into a closed, paid product.

The privacy promise

1. Your data is yours. A workspace is visible only to its members and to the API keys its owners create.
2. We never pool, sell, rent or mine it. Raisebook never builds an investor database from your data and never shows one workspace's data to another.
3. No ads, no trackers. No analytics scripts, pixels or third-party cookies. Fonts are served by Raisebook.
4. No AI on your data unless you bring it. Raisebook never runs or pays for AI on its own. Investor research runs only when you press a button, on your own OpenRouter key, and sends only the investor's name, firm and links, your company profile and round terms. Agents you connect use your key, and every action they take is on the timeline.
5. Leave any time. Export everything as CSV and JSON. Delete your workspace or account permanently, effective immediately.
6. Check our work. Raisebook is open source under AGPL-3.0, including the code that handles your data.

The details are on raisebook.org/privacy.

What it does

• Rounds with a target, instrument (SAFE, priced, convertible note), cap or pre-money, target close date, and stages you can rename, recolor and reorder.
• A pipeline page with three views: Triage to decide on new investors one at a time (number keys, undo), a kanban Board you can drag (or drive with Alt+← / Alt+→), and a sortable, filterable Table. Above them, a ledger strip with committed against target, the funnel and due follow-ups; beside them, an investor sheet with the full timeline.
• Investor contacts shared across rounds, with dedupe on email, LinkedIn, name + firm and (when it is unambiguous) the name alone. An agent adding someone you already have fills in what is missing instead of creating a duplicate or dropping its notes.
• An append-only timeline that records who did what, people and agents alike. Agent actions are marked in their own color, with the agent's name and model.
• Co-founders and advisors as owners, editors and viewers. Sign in with an emailed link or with Google.
• Meetings: schedule them from an investor's file (it moves them to Meeting), see today's on Today and on board cards, record the outcome and next step when they are done, and subscribe to all of them from Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar with a private feed URL.
• Linked cards: link two or more investors who work the deal as one team (partners at the same fund), and see the team on their cards and files.
• A sample workspace with fictional investors, to try everything before your own data.
• CSV import with column mapping, preview and dedupe. CSV and JSON export of a round, all investors or the whole workspace. Hard delete of anything, at any time.
• Investor research: on demand and on your own OpenRouter key, a short dossier per investor (recent deals, thesis, a way in, an opener, a risk) where every fact cites a source, with a monthly spend limit per workspace and no markup. Agents can save their own research with save_dossier.
• A phone layout for the pipeline, board and triage.
• A REST API under /v1 and an MCP server at /mcp with 23 tools, 28 with research enabled (no deletes).

Limits per workspace, the same for everyone: 50 rounds, 20,000 investors, 20 members, 20 API keys.

How it compares

From each product's public pricing page on 2026-10-15; sources and details on raisebook.org/compare.

	Lowest paid price	Free plan	Open source	MCP server
Raisebook	$0, no paid tier	Everything: 50 rounds, 20,000 investors, 20 members	Yes (AGPL-3.0)	Yes, free plan
Foundersuite	$745/yr (Silver)	Basic: 75 investors per pipeline	No	Not listed
Visible	$59/mo (Base, annual)	Starter: 2 pipelines, 100 update recipients	No	Yes
Affinity	$2,000/user/yr	None listed	No	Not checked
Attio	$35/seat/mo (Plus, annual)	Up to 3 seats	No	Yes
folk	$24/member/mo (annual)	14-day trial	No	Yes

Foundersuite includes an investor database, Visible adds investor updates and data rooms, Affinity is built for VC firms, and Attio and folk are general CRMs. Raisebook does the investor pipeline only, free and open source.

Connect your agent (MCP quickstart)

Create a key in Settings → Connect an agent (it is shown once), then:

claude mcp add --transport http raisebook \
  https://api.raisebook.org/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer rb_live_XXXX" \
  --header "X-Agent-Name: claude-code"

Keep the default (local) scope or use --scope user. Never use --scope project with a literal key: that writes it to a shared .mcp.json. An optional --header "X-Agent-Model: <model>" shows the model next to the agent's name on the timeline.

Codex (~/.codex/config.toml):

[mcp_servers.raisebook]
url = "https://api.raisebook.org/mcp"
bearer_token_env_var = "RAISEBOOK_API_KEY"
http_headers = { "X-Agent-Name" = "codex" }

Then export RAISEBOOK_API_KEY=rb_live_… in the shell that starts Codex.

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json; start Cursor from a terminal so it sees RAISEBOOK_API_KEY):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "raisebook": {
      "url": "https://api.raisebook.org/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:RAISEBOOK_API_KEY}",
        "X-Agent-Name": "cursor"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask: "What follow-ups are due this week in Seed?" or "Add these five investors from my notes to Seed and remind me Friday." The agent starts with get_workspace, can create a round (create_round), add up to 50 investors at once (add_investors) and set follow-ups in the same call. A read-only key only sees the read tools. Setup for other clients and the full tool reference: raisebook.org/docs/mcp.

Quick start (development)

You need Python 3.12 with uv, Node 20.9+, and Postgres 17 on localhost with raisebook_dev and raisebook_test databases (extensions citext and pg_trgm).

# API and MCP server on :8000
cd backend
uv sync
RAISEBOOK_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://localhost/raisebook_dev uv run alembic upgrade head
RAISEBOOK_ENV=dev uv run uvicorn --factory raisebook.main:create_app --reload

# Web app on :3000 (another terminal)
cd web
npm ci
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000/signin and request a link. In development the "check your inbox" page shows the link, so you do not need email. For a workspace full of fictional investors:

cd backend && uv run rbctl seed-demo --email [email protected]

Checks:

cd backend && uv run pytest -q && uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check . && uv run mypy raisebook
cd web && npm run lint && npm run typecheck && npm run build

Self-hosting

One Docker Compose file runs Postgres, the API, the web app and Caddy for TLS:

cp deploy/.env.example deploy/.env   # set your hosts and secrets
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d --build

Step by step: raisebook.org/docs/self-hosting, docs/DEPLOY.md and the trust boundaries in deploy/README.md: never expose the API port directly with FORWARDED_ALLOW_IPS=*, and keep every subdomain of your cookie domain first-party. Run rbctl housekeeping daily; it deletes expired sign-in requests, sessions and dead invites.

Repository

Path	What
backend/	FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2 (async), Alembic, Postgres 17. REST under /v1, MCP at /mcp.
web/	Next.js 15, React 19, Tailwind v4. The app, the site and the docs.
deploy/	Dockerfiles, docker-compose.yml, Caddyfile, backup script.
docs/SPEC.md	The product and engineering spec.
design/SYSTEM.md	The design system.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first, and SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability. Everyone taking part follows the Code of Conduct.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Zhirayr Gumruyan and Raisebook contributors.

Raisebook is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See LICENSE for the full text.