Attio vs folk
Attio API
Best API-first CRM $44/folk
Lightweight relationship CRM $48/Attio if anything is going to call this CRM programmatically, because the API is on the free plan and the ceiling is 100 reads a second against folk's 10. folk if the job is relationships rather than records, and you want a tool a non-technical team will actually keep up to date. The honest split is that folk is a better address book and Attio is a better database, and most teams asking this question want the database. Price the seats either way: $44 a user against $48 a member is not the difference, the free tier is.
Where they actually differ
Every value comes from the same record that drives the CRM and sync APIs listing, so this table cannot disagree with the cards. Accented tags are data one provider returns and the other does not.
| Compare | Attio API | folk |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A CRM whose data model you define in code | Two rate policies at once, and the burst one binds first |
| Entry price | $44/user/mo | $48/member/mo |
| Unit cost | Not sold by the unit | Not sold by the unit |
| Billing model | Per seat Subscription Free tier | Per seat Subscription |
| Free tier | Free plan with full API access, 100 seat credits a month | Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly. |
| GTM motion covered | Sync | Sync |
| Data returned | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics |
| MCP server | Yes Part of the Attio developer platform | Yes https://developer.folk.app/mcp/overview |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks |
| Auth | Bearer token or OAuth 2.0 | API key as a bearer token in the Authorization header |
| Rate limits | 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API | 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, both per user, both enforced at once |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II | GDPR DPA |
| Best for | Best API-first CRM | Lightweight relationship CRM |
Pick each one when
Attio API
- Something will call this CRM on a schedule, and you want to prove it before paying.
- The objects you sell to are not contacts and deals, and you want to define them in code.
- Throughput matters: 100 reads a second against 10.
folk
- The people using it are not engineers and will abandon anything heavier.
- The job is tracking relationships and introductions rather than a pipeline.
- You want rate limits documented precisely enough to design a retry against.
There is no match rate to test here, so the bake-off is about shape and headroom. Build the object you actually sell on in each of them, using one free tier and one trial, write a thousand records through the API, and watch which one needs a custom object and which one needs a plan upgrade to take the write rate. An afternoon, and it surfaces the data-modeling work before it is in production rather than after.
What each one costs, tier by tier
Both publish a full rate card, so this comparison runs on numbers rather than on adjectives. Attio API lists 4 tiers and folk lists 3. Every figure is read off the vendor's own pricing page, and the pages they came from are listed at the foot of this one.
| The short version | Attio API | folk |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Plus, $44 | Standard, $24 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 3 |
| Free tier | Free plan with full API access, 100 seat credits a month | Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly. |
| Unit cost at entry | Not sold by the unit | Not sold by the unit |
The cheapest paid plan is rarely the plan you end up on, because what moves you up a tier is usually volume rather than a feature. The two rate cards below are what you are choosing between.
Attio API
Attio API publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $44 to Custom.
Free
- Full REST API access
- 100 seat credits a month
- 250 workspace credits a month
Plus
- 500 seat credits a month
- 1,500 workspace credits a month
- Billed monthly or annually
Pro
- 1,000 seat credits a month
- 10,000 workspace credits a month
- The tier Attio marks as popular
Enterprise
- 2,500 seat credits a month
- Custom workspace credits
folk
folk publishes 3 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $24 to From $80.
Standard
- 5,000+ integrations
- No API access on this tier
Premium
- API access starts here
- Custom objects, deals and email sequences
- More credits for enrichment, messages and AI fields
Enterprise
- Everything in Premium
- Full history of interactions
What Attio and folk cost at your volume
Put your own volume in. The model picks the cheapest published plan that covers it on each side, which is the question a rate card cannot answer and the one that decides the bill.
Attio API
Priced per seat, so the bill moves with headcount rather than with volume.
folk
Publishes an entry price and no ladder above it, so the figure below is a floor rather than a forecast.
Plans are read from each vendor's own pricing page and the model picks the cheapest one that covers you, so these are list prices before any discount you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount. folk publishes an entry price with no ladder above it, so the figure shown is the floor rather than your bill.
What a year costs at three volumes
The same plan-fit arithmetic as the model above, run out to a year, because an annual number is what a budget actually asks for. Attio API is priced per seat, so that column does not move with volume. The figure shown is 3 seats for a year.
| A year at | Attio API | folk |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $576 |
| 10,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $576 |
| 50,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $576 |
2 of the 2 providers here publish enough to be put in this table. These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, so they are the number before you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount by between a fifth and a half.
How this plays out once it is running
The pricing looks similar and behaves nothing alike. Attio is $44 a user a month, or $35 on annual billing, and its free plan carries the full REST API plus 100 seat credits a month. folk is $24 a member a month on Standard and $48 on Premium, and API access starts on Premium: the entry plan does not have it at all. So the comparison for anything programmatic is Attio free against folk at $48, and only then Attio at $44 against folk at $48.
The limits separate them further and in folk's favor on clarity. Attio publishes one flat ceiling, 100 requests a second for reads and 25 for writes across the whole API, which makes sizing a job a single division. folk publishes two policies enforced at once, 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, and says plainly that a request rejected by one still spends quota on the other. folk is ten times slower in practice and the only CRM here that tells you exactly how its burst policy will bite.
What each one is genuinely good at
Not a feature list. These are the things that make somebody keep paying after the novelty has worn off, which is a different question from what the marketing page leads with.
Attio API
The free plan carries the whole API
Full REST access on the free tier plus 100 seat credits and 250 workspace credits a month, so an integration can be built and proved before anything is bought. folk has no equivalent: its entry plan excludes the API, so the first line of code costs $48 a member a month. For a team evaluating rather than committed, that is the whole decision.
Objects and attributes are defined through the API
Attio treats the schema as yours. If your motion runs on a workspace, a property, a vehicle or a clinic rather than on a contact and a deal, you declare that object once in code instead of bending it into a custom field forever. folk added custom objects on Premium, but they are configured rather than programmed.
Ten times the throughput, on one simple number
100 requests a second for reads and 25 a second for writes, across the whole API, with no per-endpoint accounting and no daily pool. folk's burst policy caps you at 20 requests per 2 seconds, which is 10 a second. For a migration or a nightly sync that difference is hours.
folk
The rate limits are documented properly
Two policies, both stated: 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, applied per user so multiple keys share one budget. folk also says that a rejected request still consumes quota on the other policy, so retrying straight after a 429 eats your minute. Almost nobody in this directory documents the interaction between their own limits, and it is the thing that actually breaks integrations.
A hosted MCP server behind OAuth
folk publishes an MCP server with a one-click install for the common AI tools and an OAuth flow rather than a pasted key. Attio ships MCP as part of its developer platform too, so both sides are covered, but folk's is the more finished consumer experience of the two.
Non-technical people keep it up to date
This is not a developer argument and it decides more CRM migrations than any API does. folk is deliberately light, and a CRM a team actually updates beats a better-modeled one they avoid. If the people entering the data are founders and partners rather than an ops team, weigh that above everything on this page.
Where each one falls down
Every provider on this site has a case it handles badly, and the people who find out are the ones who bought it for that case. These are the ones worth knowing before you sign rather than after.
Attio API
It sources nothing, so it is never the whole answer
Attio stores what you bring it. Every row arrives from a provider you buy separately, which means choosing Attio moves a vendor rather than removing one, and the real comparison is Attio plus a data provider against whatever you run now.
Per-user pricing with no allowance to offset it
$44 a user a month or $35 annually, with nothing metered because there is nothing to meter. A team of ten is $440 a month before any data is bought. The free tier is generous and the step up from it is a full seat price for everybody.
No sequencer and no calling
Attio is a CRM and a developer platform. Sending lives somewhere else, so an Attio stack is at least two contracts and usually three.
folk
The API is not on the entry plan
Standard at $24 a member a month has no API access. Premium at $48 does. For a directory of APIs that doubles folk's real entry price, and it is the single most important thing to establish before the $24 figure persuades anybody of anything.
The burst policy is the binding one
600 requests a minute reads generously until you notice the second policy: 20 requests per 2 seconds, which is 10 a second sustained and means you can never actually spend 600 in a minute by bursting. folk says so explicitly and advises spreading evenly, which is good documentation of a real constraint rather than an absent one.
Lighter by design, which cuts both ways
Custom objects and deals start on Premium, and there is no sourcing, no sequencing and no reporting layer worth the name. folk is a relationship tool that grew a pipeline, and teams that need a system of record outgrow it in one direction and rarely in the other.
Using Attio and folk together
A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of them. On this pairing it often is not, and the arrangement below is what teams actually end up running.
These two are not usually run together, and when they are it is a handover rather than a split: folk as the personal relationship layer for founders and partners, Attio as the system the go-to-market team and the pipelines actually write to. The join is a nightly sync in one direction, and because Attio's free tier carries the full API, building that sync costs nothing on the Attio side.
If you are migrating between them, go in the direction the data model points. Moving folk to Attio is mostly a field-mapping exercise and Attio's 100 reads a second makes the extraction quick. Moving Attio to folk means flattening custom objects into something lighter, and folk's 10 requests a second makes the write side the slow half: at 50,000 records that is an afternoon rather than a coffee.
The one arrangement worth avoiding is paying for both at full seat price for the same people. Both charge per user with no usage allowance, so a team of ten on both is nearly $1,000 a month for one job. Pick the system of record first, then decide whether anybody genuinely needs the other one as well.
Attio or folk, for you
Two questions, answered from the same records as the rest of this page. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no result to email yourself.
Each answer leans one way. The recommendation appears here once you have picked at least two.
A tool like this can only weigh what is on the page. It does not know your segment, and the one test that does is the bake-off further down: real rows, cheapest entry on each side, spend divided by survivors.
Where an answer leans on a certification or an integration, it means that vendor publishes it on the pages this directory read, which is not the same as the other one lacking it. The sources are listed at the foot of the page.
Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it
The question that arrives late and expensively is not how good the data is, it is who is allowed to hold it. These are the fields each one returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes.
| Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attio API | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II | Not stated |
| folk | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | GDPR DPA | Not stated |
None of these states a redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first.
Two practical notes that apply to every provider on this page. A compliance badge describes the vendor, not your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And every one of these vendors runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs.
Moving between Attio and folk
Most readers of this page are already on one of these two. A swap is four hours of code and a month of watching, and the order below is the one that catches the expensive mistakes while they are still free.
Measure the thing you are about to lose
Run 500 rows you already have through Attio API and record the match rate, the fields that came back populated and the cost. Without that number a migration cannot be judged, because every provider looks cheaper per unit than the one you are paying for today.
Check the fields, not the field count
folk returns every field Attio API does, so nothing downstream has to change shape. Confirm the values rather than the keys: two providers can both return a mobile number and disagree about which one it is.
Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order
Attio API authenticates with bearer token or OAuth 2.0. folk uses API key as a bearer token in the Authorization header.
The limits are the part that bites later. Attio API rate: 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API.
folk rate: 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, both per user, both enforced at once. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second.
Run both for one billing cycle
Keep the old key live and route a slice of real traffic to the new one. A month is the shortest honest test, because credit expiry, rollover and the overage rate only show up at renewal and those are where the surprises live.
Cancel on the renewal date, not before
Credits on most of these plans do not survive a downgrade. Check what happens to the balance you have already paid for, and time the switch so you are not buying the same records twice.
The step people skip is the first one, and it is the only one that cannot be done after the fact. Once the old key is off you have nothing to compare the new match rate against, so a provider that is quietly worse on your segment looks like a provider that is fine.
Where each one sits in a working pipeline
Neither of these is bought in isolation. These are the worked stacks on this site that use one or both, with the cost run end to end.
The wider field for both
A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of these two. Often it is not, and the reason you are comparing them at all points somewhere else entirely: Attio alternatives both start from the reason people leave.
Related comparisons
The 26 providers behind every pairing here are in the main listing.
Pairings that share a side with this one: Attio vs Twenty, HubSpot vs folk and Attio vs Close.
And: Attio vs Salesforce and Attio vs Pipedrive. Every comparison in the directory is on the compare hub.
HubSpot API vs Attio API
A free CRM API against a CRM whose data model you define in code.
Compare them →Attio API vs Salesforce
Define the schema in code for free, or buy the deepest API in the category by the seat.
Compare them →Attio API vs Pipedrive
A schema you define in code against a pipeline that works out of the box.
Compare them →Comparison pages end at the rate card. Your list does not.
We run the bake-off on your actual data, pick the provider order, and build the pipeline behind it: waterfall routing, credit ceilings and the write-back that puts a verified contact in front of a rep the same day.
Worked with 300+ companies. A senior operator runs your account.
Attio and folk, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Attio or folk cheaper?
On the entry plan it is Attio, $44/user/mo against folk at $48/member/mo. The entry price is the comparable figure, because they do not meter the same thing.
Can I try Attio and folk for free?
Attio: Free plan with full API access, 100 seat credits a month. folk: Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly.
What are the rate limits on Attio and folk?
Attio: 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API. folk: 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, both per user, both enforced at once.
Do Attio and folk both have MCP servers?
Both do. Attio: Part of the Attio developer platform. folk: https://developer.folk.app/mcp/overview.
Which is better, Attio or folk?
Attio if anything is going to call this CRM programmatically, because the API is on the free plan and the ceiling is 100 reads a second against folk's 10. folk if the job is relationships rather than records, and you want a tool a non-technical team will actually keep up to date.
What are the downsides of Attio and folk?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Attio: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. folk: there is no free tier, only a trial, so test your own list inside its limits before paying.
Can you use Attio and folk together?
These two are not usually run together, and when they are it is a handover rather than a split: folk as the personal relationship layer for founders and partners, Attio as the system the go-to-market team and the pipelines actually write to. The join is a nightly sync in one direction, and because Attio's free tier carries the full API, building that sync costs nothing on the Attio side.
Can I migrate from Attio to folk without losing data?
The fields survive: folk returns everything Attio does. What changes is the auth and the limits. Either way, measure your match rate on 500 rows before you switch, because that number is the one you cannot recover afterwards.