Best contact apps for 2024

best contact apps
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The best contact apps stand at the ready to implement some order on your disorganized address book. All those duplicate entries cluttering up your contacts will be a thing of the past, and that's just the start of what a good contact app can do for you.

Besides that level of basic tidying up, the best contact apps let you create groups for easier messaging, manage sales relationships and keep important info at the ready. Some of these apps even have their own dialer so that you can make a call without having to jump back to the phone app on your handset.

In other words, the best contact apps offer more than what you'll get from the native Contacts app on your Android device or from the iPhone's Contacts offering. We've searched through both Google Play and the iOS App Store — here are the best choices for organizing your contacts that we've found.

For 2024, it'll be interesting to see how native contact apps will evolve with the help of artificial intelligence. There wasn't a tremendous change with recent software updates such as iOS 17 and Android 14, but that could very change as AI continues to be a focus.

The best contact apps for Android and iOS

1. Contacts+

best contact apps: Contacts+

(Image credit: Contacts Plus Team)

Contacts+ combines the Contacts+ and Full Contact mobile apps into a single contacts management powerhouse. The result is one of the best contacts apps for your smartphone.

Contacts+ can help you keep track of friends, family and professional contacts while keeping your address book uncluttered. The app uses a cloud-based system that can sync with Gmail, Outlook and iCloud, automatically pulling data from your connected accounts. It can then suggest deleting duplicates, making updates and enriching contacts with photos, company info, social media activity, and more. 

The free tier of Contacts+ allows for one linked account and 1,000 contacts, while premium tiers starting at $1.99 a month can include more linked accounts, improved contacts syncing, business card scanning and no ads.

Download Contacts+: Android, iOS

2. Covve

best contact apps covve

(Image credit: Covve Visual Network)

Covve promises to supercharge your address book using proprietary search tech to fill out each of your contact's data fields such as country, company, and more. It also checks for changes, automatically keeping your contacts up to date. In addition to the autocomplete and contact update features, you can tag and organize your contact groups, get contact reminders, annotate communications, and more. 

Covve is a dense, feature-rich experience even in its free tier; a premium subscription of $12.99 a month (or $119.99 annually) unlocks more features such as expanded web views and contact analytics.

Download Covve: Android, iOS

3. Cloze Relationship Management

best contact apps: Cloze Relationship Management

(Image credit: Cloze)

Cloze Relationship Management tries to build an all-in-one contacts, social network and email command center. The app syncs details about your contacts from your social networks and email so that your information and profiles are always up to date. 

In addition to managing your contacts, Cloze functions as a one-stop social networking command center, allowing you to tweet, update your status, like or share links, and more. Additionally, Cloze uses your interactions and messages to identify "Key People" and automatically surfaces tweets, status messages and other related updates from them.

You can use Cloze for free to manage your contacts and send basic e-mails. For more advanced features, you'll need to subscribe to Cloze Pro, which starts at $17 a month.

Download Cloze: Android, iOS

4. Groups

best contact apps: Groups

(Image credit: Qbix)

If much of your communication occurs through grouped contacts, Groups is one of the best contacts apps you can put to use on your iPhone. Using the native contacts on your phone, you can group people into any category you can imagine — family, friends, neighbors, coworkers and participants in whatever social activity you enjoy.

Once you've got your groups together, just use the app to easily text or email all the contacts in a group at once. You can also set reminders for making contact with people and use the built-in tools in apps to merge duplicate contacts. A $9.99 in-app purchase unlocks all the features in Groups while removing ads.

Download Groups: iOS

5. Sync.Me

best contact apps: Sync.Me

(Image credit: Sync.Me)

These days, Sync.Me puts more of an emphasis on caller ID and spam blocking features, but there's still enough contact management functionality in here to make it a worthwhile download if you're on the hunt for one of the best contact apps. One of the app's best contact features is its ability to add full screen photos to your contacts. That way you can more easily see who's calling you. The app also lets you merge and backup contacts, and background contact sync keeps images tied to your contacts' profile pictures from social media. Those last three features are part of a premium subscription that costs $9.99 per year, with other monthly pricing options available. However, there's a free trial of the Pro features for 30 days.

Really, though, this is the app to get if you're bothered by robocallers. Sync.Me boasts features like caller and text ID, spam blocking, reverse phone lookups and call recording. 

Download Sync.Me: Android, iOS

6. Cardhop

best contact apps: cardhop

(Image credit: Flexibits)

Cardhop is a $4.75/month contacts management app for the iPhone by Flexibits, makers of the excellent Fantastical calendar app. That prowess shows in Cardhop’s excellent natural language capabilities for contacts search, the way it creates new entries, or how you can take action on existing entries. 

Type in a name and a mobile number, for example, and Cardhop will create a new entry; input “Call Michael S”, and the app will start a call to the relevant contact. Flexible actions make it easy to call, tweet, email, or start a FaceTime call. In addition, Cardhop lets you create contact groups, easily access recent contacts, and add notes to each entry. 

Download Cardhop: iOS

7. Contacts Sync Pro

best contact apps: Contacts sync pro

(Image credit: Playa Apps)

You may have previously known this app as Synctastic, but Playa Apps has rebranded this contacts app as Contacts Sync Pro, and it's available as a $6.99 download. Whatever the name, this app removes a lot of the pain from syncing contacts between our iPhone and Gmail.  

Contacts Sync Pro features a variety of syncing modes, from two-way, Gmail-to-iPhone, iPhone-to-Gmail, and manual syncing, with the app respecting a variety of filters, as well as contact groups. Users can review sync changes before the sync begins, override recommended changes, deduplicate contacts, and an option for automatic contact syncing.

Download Contacts Sync Pro: iOS

8. A2Z Contacts

best contact apps: a2z contacts

(Image credit: Playa Apps)

Another app by the makers of Contacts Sync Pro (or Synctastic if you prefer), A2Z Contacts takes a more iOS-centric design and a free-to-download approach. 

A2Z Contacts lets you view and manage contacts stored on your phone, iCloud, CardDAV, and Exchange, with group management and contacts search, favorite contacts, and a multi-function contacts card. You can sort contacts by group or company and view most frequently used contacts as well as upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. A2Z also can sync with Google contacts through Contacts Sync Pro. 

A $1.99 purchase unlocks group emails and group messages, unrestricted contacts sharing, and any further premium features to be developed. You can also pay a 99-cent annual subscription for those same features.

Download A2Z Contacts: iOS

9. CircleBack

best contact apps: CircleBack

(Image credit: CircleBack)

Another socially integrated address book app, CircleBack insures that your contacts are always up to date by monitoring social networks for any changes in job title, roles and more. 

Like other integrated address book apps, CircleBack attempts to merge duplicate contacts to streamline your address book. CircleBack can connect with your Google, Facebook, Exchange and LinkedIn accounts to help manage your address book. Available for both Android and iOS after starting out as an iPhone exclusive, the app syncs your contacts across multiple devices and platforms.

Download CircleBack: Android, iOS

10. CamCard

best contact apps: CamCard

(Image credit: INTSIG)

Even in the modern mobile age, business cards are still an important part of networking in the corporate community. Transcribing contact information from a card to your phone can be a tiresome task. 

Enter CamCard, a business card scanner and contacts manager that allows users to easily scan in business cards with the app intelligently creating contacts with the card's details. The app also has the ability to add notes and reminders, contact updates, the ability to look up company news and more. In addition, users can exchange e-cards and sync card data across multiple devices through the cloud.

CamCard is free, but paying for a subscription removes ads and any limits on the number of cards you can scan at the rare of $46.99/year.

Download CamCard: Android, iOS

11. Contact Pics Adder

best contact apps: contact pics adder

(Image credit: Volker Koch)

Unlike some of our other best contact apps picks, Contact Pics Adder doesn’t manage your address book. Rather, it lets you assign images to them — and in a manner far more efficient than Apple’s Contacts app.

The main screen shows your contacts. You can browse or search the list, or filter it to show entries without a picture. Tap a contact, and the app starts a Bing search from which you can pull an image and crop it. Further options allow you to trawl social networks and adjust your search with buttons labeled with info drawn from Contacts. 

Given that contact images are used throughout Mac, iPhone and iPad apps for email and messaging, $4.99 seems a bargain to make your contacts look a whole lot better.

Download Contact Pics Adder: iOS

12. Contacts Optimizer Pro

best contact apps: Contact Optimizer

(Image credit: Compelson)

With your contacts likely the most important asset on your phone, the mess and clutter of poorly entered data and duplicates can make them impossible to use. 

For the cost of a $8.99 download, Contacts Optimizer Pro removes duplicates and finds similar contacts, moves groups of contacts between accounts, corrects and formats phone numbers, identifies contacts with incomplete information, merges multiple incomplete contacts into one whole one and digitizes vanity numbers.

Download Contacts Optimizer Pro: iOS

13. Truecaller

TrueCaller best contacts app

(Image credit: True Software)

Much like Sync.Me and Simpler Caller ID, Truecaller wants to put a halt spam by blocking nuisance calls and hidden numbers. And it uses your contacts to help with that task. 

Truecaller lets you search for names and numbers, make calls directly from the app, see when friends are available, look up phone numbers from your call history, report spam callers and telemarketers, and remove unknown phone numbers from you call history. A $4.49 monthly subscription removes all ads and lets you know who's been viewing your profile.

Download Truecaller: Android, iOS

14. DW Contacts & Dialer

best contact apps: DW Contacts & Dialer

(Image credit: DWP)

DW Contacts & Dialer is an old favorite among Android users looking for a capable, no-nonsense app for local phone contacts management. It's a $9.49 download from Google Play.

DW Contacts takes something of an old-school approach, with an integrated dialer and SMS messaging functions, contact group organizing (with group nesting), search filters and searchable fields, and a configurable display with multiple sorting methods. 

While it doesn’t have more modern bells and whistles like smart de-duping that you'll find in the other best contact apps, DW Contacts & Dialer is still a viable choice if you don’t mind doing some contacts management and sorting manually.

Download DW Contacts & Dialer: Android

15. Drupe Contacts Phone Dialer

best contact apps: Drupe Contacts

(Image credit: Drupe)

If you’re looking for a complete realignment of your mobile communications, check out Drupe’s super-cool Contact Phone Dialer for Android. Acting more as a communications hub than just simply a phone dialer, the free app lets you reach out to your contacts, dial anyone, record your incoming or outgoing calls, set reminders, and more. 

The interface makes all communication drag-and-drop simple as you choose the person from you call list and drag the icon to your dialer, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Skype, or phone. The app also can tidy up your contact list and track your communication log, keeping your contacts assembled in one place.

Download Drupe Contacts Phone Dialer: Android

How we pick the best contacts apps

When searching for the best contacts apps, we're looking for apps that address different needs, whether it's removing duplicate contacts, assisting with calls or messaging or offering CRM features. We consider apps aimed at personal as well as business use cases. And we try to include apps at a variety of different pricing levels, from free to apps that charge a monthly fee. (A quick word on the pricing in this article: listed prices reflect the cost at the time of our our last update, but prices in the various app stores can and do change, so double-check those prices before downloading the app.)

We consider apps based on user reviews and research on app-recommendation sites. We then look at the listed features to see what each app offers and make our picks based on apps that deliver a good mix of contact management features. We prefer to select apps that work on both Android and iOS, though in some cases, we'll highlight apps that only work on one platform if their feature set impresses.

Looking for more mobile apps that can help you manage all the information on your phone? Check out our look at the best productivity apps as well as the best calendar apps and best note-taking tools.

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Craig Grannell

Craig Grannell has been writing about tech for longer than he cares to remember, and spends his days surrounded by black rectangles, cables, and countless devices going DING when a notification comes in. He’s written for a bunch of magazines and websites including Tom's Guide, TechRadar, Wired, Stuff and many others, and specializes in Apple, apps, games, design and retro. At some point, he’s hoping someone will pay him a full-time wage to write about Robotron: 2084 and Bubble Bobble all day.