PeopleBlade compared with Mesh (formerly Clay)

Which to choose

Choose Mesh if you want the product to keep your network current for you, with apps on your phone and computer, reminders, and job-change alerts, and you are fine with a hosted copy of your contacts.

Choose PeopleBlade if you want the master copy on your own computer at no cost, with every detail's source recorded and merges you review, and you want your agent to work with it through commands.

What Mesh does

Mesh started as Clay, a relationship manager that Automattic acquired in June 2025. On March 20, 2026 it took the name Mesh and moved from clay.earth to me.sh, partly because Clay the sales data company shared its name. It builds contacts from Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, iMessage, phone calls, and your address book, and from LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, and WhatsApp. A feed shows birthdays, reconnect prompts, reminders, job changes, and news mentions, and Nexus is its built-in AI assistant.

Personal is free for up to 1,000 contacts and asks for a card. Pro removes the cap and adds CSV import, listed at $10 a month. Team is listed at $40 per seat a month for up to four members and adds enrichment and admin tools; Enterprise is priced on request. New accounts start on a 14-day Pro trial. The apps run on the web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.

• Mesh's own site
• Mesh's pricing

What PeopleBlade does

PeopleBlade builds the book from sources you import onto your computer: macOS Contacts, Google Contacts, Beeper, WhatsApp, iMessage interaction metadata without message text, and the official LinkedIn, Instagram, and X exports. Every detail names the source it came from. Two records join only on a matching email, phone number, or account ID, and only when you approve the join or run an opt-in pass that accepts exact matches.

PeopleBlade has no assistant of its own and no ChatGPT integration. The agent you already run calls peopleblade commands that print JSON, or receives a Soulscrape packet, a file with one person's background, without seeing your other contacts. Notes are private Markdown with a revision history, and they leave your computer only inside end-to-end encrypted device sync. peopleblade reminders due lists the people you meant to follow up with; nothing sends a notification, and there is no feed of job changes or news and no phone app.

Public CLI · npm 0.12.0. Install it with bun add --global @hraness/peopleblade@0.12.0 on macOS or Linux.

• Read the contact-book guide
• See what leaves your computer

How they compare

Mesh gathers your network from your accounts and keeps it current on its own servers. PeopleBlade keeps the book in a file on your computer and leaves the upkeep to you and your agent. The table lines them up on cost, sources, reminders, AI, and getting your data out.

How to move your contacts from Mesh

Mesh exports what you put into it as one CSV file. PeopleBlade imports a CSV with its documented contact columns, so rename the columns you want to keep before importing. Details that Mesh added itself are not in the export.

1. In Mesh, open the App Menu, then Settings, and choose Export my Data under General. Mesh emails you the CSV. On a Teams workspace, only the primary account holder or an admin can export.
2. Save the file in a private directory and restrict access with chmod 600 /private/path/mesh.csv.
3. Keep the columns you want as name, email, phone, organization, title, birthday, and profile_url, one email and one phone per cell, and delete the rest. Unknown columns are rejected.
4. Give every row an email or a phone number in international form, such as +12025550123, and write birthdays as YYYY-MM-DD, or --MM-DD without a year. A name alone never identifies a contact, and one row that breaks these rules stops the whole import and names the row.
5. Preview it with peopleblade contacts import /private/path/mesh.csv --account mesh-export --preview --json. Review the added, changed, and overlapping records.
6. Run the same import command without --preview to save the contact details. Use peopleblade stats --json to inspect the result.
7. Run peopleblade identity suggest --limit 25 --json to review likely duplicates, decide each one with peopleblade identity decide TOKEN accept --note "reason" --json, and reverse any accepted join later with peopleblade identity separate DECISION_ID --json.
8. Copy what you still need from your Mesh notes into PeopleBlade notes. The contact importer does not carry notes over.

Mesh says its export works with Google Contacts. If you would rather not edit columns, import the file into Google Contacts and let PeopleBlade import your contacts from there.

• Read the contact-file guide
• Review identity joins
• Mesh's export guide

Is Mesh the same as Clay?

Mesh is the personal CRM that was called Clay, at clay.earth, until it renamed itself on March 20, 2026. It is unrelated to Clay at clay.com, the sales data platform. PeopleBlade's Clay comparison covers the sales platform.

Does PeopleBlade flag job changes the way Mesh does?

No. PeopleBlade has no feed and sends no notifications. Hosted research, in free preview, can show which selected contacts a run would look up, and peopleblade reminders due lists the people you meant to follow up with.

Is Mesh free?

Mesh Personal is free for up to 1,000 contacts and asks for a card. Pro, listed at $10 a month, removes the cap. PeopleBlade's CLI is free with no contact limit, and only optional hosted research costs anything.