Attio vs Close
Attio API
Best API-first CRM $44/Close
Inside sales CRM with calling built in $19/Close if the motion is calling and you want the dialler, the sequence and the activity log inside the CRM and inside its API. Attio if the shape of what you sell does not fit a contact and a deal, because its objects and attributes are defined in code and Close's are not. The seat prices meet in the middle, $44 against $19 to $149, so this is a product decision rather than a pricing one. The one place Attio wins outright is throughput: 100 reads a second against a ceiling Close declines to put a number on.
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 | Close |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A CRM whose data model you define in code | API on every plan, and the org limit is three times the key limit |
| Entry price | $44/user/mo | $19/seat/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 | No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually. |
| GTM motion covered | Sync | Sync Engage |
| Data returned | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics |
| MCP server | Yes Part of the Attio developer platform | Yes https://developer.close.com/mcp |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async |
| Auth | Bearer token or OAuth 2.0 | API key, or OAuth 2.0 for user-facing integrations |
| Rate limits | 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API | Per endpoint group. Published as a structure rather than as numbers; read the RateLimit header. |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II | GDPR DPA CCPA |
| Best for | Best API-first CRM | Inside sales CRM with calling built in |
Pick each one when
Attio API
- Your motion runs on an object that is not a contact, a lead or a deal.
- Something will move volume, and 100 reads a second matters.
- You want a free plan with full API access to prove the model on.
Close
- Calling is the job, and call activity has to be readable and writable.
- You want API access from $19 a seat with no gated tier.
- A 30-day event log of everything that changed is worth having.
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 Close lists 4. 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 | Close |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Plus, $44 | Solo, $19 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free plan with full API access, 100 seat credits a month | No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually. |
| 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
Close
Close publishes 4 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $19 to $149.
Solo
- API access and the event log included
- 500 AI credits per user a month
Essentials
- Shared pool of 1,000 credits a user, up to 10,000 a month
- Same API access as every other tier
Growth
- Shared pool of 1,500 credits a user, up to 15,000 a month
Scale
- Shared pool of 2,000 credits a user, up to 20,000 a month
What Attio and Close 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.
Close
Priced per seat, so the bill moves with headcount rather than with volume.
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.
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 and Close are priced per seat, so those columns do not move with volume. The figure shown is 3 seats for a year.
| A year at | Attio API | Close |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $684 Solo |
| 10,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $684 Solo |
| 50,000 a month | $1,584 Plus | $684 Solo |
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
Attio and Close are both developer-friendly CRMs and they are friendly to different developers. Attio's surface is the data model: custom objects and attributes created through the API, so a business whose pipeline runs on workspaces, properties or clinics describes that once in code. Close's surface is the activity: calls, SMS, email and sequences as first-class objects with a 30-day event log behind them, so a business whose pipeline runs on conversations can read and write what happened.
Both include the API on every tier, which is rarer in this category than it should be, and both ship an MCP server. Where they genuinely separate is what you can plan against. Attio publishes 100 requests a second for reads and 25 a second for writes, flat across the whole API. Close publishes the structure of its limits, per endpoint group with the organization ceiling at three times the per-key one, and leaves the actual requests per second to the RateLimit header on the response.
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 schema is yours, declared in code
Custom objects and attributes are created through the API itself, so the model matches your business rather than the vendor's idea of a sales process. Close has leads, contacts, opportunities and activities, and that is the model. For anything that does not fit it, Attio is the only one of the two that will let you say so.
A published, flat and generous ceiling
100 requests a second for reads, 25 a second for writes, across the whole API, with no per-endpoint accounting and no daily pool. Sizing a migration is one division. On Close the same exercise starts with instrumenting the RateLimit header and finding out.
A free plan with the whole API on it
Full REST access plus 100 seat credits a month, so the data model can be proved before anything is bought. Close has a trial and then $19 a seat, which is cheap and is not nothing.
Close
Calling is in the API, not beside it
Calls, SMS, email and sequences are objects you read and write, with a 30-day event log. Attio has no dialler and no sending, so an outbound calling motion on Attio means buying a dialler and writing the activity back yourself, which is a second contract and a second integration.
API access from $19 a seat, on every tier
Solo at $19 a month, $9 billed annually, carries the same API access and event log as Scale at $149. Attio's free tier is more generous still, but above it Attio is $44 a user against Close's $19, so for a team that needs paid seats Close is the cheaper entrance.
It tells you the shape of its limits even without the numbers
Per endpoint group, per key and per organization, with the org limit at three times the key limit. That last detail is genuinely useful: three keys at full rate reach the org ceiling, so splitting an integration across a fourth key gains nothing. Most vendors publish neither the numbers nor the structure.
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
No calling, no sending, no sequences
Attio is a CRM and a developer platform. Every outbound motion built on it needs at least one more vendor, and the activity written back by hand. If the reason you are reading this page is that your team is on the phone, that is a structural gap rather than a missing feature.
$44 a user with nothing metered to offset it
Or $35 on annual billing, and $99 for Pro. There is no usage allowance because there is nothing to meter, so a team of ten is $440 a month and a seat that logs in quarterly costs what one that lives in it costs.
It sources nothing
Rows come from a provider bought separately. True of Close as well, so it is a tie, but worth stating on both sides of a page about CRMs.
Close
The data model is fixed
Leads, contacts, opportunities, activities. Custom fields exist and custom objects do not, so a business whose pipeline is not shaped like a sales pipeline accumulates the same custom-field debt it would in any traditional CRM. That is the entire argument for the other side of this page.
No published rate numbers and no free tier
The structure is documented and the figures are not, so you instrument and measure rather than plan. And there is a trial rather than a free plan, so the first real test costs $19 a seat.
Calling is billed on usage, on top of the seat
Call recording and transcription is $50 an organization a month plus $0.02 a minute, and lines start at $1 a line a month. For a phone-heavy team the seat price is the floor rather than the bill, which is fair and is not what the pricing page leads with.
Using Attio and Close 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.
The sensible pairing is Attio as the system of record and Close as the outbound workspace, with Close writing call activity into Attio over its API. Attio's 100 reads a second makes it a comfortable destination, and because it lets you declare objects, the activity model Close exports can land in a shape you designed rather than one you worked around.
Make it one direction. Both of these are CRMs and bidirectional sync between two CRMs is how duplicate contacts and update loops happen; the loop is worse here because Close meters per endpoint group and you cannot see the numbers, so a runaway write is invisible until the 429s start. One way, idempotent, with a field recording which system created the record.
Most teams should not run both. If calling is the motion, Close alone is simpler and cheaper and the custom-object argument rarely survives contact with a working dialler. If the data model is the problem, Attio plus a sequencer from this directory is the better stack, and the sequencer costs less than a second CRM.
Attio or Close, for you
Four 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 |
| Close | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | GDPR DPA CCPA | 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 Close
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
Close 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. Close uses API key, or OAuth 2.0 for user-facing integrations.
The limits are the part that bites later. Attio API rate: 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API.
Close rate: Per endpoint group. Published as a structure rather than as numbers; read the RateLimit header. 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 Close and Attio vs folk.
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 Close, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Attio or Close cheaper?
On the entry plan it is Close, $19/seat/mo against Attio at $44/user/mo. The entry price is the comparable figure, because they do not meter the same thing.
Can I try Attio and Close for free?
Attio: Free plan with full API access, 100 seat credits a month. Close: No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually.
What are the rate limits on Attio and Close?
Attio: 100 requests/s for reads, 25/s for writes, across the whole API. Close: Per endpoint group. Published as a structure rather than as numbers; read the RateLimit header.
Do Attio and Close both have MCP servers?
Both do. Attio: Part of the Attio developer platform. Close: https://developer.close.com/mcp.
Which is better, Attio or Close?
Close if the motion is calling and you want the dialler, the sequence and the activity log inside the CRM and inside its API. Attio if the shape of what you sell does not fit a contact and a deal, because its objects and attributes are defined in code and Close's are not.
What are the downsides of Attio and Close?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Attio: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. Close: there is no free tier, only a trial, so test your own list inside its limits before paying.
Can you use Attio and Close together?
The sensible pairing is Attio as the system of record and Close as the outbound workspace, with Close writing call activity into Attio over its API. Attio's 100 reads a second makes it a comfortable destination, and because it lets you declare objects, the activity model Close exports can land in a shape you designed rather than one you worked around.
Can I migrate from Attio to Close without losing data?
The fields survive: Close 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.