HubSpot vs Close
HubSpot API
Best free CRM endpoint Free tierClose
Inside sales CRM with calling built in $19/Close if the motion is outbound calling and you want the dialler, the recording and the sequence to be first-class API objects rather than integrations. HubSpot if the CRM has to serve marketing and support as well as sales, or if free matters, because its free tier carries the whole API with no meter. Close is the better API for a sales team that lives on the phone and HubSpot is the better system of record for everybody else. Both publish MCP servers, so neither is the agent-friendly choice by default any more.
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 | HubSpot API | Close |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Write back to the CRM your team already lives in | API on every plan, and the org limit is three times the key limit |
| Entry price | Free tier | $19/seat/mo |
| Unit cost | $0.0000 free tier | Not sold by the unit |
| Billing model | Free tier Subscription Per seat | Per seat Subscription |
| Free tier | Free CRM including API access | No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually. |
| GTM motion covered | Sync Engage | Sync Engage |
| Data returned | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics |
| MCP server | Yes Official remote and local servers | Yes https://developer.close.com/mcp |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async |
| Auth | Private app token or OAuth 2.0 | API key, or OAuth 2.0 for user-facing integrations |
| Rate limits | 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. | 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 CCPA | GDPR DPA CCPA |
| Best for | Best free CRM endpoint | Inside sales CRM with calling built in |
Pick each one when
HubSpot API
- The CRM has to hold marketing, forms, workflows and reporting too.
- Free matters: full object access over REST with no clock and no credit meter.
- You want the highest published throughput, at 600 requests a minute.
Close
- Calling is the motion, and calls, SMS and sequences should be API objects.
- You want API access on the cheapest tier rather than on a quote.
- A 30-day event log of everything that happened is worth paying for.
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. HubSpot 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 | HubSpot API | Close |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Starter, $20 | Solo, $19 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free CRM including API access | No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0 free tier | 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.
HubSpot API
HubSpot API publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $20 to Quote.
Free
- Full CRM object access over the API
- Free Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data and Revenue tools
- 100 calls per 10s, 250,000 a day
- No credit card required
Starter
- Same API, same limits as Free
- 500 HubSpot Credits included
- 1,000 marketing contacts
- From $7/seat/mo on the current new-customer offer
Professional
- 190 calls per 10s per app
- 625,000 calls a day per account
- Where the limit increase starts to matter
Enterprise
- 190 calls per 10s per app
- 1,000,000 calls a day per account
- Highest published daily ceiling
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 HubSpot 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.
HubSpot 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. HubSpot 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 | HubSpot API | Close |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $720 Starter | $684 Solo |
| 10,000 a month | $720 Starter | $684 Solo |
| 50,000 a month | $720 Starter | $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
The products answer different questions and the pricing shows it. HubSpot gives the CRM away: full object access, associations, properties and workflows over REST on the free tier with nothing metered, and sells seats and the marketing suite above it. Close charges from $19 a seat a month on Solo, $9 on annual billing, and includes API access and the event log on all four paid plans. Neither gates the API behind a quote, which already puts both ahead of most of this category.
What you actually get differs more than the price does. Close is built around the phone, so calls, SMS, sequences and the activity log are objects you can read and write rather than things a third-party integration bolts on. HubSpot is a suite, so the API surface is wider and shallower: more object types, more associations, and no dialler. If your integration is going to create and read call activity, that is the whole comparison.
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.
HubSpot API
Free, and the free tier includes the API
Full CRM object access over REST with no clock and no credit meter, up to two users. Close has no free tier at all, only a trial. For a pipeline that just needs somewhere to land enriched rows, HubSpot is the cheapest legitimate destination in this directory and the integration can be proved before any budget exists.
The highest published throughput here
100 requests per 10 seconds on Free and Starter, rising to 190 on Professional, which is 600 to 1,140 a minute. Close publishes its rate limits as a structure rather than as numbers, so you can design against HubSpot's figure and have to measure Close's.
Two official MCP servers and a whole suite behind them
A remote server for the CRM and a local one for builds. Close ships an MCP server too, so this is a narrower lead than it was, but HubSpot carries marketing, forms, landing pages, workflows and reporting in the same system, which Close deliberately does not.
Close
Calling is a first-class part of the API
Calls, SMS, email and sequences are objects rather than integrations, with a 30-day event log behind them. If what you are building reads call outcomes or writes activity back, Close answers it natively and HubSpot answers it through whichever dialler you bought separately.
API access on every paid tier, from $19
Solo at $19 a seat a month, or $9 billed annually, carries the same API access and event log as Scale at $149. There is no gated tier and no quote. Against the CRMs in this directory that put the API on a Professional plan nobody can price, that is worth naming plainly.
The rate limit structure is published even though the numbers are not
Limits are per endpoint group, enforced per key and per organization, and the organization ceiling is three times the per-key one. That tells you something useful: three keys at full rate reach the org limit, so a fourth buys nothing. Most vendors publish neither the numbers nor the shape.
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.
HubSpot API
No dialler, and no contact data
HubSpot stores and does not source, and it does not call. A calling motion on HubSpot means a third-party dialler and a second integration to write the activity back, which is exactly the seam Close exists to remove.
The daily cap is shared across apps
Behind the generous per-10-second ceiling sits a daily cap every integration on the account draws on together. A marketplace app somebody installed can spend it, and your job is what fails.
Professional and Enterprise are a quote
Free is free, Starter is $20 a seat. Above that the CRM pricing page stops publishing, so a plan that depends on a Professional feature depends on a conversation.
Close
No free tier, and no published rate numbers
A trial and then $19 a seat. And the rate limits are described rather than quantified: per endpoint group, with the organization limit at three times the per-key one, and the specific requests per second left to the RateLimit header. You can code against it correctly and you cannot size a job in advance.
It is a sales CRM, not a system of record for the business
No marketing suite, no forms, no landing pages. Close is deliberately narrow and good at the narrow thing, which means a company that wants one system for sales, marketing and support is on the wrong side of this page.
The useful add-ons are priced on top
Call recording and transcription is $50 an organization a month plus $0.02 a minute, and lines start at $1 a line a month. Calling is charged on usage, so the seat price is the floor of a phone-heavy month rather than its shape.
Using HubSpot 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 arrangement that shows up in practice is Close for the outbound team and HubSpot as the company system of record, with Close writing activity into HubSpot rather than the other way round. HubSpot's free tier makes the destination side cost nothing, and Close's event log gives you a clean 30-day source to replay from if the sync falls behind.
Decide which side owns the contact before you write a line of it. Two CRMs with bidirectional sync is how duplicates and loops happen, and the loop is expensive on the Close side because its limits are per endpoint group and you cannot see the numbers. One direction, idempotent writes, and a field recording which system created each record.
The case for dropping one is usually that the outbound team is small enough that HubSpot plus a dialler is simpler, or large enough that Close's calling model earns its own system. Between those two the double contract is hard to justify, since both charge per seat and the people who need Close are usually people who also need HubSpot.
HubSpot or Close, for you
Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot API | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | 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 HubSpot 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 HubSpot 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 HubSpot 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
HubSpot API authenticates with private app 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. HubSpot API rate: 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps.
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.
What practitioners say about HubSpot
The one part of this page that is not a vendor claim. Quotes are transcribed as written, linked to the thread, and nothing here is the only source for a figure in the tables above.
The per-app rate limit is why people end up running several private apps
API limits are not being respected or the sync isn't really set up in a way that someone with knowledge of the api. They may not be using a queue system. They haven't optimized and paid attention to api limits. [...] This may need to be done using multiple private app keys because you are hitting specific limits. [...] If these updates are happening all at once, batch and import/export APIs are the way to go
r/hubspot · April 2025 · 2 points
This corroborates the shape of HubSpot's limits rather than the numbers. The rate, 100 requests per 10 seconds on Free and Starter and 190 on Professional, is per app, which is exactly why splitting work across several private apps raises throughput at all.
The part that is easy to miss is that the daily cap is not per app, so the same trick does nothing for it. Splitting a sync across three private apps triples the requests a second you can make and shares one daily budget between them, which is a fix for the wrong half of the problem if the daily cap is what you were hitting.
The search endpoint is the one to design around
When building custom integrations or custom data migrations, always set the external ID as a unique property so you can use the unique identifier endpoint to read/query records... instead of using the search endpoint which has a 5 calls per second limit. Use batch endpoints as much as possible.
r/hubspot · August 2025 · 10 points
The same lesson the Pipedrive side of this directory records as a token cost, arriving here as a separate rate. Search is the expensive call on every CRM in this listing and it is the one a first integration reaches for, because searching by email is the obvious way to find a contact when you have not stored its id.
Storing an external id on creation is the fix in both products, and it is cheaper to do on day one than to retrofit. Treat this as a design note rather than as a published figure: HubSpot's own documentation is the authority on the per-endpoint limits.
14 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page.
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: HubSpot 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: HubSpot vs Freshsales, Attio vs Close and HubSpot vs Copper.
And: HubSpot vs folk and HubSpot vs Zoho CRM. 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 →HubSpot API vs Salesforce
A CRM that gives the API away against one that sells it by the seat.
Compare them →HubSpot API vs Pipedrive
A free tier with a per-second rate limit against a $14 seat with a daily token budget.
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.
HubSpot and Close, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is HubSpot or Close cheaper?
On the entry plan it is HubSpot, free against Close at $19/seat/mo. The entry price is the comparable figure, because they do not meter the same thing.
Can I try HubSpot and Close for free?
HubSpot: Free CRM including API access. Close: No free tier. Free trial, and $9 a seat a month on Solo billed annually.
What are the rate limits on HubSpot and Close?
HubSpot: 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. Close: Per endpoint group. Published as a structure rather than as numbers; read the RateLimit header.
Do HubSpot and Close both have MCP servers?
Both do. HubSpot: Official remote and local servers. Close: https://developer.close.com/mcp.
Which is better, HubSpot or Close?
Close if the motion is outbound calling and you want the dialler, the recording and the sequence to be first-class API objects rather than integrations. HubSpot if the CRM has to serve marketing and support as well as sales, or if free matters, because its free tier carries the whole API with no meter.
What are the downsides of HubSpot and Close?
Measured against each other rather than in general. HubSpot: 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 HubSpot and Close together?
The arrangement that shows up in practice is Close for the outbound team and HubSpot as the company system of record, with Close writing activity into HubSpot rather than the other way round. HubSpot's free tier makes the destination side cost nothing, and Close's event log gives you a clean 30-day source to replay from if the sync falls behind.
Can I migrate from HubSpot to Close without losing data?
The fields survive: Close returns everything HubSpot 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.