HubSpot vs folk
HubSpot API
Best free CRM endpoint Free tierfolk
Lightweight relationship CRM $48/HubSpot for almost any programmatic use, because the free tier carries the full API at 600 requests a minute and folk starts its API at $48 a member a month. folk if the people who have to keep the CRM current are founders, partners or anyone who will abandon a tool that feels like software. That is a real argument and it is the only one folk wins here, which does not make it a small one: a CRM nobody updates has no data worth syncing. Check which plan you actually need on folk before comparing anything, because the $24 tier has no API at all.
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 | folk |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Write back to the CRM your team already lives in | Two rate policies at once, and the burst one binds first |
| Entry price | Free tier | $48/member/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 | Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly. |
| GTM motion covered | Sync Engage | Sync |
| Data returned | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics |
| MCP server | Yes Official remote and local servers | Yes https://developer.folk.app/mcp/overview |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks |
| Auth | Private app token or OAuth 2.0 | API key as a bearer token in the Authorization header |
| Rate limits | 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. | 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 CCPA | GDPR DPA |
| Best for | Best free CRM endpoint | Lightweight relationship CRM |
Pick each one when
HubSpot API
- Anything will call the CRM, and you would rather not pay to find out if it works.
- Marketing, forms, workflows and reporting belong in the same place.
- Throughput matters: 600 requests a minute against folk's effective 10 a second.
folk
- The people maintaining it are not an ops team and will not adopt a suite.
- The job is relationships and introductions rather than a sales pipeline.
- You want rate limits documented well enough to write a correct retry.
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 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 | HubSpot API | folk |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Starter, $20 | Standard, $24 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 3 |
| Free tier | Free CRM including API access | Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly. |
| 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
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 HubSpot 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.
HubSpot 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. HubSpot 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 | HubSpot API | folk |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $720 Starter | $576 |
| 10,000 a month | $720 Starter | $576 |
| 50,000 a month | $720 Starter | $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 comparison is not $0 against $24, it is $0 against $48. HubSpot includes full CRM object access over REST on its free plan with no clock and no credit meter. folk charges $24 a member a month for Standard and puts API access on Premium at $48, so the entry plan is not in this comparison at all. That single fact decides most evaluations before anything about the products matters.
On throughput HubSpot is ahead and folk is clearer. HubSpot allows 100 requests per 10 seconds on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional, with a daily pool shared across every app on the account. folk allows 600 a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, enforced together, which caps you at 10 a second in practice; it also states that a request rejected by one policy still spends quota on the other, which is the kind of detail that stops an integration retry-storming itself and which HubSpot does not spell out.
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 API is on the free tier
Full object access, associations, properties and workflows over REST with no meter, up to two users. folk's API begins at $48 a member a month. For a team proving an integration before it has a budget, that is the difference between building it this week and asking for approval first.
Six times the sustained throughput
600 requests a minute on the free plan against folk's effective 10 a second ceiling, and 1,140 a minute on Professional. For a nightly sync or a one-off migration that is hours rather than minutes of difference, and the generous side is the free one.
It is a suite, and two MCP servers come with it
Marketing, forms, landing pages, workflows and reporting in the same system as the CRM, plus a remote MCP server for the CRM and a local one for builds. folk ships one hosted MCP server, which is good, and nothing else on this list.
folk
The rate limits are documented properly
Two policies stated plainly, 600 a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, applied per user so multiple keys share one budget, and an explicit warning that a rejected request still consumes the other policy's quota. HubSpot publishes its per-10-second figure and leaves the daily pool vaguer. For writing a correct backoff, folk gives you more to work with.
A hosted MCP server with a real OAuth flow
One-click installation for the common AI tools and OAuth rather than a pasted key, with read and write across the workspace. HubSpot has more MCP surface; folk has the smoother one, and for a small team wiring an assistant to their CRM that is the part that gets done.
People actually keep it current
folk is light on purpose, and the teams that choose it choose it because the alternative is a spreadsheet. A CRM that founders and partners update beats a better-modeled one they avoid, and no API comparison rescues an empty database. This is the argument folk wins and it is worth more than the rest of 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.
HubSpot API
The daily cap is shared across every app on the account
Behind the per-10-second ceiling is a daily pool every integration draws on together, so a marketplace app somebody else installed can spend it and your job is the one that fails. The limit you can plan against is the burst one; the one that surprises you is the daily one.
Professional and Enterprise are a quote
Free is free and Starter is $20 a seat a month. Above that the CRM pricing page stops publishing numbers, so any plan that depends on the higher rate limit depends on a sales conversation first.
The free CRM is the door to a suite
It is genuinely free and genuinely good, and it exists to sell the marketing tiers. That is a fair trade and worth naming, because the cost of HubSpot usually arrives later and from a different budget.
folk
The API starts at $48, not $24
Standard has no API access. Premium does. Any comparison that uses the $24 figure against HubSpot's free tier is comparing the wrong plan, and this is the first thing to check on folk's pricing page rather than the last.
The burst policy is the one that binds
600 a minute looks comfortable until the second policy applies: 20 requests per 2 seconds, so 10 a second sustained and no way to spend the minute allowance in a burst. folk documents this clearly and advises spreading evenly, which is honest and is still a ceiling a sixth of HubSpot's.
Light by design, and the depth is not there
Custom objects and deals arrive on Premium, there is no marketing suite, no forms and no reporting layer. folk is a relationship CRM that grew a pipeline, and a team that needs a system of record for the whole business outgrows it in one direction only.
Using HubSpot 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.
The pairing that works is folk as the personal relationship layer and HubSpot as the company system of record, which is common in businesses where founders keep their own network and the go-to-market team runs a pipeline. One-way sync from folk into HubSpot, and because HubSpot's free tier carries the API, the destination costs nothing to build against.
Write the sync to folk's ceiling rather than HubSpot's. folk is the slower and more precisely documented side, so pace the reads at ten a second, honour the Retry-After header rather than retrying immediately, and remember that a rejected request has already spent quota on the other policy. HubSpot will absorb whatever folk can produce.
The reason not to run both is the same as everywhere else on this hub: two CRMs means two answers to who owns a contact. If the founders' network genuinely is a separate graph from the sales pipeline, the split is defensible. If it is the same people in two places, pick one and move the other in.
HubSpot or folk, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot API | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | 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 HubSpot 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 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
folk 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. folk uses API key as a bearer token in the Authorization header.
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.
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.
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 folk and HubSpot vs Copper.
And: HubSpot vs Close 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 folk, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is HubSpot or folk cheaper?
On the entry plan it is HubSpot, free against folk at $48/member/mo. The entry price is the comparable figure, because they do not meter the same thing.
Can I try HubSpot and folk for free?
HubSpot: Free CRM including API access. folk: Free trial. API access begins on Premium at $48 a member a month billed yearly.
What are the rate limits on HubSpot and folk?
HubSpot: 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. folk: 600 requests a minute and 20 per 2 seconds, both per user, both enforced at once.
Do HubSpot and folk both have MCP servers?
Both do. HubSpot: Official remote and local servers. folk: https://developer.folk.app/mcp/overview.
Which is better, HubSpot or folk?
HubSpot for almost any programmatic use, because the free tier carries the full API at 600 requests a minute and folk starts its API at $48 a member a month. folk if the people who have to keep the CRM current are founders, partners or anyone who will abandon a tool that feels like software.
What are the downsides of HubSpot and folk?
Measured against each other rather than in general. HubSpot: 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 HubSpot and folk together?
The pairing that works is folk as the personal relationship layer and HubSpot as the company system of record, which is common in businesses where founders keep their own network and the go-to-market team runs a pipeline. One-way sync from folk into HubSpot, and because HubSpot's free tier carries the API, the destination costs nothing to build against.
Can I migrate from HubSpot to folk without losing data?
The fields survive: folk 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.