HubSpot vs Salesforce
HubSpot API
Best free CRM endpoint Free tierSalesforce
Best CRM API for enterprise integration US$125/For anybody comparing HubSpot vs Salesforce on the integration, this is not close on cost and not close on depth, and they point opposite ways. Pick HubSpot if the integration is the point and the CRM is simple. Pick Salesforce if the org is already there, or if you genuinely need the metadata and deployment APIs, and then budget for seats rather than for calls.
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 | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Write back to the CRM your team already lives in | The only CRM here that sells API access separately |
| Entry price | Free tier | US$125/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 with API access. Developer Edition is free and gets 15,000 calls a day. |
| GTM motion covered | Sync Engage | Sync Engage |
| Data returned | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics | CRM recordsWork emailFirmographics |
| MCP server | Yes Official remote and local servers | Yes Hosted MCP servers, plus a DX server in beta |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async n8n node |
| Auth | Private app token or OAuth 2.0 | OAuth 2.0. SOAP login() with a username and password retires in Summer 27 |
| Rate limits | 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. | Daily org budget: 100,000 plus 1,000 per Enterprise license. 25 concurrent calls over 20s. |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | SOC 1 ISO 27001 ISO 42001 |
| Best for | Best free CRM endpoint | Best CRM API for enterprise integration |
Pick each one when
HubSpot API
- You want to build against the API before buying anything.
- A per-10-second rate limit suits a steady sync better than a daily pool.
- The CRM is for a sales team, not a platform you are extending.
Salesforce
- The company already runs on Salesforce and the data lives there.
- You need metadata, deployment or streaming APIs, not just records.
- Custom objects are doing real work and must behave like standard ones.
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 Salesforce lists 5. 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 | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Starter, $20 | Starter Suite, US$25 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 5 |
| Free tier | Free CRM including API access | No free tier with API access. Developer Edition is free and gets 15,000 calls a day. |
| 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
Salesforce
Salesforce publishes 5 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from US$25 to US$550.
Starter Suite
- Sales, service, marketing and commerce in one
- Slack included at no extra cost
- Not listed on the API rate-limit table
Pro Suite
- Web Services API available for an extra $25/user/mo
- So US$125/user/mo all in, the cheapest API access here
- 5 flows per org
Core
- APIs included, no add-on
- Forecasting, opportunity scoring, conversation intelligence
- Agentforce with the free Salesforce Foundations add-on
Advanced
- APIs included
- 1 Full Sandbox included per org
- Everything in Core plus advanced automation
Max
- APIs included
- Slack Enterprise+ included
- The complete suite
What HubSpot and Salesforce 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.
Salesforce
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 Salesforce 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 | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $720 Starter | $4,500 Pro Suite |
| 10,000 a month | $720 Starter | $4,500 Pro Suite |
| 50,000 a month | $720 Starter | $4,500 Pro Suite |
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
HubSpot includes full CRM object access on a free tier, so you can build and ship before you pay anything. Salesforce charges $25 per user per month for the Web Services API on Pro Suite, or $195 a seat at Core where it is bundled, which makes $125 a seat the cheapest honest route to a Salesforce API call.
What that buys is a far deeper surface: more than a dozen APIs covering records, metadata, deployment, streaming and bulk, where HubSpot gives you a clean CRM and stops. Most teams never touch the half of Salesforce that justifies the price, which is why the seat cost decides this one more often than the API does.
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
The API is on the free tier, not behind it
HubSpot's free CRM includes full object access over REST, not a trial of it. You can build the integration, ship it and run it in production before anyone approves a budget, which is the opposite of how every other CRM on this site works. For a team whose first question is whether the pipeline is even possible, that removes the only step that needed a purchase order.
Two official MCP servers, for two different jobs
A remote server for the CRM itself and a local one for builds. If an agent is going to read or write your records, that is a configuration line rather than a wrapper you maintain. Salesforce ships hosted MCP servers too, with a DX server still in beta, so this is a narrow lead rather than a category difference.
The limit is a rate you can design against
100 requests per 10 seconds on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. A rate is something you can hold a queue under; a daily pool is something you have to forecast. HubSpot has a daily cap as well, but the per-10-second figure is the one your code lives inside.
Salesforce
More than a dozen APIs, not one
REST, SOAP, Bulk 2.0, GraphQL, Metadata, Tooling and Pub/Sub, each built for a different shape of work. Bulk 2.0 for the nightly load, Pub/Sub for the event stream, Metadata for the deployment. Nothing else in this directory comes close to that surface, and for an integration team that already knows which one it needs, that is the whole argument.
Throughput scales with what you already bought
The daily budget is 100,000 calls plus 1,000 for every Enterprise license, shared across every integration on the org. A company with 200 licensed reps starts at 300,000 calls a day without asking anyone. The ceiling grows with the business rather than with a support ticket.
Developer Edition is free and is the real thing
A free Developer Edition org gets 15,000 API calls a day against the same endpoints. You cannot run your business on it, and you can build and test the whole integration on it before the contract is signed, which is the nearest Salesforce comes to HubSpot's free tier.
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
The per-10-second rate is per app, and the daily cap is not. A marketing tool somebody installed from the app marketplace spends the same budget your pipeline does, and you will find out when your sync starts failing rather than when the tool is installed. Audit the connected apps before you size a backfill.
The tier where limits matter has no public price
The limit rises from 100 to 190 requests per 10 seconds at Professional, and Professional and Enterprise are not on the CRM pricing page at all. So the moment throughput becomes your problem, the price becomes a quote. HubSpot is free until exactly the point where you need it not to be.
Salesforce
The API is a line item, and this is the only CRM here sold that way
On Pro Suite the Web Services API is an extra US$25 per user per month on top of US$100, so US$125 a seat is the real floor for anything programmatic. It is included from Core at US$195. Three seats on Pro Suite with the API cost US$375 a month against US$60 for the same three on HubSpot Starter.
More calls means more licenses
Because the daily budget is 100,000 plus 1,000 per Enterprise license, the only published way to raise your ceiling is to buy seats. An integration that needs throughput and no extra people has no lever, which is a strange place to end up and a real one.
A dated migration is already on the calendar
SOAP login() with a username and password retires in Summer 27. If you inherit an integration that authenticates that way, moving it to OAuth 2.0 is work you have not scheduled yet, and the deadline is not yours to move.
Using HubSpot and Salesforce 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.
Almost every pairing on this site is a waterfall where one provider picks up what the other missed. This one is not. HubSpot and Salesforce do the same job, carry the same three data types and sit at the same two stages of the motion, so running both is a transition state or a deliberate split, never a cost optimization.
The split that does happen is marketing on one and the system of record on the other, and the API question it creates is ownership. Decide which system owns each field before you write a line of sync code, because two CRMs that both believe they own the email address will overwrite each other on a loop, and the loop costs you daily budget on the Salesforce side and shared cap on the HubSpot side.
If you are in that state because of an acquisition rather than a decision, price the exit rather than the sync. A year of running both is US$4,500 for three Salesforce seats with the API plus whatever HubSpot tier your volume needs, and the integration maintenance is the part nobody budgets.
HubSpot or Salesforce, 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 |
| Salesforce | CRM records, Work email, Firmographics | Global | SOC 1 ISO 27001 ISO 42001 | 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 Salesforce
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
Salesforce 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. Salesforce uses OAuth 2.0. SOAP login() with a username and password retires in Summer 27.
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.
Salesforce rate: Daily org budget: 100,000 plus 1,000 per Enterprise license. 25 concurrent calls over 20s. 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.
What practitioners say about Salesforce
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.
Paying per seat for integrations is what pushed teams into sharing credentials
[...] I've seen SO much horrible security practise and API user sharing at small/mid size companies who just can't afford a proper full user license for each dedicated integration. Can't wait to share this news tomorrow to my boss.
r/salesforce · March 2023 · 11 points
Written when API-only licenses arrived, and it is the clearest practitioner account of what this page's pricing section describes. When a license costs US$125 a seat with the API add-on, a company with six integrations is being asked for six seats for software rather than people, and the thing that gives way is the credential.
The security consequence is the part a rate card does not show. One shared integration user across six systems means no way to tell which of them made a call, revoked access for one revokes it for all, and the daily org budget drains with no attribution. Price the integration users before you commit, not after.
The list price is a starting position, and practitioners treat it that way
They will fight you tooth and nail to maintain ACV. The trick is to figure out how to get leverage on them. [...] My standard approach: 1.Start renewals 6+ months out 2.Assess SF's current capability and how it aligns to your business goals (is it enabling you or holding you back) 3.Evaluate alternative vendors and position them to salesforce 4+ months out from renewal This playbook regularly knocks 15-30% out of a contract in a flat renewal.
r/salesforce · December 2025 · 9 points
Every figure in the cost model above is a list price, and this is the practitioner version of that caveat. A discount in this range would move three Core seats from US$585 a month to somewhere between US$410 and US$497, which changes the answer against a cheaper CRM at the margin and does not change it at the floor.
Treat the percentages as a signal rather than a number you can plan on: they are one person's experience of their own renewals, not a published rate. What is worth copying is the timing, because leverage is a function of how long you left yourself and that part costs nothing.
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 and Salesforce alternatives both start from the reason people leave.
HubSpot API alternatives
4The free tier is the best in the category. The bill when you outgrow it is why people look at HubSpot alternatives.
See the alternatives →Salesforce alternatives
4Almost nobody leaves Salesforce because the API is bad. They leave because reaching it costs $125 a seat.
See the alternatives →Everything in Sync
6The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price.
Browse the category →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, Salesforce vs Zoho CRM and HubSpot vs Copper.
And: Pipedrive vs Salesforce and HubSpot vs Close. 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 →Pipedrive vs Salesforce
US$14 a seat with the API included against US$125 a seat before the first call.
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 →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 Salesforce, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is HubSpot or Salesforce cheaper?
On the entry plan it is HubSpot, free against Salesforce at US$125/seat/mo. The entry price is the comparable figure, because they do not meter the same thing.
Can I try HubSpot and Salesforce for free?
HubSpot: Free CRM including API access. Salesforce: No free tier with API access. Developer Edition is free and gets 15,000 calls a day.
What are the rate limits on HubSpot and Salesforce?
HubSpot: 100 req/10s on Free and Starter, 190 on Professional. Daily cap shared across apps. Salesforce: Daily org budget: 100,000 plus 1,000 per Enterprise license. 25 concurrent calls over 20s.
Do HubSpot and Salesforce both have MCP servers?
Both do. HubSpot: Official remote and local servers. Salesforce: Hosted MCP servers, plus a DX server in beta.
Which is better, HubSpot or Salesforce?
For anybody comparing HubSpot vs Salesforce on the integration, this is not close on cost and not close on depth, and they point opposite ways. Pick HubSpot if the integration is the point and the CRM is simple.
What are the downsides of HubSpot and Salesforce?
Measured against each other rather than in general. HubSpot: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. Salesforce: there is no free tier, so you cannot measure your own match rate before paying.
Can you use HubSpot and Salesforce together?
Almost every pairing on this site is a waterfall where one provider picks up what the other missed. This one is not.
Can I migrate from HubSpot to Salesforce without losing data?
The fields survive: Salesforce 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.