HubSpot vs Salesforce (2026)

Pick HubSpot if you are a small or midsize team that wants a CRM you can set up yourself, with marketing and sales on the same records and published limits on every plan. Its free tools cover 2 users, Sales Hub Starter costs $7 a seat a month for new customers on yearly billing, and Professional costs $90 to $100 a seat plus a $1,500 onboarding fee. Pick Salesforce if you run a larger or more complex sales operation and have an admin or partner to shape it: you get territories, sandboxes, custom apps and deeper forecasting, with Starter Suite at $25 a user and the Core edition at $195 a user a month, billed yearly. Salesforce also gives you longer to test, with a 30-day free trial of every Sales Cloud edition.

Pricing compared

Both vendors price their sales CRM per seat, and both start free for 2 users. The gap opens on the paid plans.

On November 4, 2026, HubSpot listed Sales Hub Starter at $7 a seat a month paid yearly. That price is for new customers only; the regular price is $20, and HubSpot's CRM pricing page gives $10 a seat for month-to-month billing. Professional shows $90 and $100 a seat a month, sold on an annual commitment, plus a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. Enterprise starts at $150 a seat a month with a $3,500 onboarding fee.

Salesforce charges $25 a user a month for Starter Suite, billed monthly or yearly, and $100 for Pro Suite, billed yearly with a contract. Above those sit the Sales Cloud editions, renamed in 2026: Core at $195 replaces Enterprise, Advanced at $395 replaces Unlimited, and Max at $550 replaces Agentforce 1. All three are billed yearly. Salesforce adds transaction fees to the two suites and sells extras such as Agentforce for Sales (from $125 a user a month) and Revenue Intelligence (from $220).

Take a team of five sellers paying yearly. HubSpot Starter costs $420 for the first year at the new-customer price, or $1,200 at the $20 regular rate, against $1,500 for Salesforce Starter Suite. One step up, HubSpot Professional comes to about $6,900 in year one at $90 a seat including onboarding, close to Salesforce Pro Suite at $6,000. Salesforce Core runs $11,700 a year, and HubSpot Enterprise $12,500 in its first year with onboarding.

The free plans differ more than the headline suggests. HubSpot's free tools include 1,000 contacts, forms, live chat and one-to-one email with HubSpot branding, and they never expire. Salesforce Free Suite tracks accounts, leads, opportunities and cases for 2 users and sends up to 100 marketing emails a month, and it stays free only while someone signs in at least once every 60 days.

So HubSpot is cheaper to start, the two meet in the middle, and the onboarding fee is the cost to plan for on HubSpot. On Salesforce, budget for an admin or partner instead, which the price list doesn't show.

Sales features head to head

HubSpot prints its limits on every plan, which makes it easy to see what you are buying. Sales Hub Starter gives you up to 15 pipelines, 5,000 sequences with 500 email sends per user a day, 50 workflows with restricted triggers, up to 5 lead scores and 500 calling minutes with one HubSpot phone number. Professional raises that to 100 pipelines, 300 fully customizable workflows, 10 lead scores and 3,000 calling minutes. Enterprise allows 350 pipelines and 1,000 workflows that can start sequences, and adds forecasting across team hierarchies. Every paid plan includes default and custom forecasting. Starter also brings meeting scheduling, payments and e-signatures.

Salesforce starts with the basics on Starter Suite: lead, account, contact and opportunity management, built-in sales flows, lead routing and AI that syncs emails, events and contacts into the CRM. Pro Suite adds quoting and forecasting, more customization and automation, and access to AgentExchange, Salesforce's app marketplace. Core is where the classic Salesforce depth begins: advanced pipeline and forecast management, opportunity scoring, conversation intelligence and API access, with Slack Business+ and Tableau Next included. Its comparison table also lists sales territories, opportunity splits, sandboxes and custom apps, though it doesn't spell out which edition gets each one.

For a team with one pipeline, a few reps and a sales manager who wants a forecast, HubSpot covers the job and shows you its limits up front. For a company with territories, split commissions, approval processes and a test environment for changes, Salesforce Core or Advanced is the stronger fit.

AI and automation

Both vendors now meter AI with credits. HubSpot includes 500 credits a month on Starter, 3,000 on Professional and 5,000 on Enterprise. Unused credits reset each month, and extra credits cost $0.010 each. Sales Hub's AI tools include the Breeze Prospecting Agent, still in beta, and the agents draw on the same credit allowance, so a busy month of AI work can use up the included credits before the month ends.

Salesforce gives Core 500K Flex Credits a year, Advanced 1M and Max 2.75M, with Agentforce, Slack, Tableau and Data 360 included in all three. Max adds Agentforce for Sales and Agentforce Coworker without the usual meter. Starter and Pro Suite include Assistive AI with Employee Agent and AI that syncs emails, events and contacts, while the Agentforce sales features are listed as paid extras.

Credit units differ, so you can't compare the two allowances directly. Ask each vendor what a typical month of your agent use would cost before you count on either.

Ease of use and setup

HubSpot is the easier CRM to get running alone. The free tools need no credit card, Starter has no onboarding fee, and the paid plans' limits are on the pricing page. Your marketing team can work from the same contact and deal records through HubSpot Marketing Hub, so a rep sees which emails a lead opened and which forms they filled in. The required onboarding fee on Professional and Enterprise is the price of stepping up, and you pay it once.

Salesforce gives you more to configure: profiles and page layouts, record types, roles, approval processes and the Lightning App Builder. That depth is the reason to choose it, and you should plan on a Salesforce admin or a certified partner to set it up; Salesforce sells Professional Services for the same job. Starter Suite is Salesforce's answer for small teams, with Slack included, and its 30-day trial gives you a month to see whether you can run it without help. The Salesforce mobile app also supports offline pages for reps who sell in places with poor signal.

Support compared

HubSpot ties support to plan and seat. Free tools come with the knowledge base and community. Starter adds chat and email, and Professional and Enterprise add phone. For accounts created on or after March 5, 2024, a user needs an assigned Core, Sales or Service seat to reach chat, email or phone support.

Every Salesforce license includes the Standard Success plan: knowledge articles, documentation, Trailhead training and the Trailblazer Community. Premier Success, with expert guidance, health checks and 24/7 support for business-stopping issues, comes with Core, Advanced and Max and is an add-on for Pro Suite. Signature Success, with a designated customer success manager, is sold through your account executive.

If you want to pick up the phone at a mid-tier price, HubSpot Professional gets you there for less than Salesforce Core.

Who each one suits

HubSpot suits small and midsize B2B teams that want sales and marketing on one CRM, set up by the people who use it. It is also the cheaper way to move off a spreadsheet, with free tools for 2 users and a low Starter price for new customers. Watch the jump to Professional, where the onboarding fee and per-seat price add up quickly.

Salesforce suits companies with a dedicated admin, several sales teams or territories, and a plan to customize the CRM around their process. Its Starter Suite is a fair choice for a small team that expects to grow into the wider Salesforce platform, because you keep the same CRM as you move up to Core.

Between the two sits a common case: a 10-person team that sells to businesses and runs its own email campaigns. HubSpot fits that team better today, since sales and marketing share one record and phone support arrives with Professional. Choose Salesforce instead if you already know you will need territories, a sandbox or custom apps within a year or two.

If your CRM is mostly there to show which emails and links bring in sales, look at Platformly too. It keeps deals, stages, activities and reminders on the same contact records as your email, automations and sales imported from Stripe, Paddle, Shopify or WooCommerce, with five attribution models to credit each sale. It fits businesses that publish and sell, such as newsletters, SaaS companies and online stores; Platformly doesn't list sales territories or built-in calling, so a large outbound sales team is better served by HubSpot or Salesforce. For a sales-only pipeline tool, compare Pipedrive and Zoho CRM.