TL;DR
HubSpot's advertised price is a per-seat figure, and four things sit between it and your actual bill: the seat count, the hub and tier, a mandatory one-time onboarding fee, and metered AI credits. The onboarding fee is the one people miss. Sales Hub Professional carries a required $1,500, Enterprise $3,500, Marketing Hub Professional $3,000 and Marketing Enterprise $7,000. A five-person team on Sales Hub Professional pays $450 a month plus $1,500 up front, so $6,900 in year one. Marketing Hub Professional starts at $800 a month before seats. For most home service contractors this is the wrong tool at roughly ten times the price of Jobber, and the free tier plus a field service platform beats it outright.
HubSpot publishes its pricing, which already puts it ahead of half the software in this category. The complaint is not secrecy. The complaint is that the number on the card is a per-seat, per-hub, annual-commitment figure, and the things that multiply it are printed in grey type underneath.
Every figure below was read off HubSpot's live pricing pages in September 2026. Annual and monthly rates are labelled separately, because HubSpot displays the annual figure by default with the monthly price struck through beside it.
Sales Hub, the actual numbers
| Plan | Annual (per seat) | Monthly (per seat) | Credits included | Required onboarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, up to 2 users | $0 | None | None |
| Starter | $7/mo | $20/mo | 500/mo | None |
| Professional | $90/mo | $100/mo | 3,000/mo | $1,500 one time |
| Enterprise | From $150/mo | Talk to sales | 5,000/mo | $3,500 one time |
| Verdict | Starter is genuinely cheap and genuinely limited. The jump from Starter to Professional is roughly 13x per seat plus $1,500, and that cliff is where most evaluations should stop and reconsider. | |||
View-only seats cost nothing, which is useful for owners who want dashboards without working leads. There is also a running offer that bundles Revenue Hub Professional at $57 per seat (listed against $95) or Enterprise at $98 (against $140) for new Sales Hub customers on annual billing.
Marketing Hub, where the price stops being per-seat
Marketing Hub changes billing shape at Professional. Free and Starter are per seat. Professional and Enterprise are a flat platform fee with seats bundled in, and marketing contacts become the meter.
| Plan | Price | Seats included | Extra seats | Marketing contacts | Required onboarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, up to 2 users | 2 | n/a | Limited | None |
| Starter | $7/seat annual, $20 monthly | Per seat | Per seat | 1,000 | None |
| Professional | $800/mo annual, $890 monthly | 3 core seats | From $45/mo | 2,000 | $3,000 one time |
| Enterprise | From $3,600/mo | 5 core seats | From $75/mo | 10,000 | $7,000 one time |
| Verdict | Professional at $800 a month plus $3,000 of onboarding is a $12,600 first-year commitment before a single extra seat. Price it against hiring rather than against other software. | ||||
One detail worth knowing before you pick a contact tier: once you select one, you cannot downgrade it until your contract renews. Marketing contacts are the ones you actively market to rather than everyone in the database, so the number is manageable, but the ratchet only turns one way inside a term.
The onboarding fee nobody mentions
This is the part that surprises people, so it gets its own section. Professional and Enterprise plans on both hubs carry a required, one-time onboarding fee. Not recommended. Required.
mandatory one-time onboarding on Marketing Hub Professional, on top of $800 a month
The fees are $1,500 on Sales Hub Professional, $3,500 on Sales Hub Enterprise, $3,000 on Marketing Hub Professional and $7,000 on Marketing Hub Enterprise. They are disclosed, in a footnote, under the price. Budget for them at the start of the evaluation rather than at the contract stage, because they change the comparison against every competitor in this category. Pipedrive, Nutshell and Zoho charge nothing equivalent.
Credits, the newer meter
HubSpot now bills AI work in credits, which sit on top of the subscription. Every plan includes a monthly allowance: 500 on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, 5,000 on Enterprise. Unused credits do not carry over. Additional credits cost $9.00 per 1,000 when you pay annually.
The published consumption rates tell you how far an allowance goes:
- Customer agent: 50 credits per conversation resolved
- Prospecting agent: 100 credits per recommended outreach for one lead
- Data agent: 10 credits per smart properties run
Professional's 3,000 monthly credits therefore cover 60 resolved conversations, or 30 prospecting outreaches, or some blend. A busy inbound phone line burns that in a fortnight. At $9 per 1,000 the overage is not punishing, but it is a variable line on a bill people budget as fixed.
Separately, HubSpot now sells an answer-engine visibility tool called AEO at $50 a month, or $45 annually, tracking 25 prompts daily across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It is included with Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise. If that is the job you need doing, our roundup of AI search visibility tools compares the standalone options.
Pricing a CRM and not sure it fits?
We will look at how your leads actually arrive and tell you what you need, including when the answer is a tool we do not sell.
What a five-person team actually pays
Take a commercial HVAC company with five people who need a real sales pipeline. Sales Hub Professional on annual billing:
| Line | Year one | Year two |
|---|---|---|
| 5 seats at $90/mo annual | $5,400 | $5,400 |
| Required Professional onboarding | $1,500 | $0 |
| Credit overage (say 10,000 extra credits) | $90 | $90 |
| Total | $6,990 | $5,490 |
Add Marketing Hub Professional and year one passes $19,000. For comparison, Jobber Grow runs $149 a month, or $1,788 a year, and includes the dispatch board, job costing, invoicing and the QuickBooks sync that HubSpot does not do at all.
The honest verdict for contractors
HubSpot is a good product aimed at a different buyer. It is built for companies whose sale is the difficult part: long cycles, multiple stakeholders, content-driven demand generation, a marketing team that writes. Most home service businesses have the opposite problem. The sale is a phone call, and the difficulty is operational.
Three situations where HubSpot is the right call. Commercial contracting with nine-month pursuits across several decision makers at one facility. A company running genuine content marketing with someone accountable for it. A business already on HubSpot whose data and reporting would cost more to move than to keep.
Everywhere else, a field service platform wins on price and on fit. Our breakdown of contractor CRM categories covers the four product shapes and which trades belong in each, and the field service software roundup ranks the platforms that run schedules rather than pipelines.
If the pull toward HubSpot is really about follow-up discipline rather than software, the cheaper fix is process. Response time inside five minutes moves booking rates more than any CRM feature, which is the whole argument in our lead follow-up system guide.
Getting a HubSpot quote? Price the alternative first
We will map what you actually need against what each tier charges for it, including the tools we do not sell. Fifteen minutes, no pitch.
Frequently asked questions
How much does HubSpot cost per month?
Sales Hub runs $0 for up to 2 users, $7 per seat monthly on annual billing for Starter, $90 per seat for Professional and from $150 per seat for Enterprise. Marketing Hub Professional is a flat $800 a month with 3 seats included, and Enterprise starts at $3,600. Professional and Enterprise tiers also carry one-time onboarding fees between $1,500 and $7,000.
Is HubSpot's onboarding fee really mandatory?
Yes on Professional and Enterprise plans, and HubSpot states so in a footnote on its own pricing pages. The amounts are $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional, $3,500 for Sales Hub Enterprise, $3,000 for Marketing Hub Professional and $7,000 for Marketing Hub Enterprise. Starter and Free carry no onboarding fee.
Is the HubSpot free CRM actually free?
Yes, for up to 2 users, with no credit card required and no time limit. It covers contacts, deals, tasks and basic email, which is enough for a small operation that just needs leads to stop falling out of a notebook. The limits arrive at automation, reporting depth and seat count.
What are HubSpot credits and do I need them?
Credits meter HubSpot's AI agents. Plans include 500 to 5,000 per month depending on tier, they do not roll over, and extra credits cost $9.00 per 1,000 on annual billing. A resolved customer-agent conversation costs 50 credits and a prospecting-agent outreach costs 100, so a Professional allowance covers roughly 60 conversations a month. You only need them if you turn the agents on.
Is HubSpot worth it for a small contracting business?
Usually not. A five-person team on Sales Hub Professional pays about $6,990 in year one, against $1,788 for Jobber Grow, and Jobber also handles scheduling, invoicing and job costing that HubSpot does not. HubSpot earns its price when the sale is long and complicated rather than when the operation is.