HubSpot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud: list prices, AI credits and EU hosting compared (October 2026)

Updated September 30, 2026 · 8 min · by Nick Schäfer

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Key takeaways

Verdict: HubSpot Sales Hub is the cheaper and simpler start with prices you can read off the page. Salesforce Sales Cloud costs more per seat but gives larger teams territories, splits, sandboxes and a bigger AI credit pool.
Where HubSpot leads: A $7 Starter seat, a free plan for 2 users, the Prospecting agent from the entry plan, and paid accounts that can move to HubSpot's German data center.
Where Salesforce leads: Core and above include conversation intelligence, opportunity scoring and 500,000 to 2.75 million Flex Credits a year, plus a German BSI C5 certification for Sales Cloud.
The number that decides: For 10 sellers, year one at list price is $12,300 on HubSpot Professional and $23,400 on Salesforce Core. The gap narrows only if Core replaces tools you pay for today.
Check before choosing: Salesforce's Starter Suite and Pro Suite sit outside its ISO 27001, SOC and C5 scope as of September 22, 2026. If your security review needs those, budget for Core.

HubSpot Sales Hub and Salesforce Sales Cloud are the two names most sales teams put side by side when they pick a CRM, and on September 30, 2026 Google suggested ten follow-up searches for "hubspot vs salesforce" in English and ten in German, led by pricing. Both now sell AI agents inside the CRM, and both changed how they price them in 2026: HubSpot meters AI in HubSpot Credits, and on September 3, 2026 Salesforce introduced Core, Advanced and Max, which take the place of Enterprise and Unlimited on its price list.

We read both pricing pages, HubSpot's product catalog and credit rate sheet, Salesforce's Agentforce price list and its security documentation on September 30, 2026, and added counts from the ai-toolfinder directory. We sell neither product and are paid by neither vendor. All prices are list prices in US dollars as the vendors publish them; discounts in a real quote are not included.

HubSpot Sales Hub or Salesforce Sales Cloud: the verdict

HubSpot Sales Hub

Pick HubSpot Sales Hub if you have up to a few dozen sellers, want to start free or at $7 a seat, and want AI agents billed per result from the entry plan.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Pick Salesforce Sales Cloud if you need territories, opportunity splits, approval processes and sandboxes, expect heavy AI use, or your auditors ask for ISO 27001 and C5 on the CRM itself.

HubSpot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud: comparison table

HubSpot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud
	HubSpot Sales Hub	Salesforce Sales Cloud
Entry paid plan (Sept. 2026)	Starter $7/seat/mo billed annually, $20 monthly	Starter Suite $25/user/mo, monthly or annual billing
Middle tier	Professional $90/seat/mo annually, $100 monthly	Pro Suite $100/user/mo, billed annually
Upper tiers	Enterprise $150/seat/mo	Core $195, Advanced $395, Max $550/user/mo, annually
One-time fees	Onboarding $1,500 (Professional), $3,500 (Enterprise)	None listed; Premier Success on Pro Suite: 30% of net license fees
Free option	Free plan for up to 2 users	Free Suite at $0; 30-day trial
AI capacity included	500, 3,000 or 5,000 HubSpot Credits per month	500,000, 1M or 2.75M Flex Credits per org per year (Core to Max)
Extra AI	$0.01 per credit, or $10 per 1,000-credit pack	$500 per 100,000 Flex Credits, $2 per conversation
Prospecting agent	From Starter, 100 credits per lead	Add-on in Core and Advanced, included in Max
EU hosting	AWS in Germany; paid accounts can switch	Data center in Germany, backup in France; EU Operating Zone
Certifications	SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, HIPAA attestation, EU Cloud Code	ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, C5 (not Starter, Pro Suite); ISO 42001 AI
Contract	Starter can commit monthly; Professional commits annually	"Most" products on annual contracts

Compare all fields side by side, including certifications and hosting →

HubSpot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud: what it costs per year

Employees

HubSpot Sales Hub$10,080 per yearStarter, $7 × 120 × 12 months. List price per seat per month, billed annually, as of September 2026 · Source, checked September 2026

Salesforce Sales Cloud$36,000 per yearStarter Suite, $25 × 120 × 12 months. List price per user per month, billed monthly or annually, as of October 2026 · Source, checked October 2026

List prices according to the vendors, excluding VAT, setup fees, add-on modules and discounts. Currencies are not converted.

Pricing: HubSpot starts lower, and its one-time fees are the part people miss

HubSpot lists four levels for Sales Hub as of September 2026. The free plan covers up to 2 users. Starter costs $7 per seat per month when paid annually or $20 when committed monthly, Professional $90 annually or $100 per month on an annual commitment, and Enterprise $150. Professional adds a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500, Enterprise one of $3,500. From the eurozone the page shows €7, €90 and €150 with onboarding of €1,470 and €3,420.

The seat rules matter as much as the price. HubSpot's product catalog says Starter is used with Core Seats, while Professional and Enterprise need Sales Seats for full access; view-only seats cost nothing on every tier.

Salesforce publishes six rungs. Free Suite is $0, Starter Suite $25 per user per month billed monthly or annually, Pro Suite $100, then Core $195, Advanced $395 and Max $550, all billed annually. Euro prices use the same figures (25 € to 550 €). Pro Suite charges an extra $25 per user per month for API access and 30% of net license fees for the Premier Success Plan, which Core and above include.

The top of the ladder is new. On September 3, 2026 Salesforce said Core ($195) offers 70% more value than the legacy Enterprise Edition, Advanced ($395) over 50% more than Unlimited, and Max keeps the $550 of the old Agentforce 1 Edition. Existing customers keep their legacy pricing, so a renewal quote can differ from this page.

Year one for a team of 10 sellers: $12,300 on HubSpot Professional, $23,400 on Salesforce Core

To make the list prices comparable we priced one scenario: 10 sellers, paid annually, first year, no discounts, no add-ons. HubSpot Starter comes to $840 (10 × $7 × 12), Professional to $10,800 plus $1,500 onboarding, so $12,300, and Enterprise to $18,000 plus $3,500, so $21,500.

Salesforce Starter Suite comes to $3,000, Pro Suite to $12,000 before any API or Premier Success add-on, Core to $23,400, Advanced to $47,400 and Max to $66,000. Adding Agentforce for Sales at its published "from $125" per user per month would put Core at $38,400.

Read the pairs by function, not by name. HubSpot Professional and Salesforce Pro Suite land within $300 of each other in year one, and both include forecasting. Conversation intelligence is in HubSpot Professional; at Salesforce it starts with Core, together with opportunity scoring and advanced pipeline management. From year two HubSpot's onboarding fee falls away, and Professional costs $10,800 a year for the same team.

HubSpot's $7 Starter seat is one of the lowest per-seat entry prices among the 15 CRM tools with AI in our directory, where 7 charge per user and 9 offer a free plan.

AI: HubSpot charges per result, Salesforce sells credit pools, conversations and flat seats

HubSpot runs AI on HubSpot Credits: 500 a month in Starter, 3,000 in Professional and 5,000 in Enterprise, reset monthly with no rollover. Its rate sheet prices the Prospecting agent at 100 credits per lead it recommends outreach for, the Data agent at 10 credits per prompt and record, and an AI action in a workflow at 10. Extra credits cost $0.01 each, so a Starter account covers 5 prospecting leads a month and every further lead costs $1. CMSWire reported that HubSpot moved two agents to pay-per-result pricing in April 2026.

Several HubSpot sales features are still marked beta on the pricing page: Deal Progression and Deal Plans in Professional. The Notetaker and the Prospecting agent carry no beta label and start in Starter; conversation intelligence starts in Professional.

Salesforce says "AI can be added to Core and above". Core includes conversation intelligence, opportunity scoring, deal insights and the Sales Emails agent, and 500,000 Flex Credits per org per year; Advanced adds Account Research and 1 million credits; Max includes Agentforce for Sales, the Prospecting and Pipeline Management agents and 2.75 million credits. Starter Suite and Pro Suite have no Agentforce for Sales option.

Beyond the included pool Salesforce sells three meters: Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000, $2 per conversation, or a flat add-on from $125 per user per month for unmetered employee use. Salesforce's own example counts 20 credits, or $0.10, per action, so Core's yearly pool covers 25,000 such actions. At list price Core's pool is worth $2,500 a year, while the 3,000 monthly credits in HubSpot Professional are worth $30 a month, or $360 a year.

Hosting and certificates: EU data centers on both sides, a scope gap in Salesforce's entry suites

HubSpot hosts on AWS in Germany, the eastern and western US, Canada and Australia. An account gets its data center from the sign-up IP address, and paid accounts can switch; free accounts must upgrade first. HubSpot notes that usage analytics go to the US and that sub-processors may process data outside the region. Its DPA covers transfers through the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.

Salesforce's sub-processor document of September 22, 2026 describes a German data center backed up into France. On top, the Hyperforce EU Operating Zone keeps data inside the EU and Switzerland and routes support to EU-based staff. HubSpot is one of 7 CRM tools in our directory that can keep data in the EU.

Certificates are where the entry tiers differ. Salesforce's security documentation of September 22, 2026 lists ISO 27001/27017/27018, SOC 1, 2 and 3 and the German BSI C5 certification for Sales Cloud, but excludes "Salesforce Starter" and "Salesforce ProSuite" from each of them. Agentforce and Einstein are certified to ISO 42001. HubSpot's trust center lists SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, a HIPAA attestation and EU Cloud Code of Conduct Level 2; for ISO 27001 it points to its cloud providers. Of the 57 sales tools we list, 7 name ISO 42001.

Our read by team size and for teams in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Up to about 10 sellers the published numbers favor HubSpot: Starter costs $7 a seat against $25 for Starter Suite, and Professional stays below Core even with onboarding. Between roughly 10 and 50 sellers the decision turns on process depth. Territories, opportunity splits, approval processes and a partial sandbox are in Salesforce Core; HubSpot adds deal splits and a standard sandbox only in Enterprise at $150.

Above that, Salesforce's credit pools and the Max edition make heavy agent use easier to budget, while HubSpot's monthly credit reset suits steady but modest use. These size bands are our reading of the published tiers, not vendor guidance.

For teams in Germany, Austria and Switzerland three points come first. Both vendors can host in Germany, and only Salesforce offers a zone that includes Switzerland. Public bodies and regulated firms that ask for C5 get it for Sales Cloud from Core upward, not in the suites. Call recording, conversation intelligence and activity capture can measure how sellers work, so under § 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act a German works council has a say before rollout, whichever CRM you choose.

Who should pick HubSpot Sales Hub and who Salesforce Sales Cloud

Pick HubSpot Sales Hub if

You have fewer than about 10 sellers and want to start on a free plan or at $7 a seat.
You want AI prospecting from the entry plan and prefer paying $1 per researched lead over buying a credit pool.
You need monthly commitment on the entry plan while you test.
Your marketing already runs on HubSpot and you want sales on the same CRM and seat model.

Pick Salesforce Sales Cloud if

You need territories, opportunity splits, approval processes and sandboxes in the standard edition.
You expect heavy agent use and want 500,000 or more Flex Credits a year included.
Your security review requires ISO 27001, SOC 2 and BSI C5 on the CRM itself; plan for Core or above.
You want data and support kept inside the EU and Switzerland through the Hyperforce EU Operating Zone.

HubSpot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud: frequently asked questions

Is HubSpot cheaper than Salesforce?

At list price, yes, at every comparable step as of September 2026. For 10 sellers year one costs $12,300 on HubSpot Professional including onboarding and $23,400 on Salesforce Core. Salesforce Pro Suite ($12,000) is close to HubSpot Professional in cost, but conversation intelligence and opportunity scoring start at Salesforce only with Core.

Does Salesforce still sell Enterprise and Unlimited editions?

Not on its public price list. Since September 3, 2026 the pricing page shows Core, Advanced and Max in their place, at $195, $395 and $550 per user per month. Existing customers keep their legacy pricing.

How do HubSpot Credits compare with Salesforce Flex Credits?

They are different units. A HubSpot Credit costs $0.01 and the Prospecting agent uses 100 per lead. Salesforce sells Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000, and its own example counts 20 credits, or $0.10, per action.

Can I keep CRM data in the EU with both tools?

Yes. HubSpot hosts EU accounts on AWS in Germany, and paid accounts can move there. Salesforce offers a German data center with backup in France and the Hyperforce EU Operating Zone for the EU and Switzerland. Both vendors state that some processing, such as by sub-processors, can happen outside the region.

The bottom line

Price the team you will have in two years, not the one you have today. With a small team, modest AI use and no C5 requirement, HubSpot Sales Hub gives you published prices, a free start and agents billed per lead. Once you need territories, sandboxes, a large AI budget or certified scope for the whole CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud from Core upward is the better base, at roughly twice the per-seat list price of HubSpot Professional.

Sources

Independent comparison: neither vendor paid for it or reviewed it before publication. How we review