Here's the trap. You compare starter CRMs on entry price, find that two of the three are free, and pick on feel. Entry price is the one number in this category that tells you nothing, because all three of these get expensive and none of them does it the same way.
Attio reprices your entire team at the eleventh hire. HubSpot scales with contacts you are not marketing to. Close is $19 and has a smaller integration ecosystem. Those are three completely different problems and only one of them will be yours.
So this page prices each at the point it stops being cheap, rather than at the point you sign up.
What does each one cost to start?
Attio: free up to three users, then $44 a seat. HubSpot: genuinely free with unlimited users, then $20 a seat. Close: $19 a seat with no free tier. All verified in August 2026.
HubSpot's free tier deserves its reputation. Unlimited users, contact management, deal pipelines and basic email, and most small teams could run on it for a year. Many do. It is the most effective distribution mechanism in business software and it works because the product is good.
Why does Attio's eleventh hire cost $649?
Because Attio caps seats rather than charging for them, so crossing a cap moves the whole team to a different rate.
| Team size | Tier | Rate per seat | Monthly bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Plus | $44 | $396 |
| 10 | Plus | $44 | $440 |
| 11 | Pro | $99 | $1,089 |
| 12 | Pro | $99 | $1,188 |
Free stops at three users, Plus stops at ten, and Pro is the first tier with unlimited seats. So the boundary is not a feature boundary, it is a headcount boundary, and the eleventh person raises the bill from $440 to $1,089. That is 2.48 times, on both billing bases, and the marginal cost of that one hire is $649 a month.
Two other caps bind on the same tier. Objects stop at five on Plus, which matters because reshaping objects is the reason to choose Attio in the first place. And its AI features draw on two separate credit pools, one per seat and one per workspace, with no published map of which features consume which.
How does HubSpot get expensive?
Differently, and more slowly, which is why it catches people out later. Two mechanisms compound: seat types, and contact tiers.
The contact tier is the one worth understanding. Marketing pricing scales with contacts stored, and contacts accumulate whether or not you are marketing to any of them. A list that grows through normal operation walks you up tiers nobody decided to buy.
The practical instruction our own review gives is the right one: model the price at the contact count you expect in two years, not today. The tier you are quoted describes a moment; the bill describes a trajectory.
Where does Close fit?
It is the one built for people who dial. Calling is included rather than integrated, which for an outbound team removes a separate tool instead of adding one, and at $19 a seat it is the cheapest of the three at any size above ten people.
Its trade-off is a smaller integration ecosystem than the incumbents. That is a real constraint and an easy one to check before committing: list the five tools your team touches daily and confirm each one first. If they are all there, the objection evaporates.
So which should you pick?
- Under ten people and likely to stay there: Attio, if you want to shape the data model around a sales motion that does not look like everyone else's. Watch the five-object cap on Plus, because it binds on exactly the buyer the product suits.
- Growing through ten: not Attio, unless you go straight to Pro and budget it. Crossing that boundary mid-year is a 2.48 times increase arriving in one invoice.
- Small, unsure, and want to defer the decision: HubSpot's free tier, with a calendar reminder to model your contact count in eighteen months. It is free until it is not, and the transition is gradual rather than announced.
- An outbound team that lives on the phone: Close. The built-in calling is the differentiator and $19 a seat is the lowest sustained cost here. Check your five daily integrations first.
- Still on a spreadsheet: possibly none of them yet, and there is no shame in that. We set out the four thresholds that actually trigger this decision separately.
The answer to the question everyone asks here is that the entry prices are almost identical and almost irrelevant. What you are choosing between is a headcount cliff, a contact-count drift, and a narrower integration list, and which of those three you can live with is a question about your next two years rather than your next month.