Free CRM in 2026: what HubSpot, Zoho CRM and Pipedrive actually give you for nothing

Which CRMs are actually free in 2026?

Two of the three tools compared here have a free plan with no time limit: HubSpot, for up to 2 users, and Zoho CRM, for up to 3 users. Pipedrive does not: it offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and then you pick a paid plan.

So “free” means different things depending on the vendor. At HubSpot and Zoho, it is a free CRM you can keep for as long as your team fits within the user cap. At Pipedrive, it is a test period. Every price on this page was read on the vendors’ official pricing pages on September 23, 2026.

What does each free CRM plan include?

The table below sums up what is included, the limit the vendor publishes, and what the next step costs.

Two caveats. HubSpot’s pricing page does not confirm a contact cap for the free CRM, so we do not state one. Zoho, for its part, only publishes the 3-user limit in its pricing data; storage and the modules included in the free plan are not quantified by the vendor in what we checked.

How far can you go with HubSpot’s free CRM?

HubSpot’s free CRM covers the core of sales tracking: contact management, deal pipelines, file import and a reporting dashboard. It has no time limit and supports up to 2 users.

Things get more involved once you pay. Sales Hub Starter has a base price of $20 per seat a month, with 500 HubSpot credits. The page currently shows a limited-time offer for new customers, at $7 billed yearly or $10 billed monthly, but it is temporary. The next plan, Professional, jumps to $100 per seat a month ($90 billed yearly) and comes with a mandatory one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. Enterprise is listed at $150 per seat billed yearly, with a $3,500 onboarding fee.

In our reading, this is the real question with HubSpot: its free entry point is the most complete of the three, but the gap between Starter and Professional is wide. A team that expects to rely on Professional’s automation should budget for that jump from day one rather than discover it when upgrading.

On data, HubSpot runs an EU data center in Frankfurt, on AWS. Accounts are assigned by IP location at sign-up, and European customers are normally hosted in the EU.

Which team is Zoho CRM’s free plan built for?

Zoho CRM is free forever for up to 3 users, one more than HubSpot. That makes it the free plan that lasts longest as a team grows.

Its first paid tier is also among the cheapest here: Standard costs $14 per user a month billed yearly, or $20 billed monthly, plus local taxes. It adds assignment rules, workflows, AI agents, follow-up cadences, reports and sales forecasting. Professional moves to $23 billed yearly, Enterprise to $40 and Ultimate to $52. The annual discount varies by plan and reaches up to 34%.

The trade-off is the learning curve: Zoho CRM comes with many settings and options, which takes more time at the start. On data, accounts created on zoho.eu are stored and processed in the EU, in Amsterdam (primary) and Dublin (secondary). Zoho lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications.

Why doesn’t Pipedrive have a free plan?

Pipedrive chose a trial over a free plan: 14 days, no credit card, then a paid plan. It appears here as a counterexample, because it often shows up in free CRM searches even though it does not offer one.

Its prices, read with annual billing, start at $14 per seat a month for Lite, then $24 for Growth, $49 for Premium and $69 for Ultimate. The monthly billing price was not readable on the pricing page when we checked. Worth knowing: Lite does not include full Gmail and Outlook email sync, which comes with Growth.

Fourteen days is enough to judge a visual pipeline. It is not enough to tell whether a CRM will hold up over six months of real use, which is exactly what a permanent free plan lets you find out.

When is a free CRM no longer enough?

A free plan stops being enough in three situations, all easy to spot.

Your team outgrows the user cap. A third user takes you off HubSpot’s free plan; a fourth, off Zoho CRM’s. If four users move to Zoho’s Standard plan billed yearly, the bill is $56 a month (4 × $14).

You want to automate follow-up. At Zoho CRM, workflows, follow-up cadences and sales forecasting come with Standard. At Pipedrive, automations and sequences start with Growth, at $24 per seat billed yearly.

You need advanced sales features. Quotes with pricing rules (CPQ) and guided processes are in Zoho CRM Professional, at $23 billed yearly. Pipedrive’s lead generation and routing (LeadBooster) sits in Premium, at $49 billed yearly.

Which free CRM fits your team?

• Solo or a pair, with marketing needs ahead: HubSpot, whose free CRM is the most complete of the three and which brings sales, marketing and customer service into one suite.
• Three people, tight budget once you leave the free plan: Zoho CRM, free for up to 3 users, then $14 per user billed yearly.
• A sales team ready to pay for a simple pipeline: Pipedrive, to test for 14 days with no card before committing.

Our overall scores, calculated on five criteria (price, free plan, ease of use, features, GDPR), put HubSpot and Zoho CRM at 4.3 out of 5 and Pipedrive at 4.1. The gap comes mostly from the free plan criterion: 5 for HubSpot, 4.5 for Zoho CRM, 2.5 for Pipedrive.