By Alpit Patel and the aibrevo team · October 22, 2026 · 6 min read
What Are the Limits of HubSpot Starter?
Quick answer
HubSpot Starter caps workflows at 50 with restricted triggers and actions, pipelines at 15, dashboards at 30, API calls at 250,000 a day and email sends at 5 times your marketing contact tier each month. Sequences, forecasting, calculated properties and association labels need Professional, and custom objects need Enterprise.
Key takeaways
- Sales Hub Starter allows up to 50 workflows with restricted triggers and actions, up to 15 pipelines per account, 30 dashboards with 50 reports each, 10,000 email templates and 5,000 snippets (HubSpot pricing pages, checked Oct 22, 2026).
- Email sending is tied to marketing contacts: Marketing Hub Starter allows 5 times your marketing contact tier per calendar month, so 5,000 sends at the included 1,000 contacts. Professional is 10 times and Enterprise 20 times.
- API limits for Free and Starter are 100 requests per 10 seconds and 250,000 per day. Two capacity packs at $500 a month each raise the daily total to 2,250,000, per HubSpot's technical limits page.
- Professional-only features include sequences (Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional and above), calculated properties, association labels, forecasting, fully customizable workflows and phone support. Custom objects are Enterprise only, per HubSpot's data-limits article.
- Starter includes 500 HubSpot Credits a month that do not roll over, and extra credits cost $0.010 each. HubSpot's own pages disagree on whether Starter gets workflows at all, so test in a trial before relying on it.
HubSpot Starter is capped in five places that matter: 50 workflows with restricted triggers and actions, 15 pipelines, 30 dashboards, 250,000 API calls a day, and email sends of 5 times your marketing contact tier per month. Sequences, forecasting, calculated properties and association labels are not in Starter at all, and custom objects need Enterprise.
This page tables those limits from HubSpot’s pricing pages, product catalog, technical limits page and knowledge base, all read on October 22, 2026. Where HubSpot’s own pages disagree, the page says so. The wider plan sheet, with seat prices for 5, 10 and 25 users, is on HubSpot pricing and limits 2026.
What are the usage limits on HubSpot Starter?
These are the numbers HubSpot prints for Starter, with Free and Professional beside them where the same page gives them.
| Limit | Free | Starter | Professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Users | 2 | purchased seats, seat cap not stated | purchased seats |
| Workflows (Sales Hub) | not listed | up to 50, restricted triggers and actions | up to 300, fully customizable |
| Pipelines per account | not listed | up to 15 | up to 100 |
| Dashboards | 10 | 30 | 75 |
| Reports per dashboard | 50 | 50 | 50 |
| Email templates per account | 3 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Canned snippets | 3 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Meeting links | 1, with HubSpot branding | 1,000, branding removed | 1,000, branding removed |
| Playbooks | not listed | up to 5 | up to 5,000 |
| HubSpot Credits per month | not listed | 500 | 3,000 |
| Support | not listed | email only | email and phone |
| Email automation (Marketing) | 1 automated action | up to 10 automated actions | not on the page we read |
| CRM segments | 10 active, 1,000 static | up to 50 active, 1,000 static | not on the page we read |
Source: hubspot.com/pricing/sales, hubspot.com/pricing/crm and hubspot.com/pricing/marketing/starter, checked Oct 22, 2026. “Not listed” means the page gave no figure for that tier, not that the limit is zero. The Marketing Hub Starter page shows 1 automated action, while the Customer Platform page shows up to 10, so email automation depends on which Starter you buy.
How many contacts and records can you have on HubSpot Starter?
HubSpot’s technical limits page gives 1,000 contacts for free accounts and 15 million for paid accounts, and does not give a Starter-only figure. The Free tools pricing page repeats the 1,000-contact cap and adds 1,000 across other standard objects.
Your bill depends on a different count: marketing contacts. Marketing Hub Starter includes 1,000 marketing contacts, Professional 2,000 and Enterprise 10,000, and the page does not list a price for extra ones. Contacts you mark as non-marketing are not part of that bill. The catalog also notes that the 15 million limit is shared across objects and that limits are not additive across products.
Association limits are separate: a record can hold up to 10,000 associations of one type on Free and 250,000 on Starter, Professional or Enterprise, with fixed exceptions such as 1,000 contacts per deal. If imports fail on a limit, how to fix HubSpot import errors lists the messages.
What is the HubSpot Starter email sending limit?
Marketing Hub Starter allows 5 times your marketing contact tier in email sends per calendar month. At the included 1,000 contacts, that is 5,000 sends. HubSpot’s catalog words it as 5 times per contact per month and says no separate email sending fees apply.
Buying more marketing contacts raises the send limit with it, because the limit is a multiple of the tier you pay for.
What are the HubSpot Starter API limits?
Free and Starter share the lowest API limits.
| Limit | Free and Starter | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requests per 10 seconds | 100 | 190 | 190 |
| Included calls per day | 250,000 | 650,000 | 1,000,000 |
| With 1 capacity pack (+$500 a month) | 1,250,000 a day, 350 per 10 seconds | 1,650,000, 440 per 10 seconds | 2,000,000, 440 per 10 seconds |
| With 2 capacity packs (+$1,000 a month) | 2,250,000 a day, 600 per 10 seconds | 2,650,000, 690 per 10 seconds | 3,000,000, 690 per 10 seconds |
Source: HubSpot Product and Services Catalog, Technical Limits, “API Calls” and “API Rate Limits”, checked Oct 22, 2026. HubSpot allows a maximum of two capacity packs. Our earlier page on pricing used 625,000 for Professional from HubSpot’s developer docs, and the catalog now says 650,000; use the catalog figure and recheck before you size an integration.
Our CRM API rate limits comparison sets these against other platforms.
Which features are locked to Professional or Enterprise?
| Feature | Starter | Where HubSpot says so |
|---|---|---|
| Sequences | No. Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional and Enterprise, with a Sales or Service seat | Knowledge base, “Create and edit sequences” |
| Fully customizable workflows | No. Starter’s are restricted | hubspot.com/pricing/sales |
| Workflows at all | Pricing page says up to 50 on Starter; the create-workflows article lists only Professional and Enterprise | Conflict between the two pages |
| Forecasting | Not listed for Starter; Professional has default and custom forecasting | hubspot.com/pricing/sales |
| Calculated properties | No | Knowledge base, “Track CRM data limits” |
| Association labels | No | Knowledge base, “Track CRM data limits” |
| Custom objects | No; Enterprise only | Knowledge base, “Track CRM data limits” |
| Sales, Service and Revenue Seats | Not available; Starter uses Core Seats | Product catalog, seats |
| Phone support | No, email only | hubspot.com/pricing/sales |
| Custom and template goals, coaching playlists | Not on Starter | hubspot.com/pricing/sales |
Sources: HubSpot pricing pages, Product and Services Catalog and knowledge base articles named in the table, checked Oct 22, 2026.
If a Professional feature is the reason you are reading this, the upgrade starts at $90 per seat on the pricing page, our pricing and limits page covers the required onboarding fee, and the HubSpot pricing calculator totals it for your headcount. Whether Free already covers you is the subject of is HubSpot Free or Starter better.
How much do HubSpot Credits cost on Starter?
Starter includes 500 credits a month, and extra credits are $0.010 each, so 5,000 extra credits cost $50. HubSpot says unused credits do not roll over to the next month. Credits fund metered features, so a team that uses many AI agent runs can burn through 500 early in the month.
When to get help
Starter works for one small team with one pipeline and light automation. Get help when you are hitting the workflow cap, need sequences and forecasting, want to connect Starter to other systems within the API ceiling, or are deciding whether Professional is worth the onboarding fee. aibrevo implements HubSpot and seven other CRMs and quotes per project. You can book a short call or send a message, and the HubSpot service page lists what we build. For a side-by-side with a flat-priced alternative, see HubSpot vs Pipedrive.
Sources
- HubSpot, Sales Hub pricing, checked Oct 22, 2026.
- HubSpot, Free tools and Customer Platform pricing, checked Oct 22, 2026.
- HubSpot, Marketing Hub pricing and Marketing Hub Starter, checked Oct 22, 2026.
- HubSpot, Product and Services Catalog and Technical Limits, checked Oct 22, 2026.
- HubSpot Knowledge Base, Track CRM data limits, Create workflows and Create and edit sequences, checked Oct 22, 2026.