HubSpot charges by the seat. GoHighLevel charges by the agency. Both keep your contacts in the United States.
HubSpot prices per seat — US$7 to US$20 on Starter, US$90 to US$150 at Professional and Enterprise, plus a mandatory US$1,500 or US$3,500 onboarding fee. GoHighLevel prices flat: US$97, US$297 or US$497 a month with unlimited users and contacts. Both host in the US. We have built against GoHighLevel in production and never against HubSpot.
These are not the same kind of product, and the price lists prove it
HubSpot sells seats to a business. GoHighLevel sells a platform to an agency, which then runs sub-accounts for its clients. Most comparisons treat them as two CRMs and argue about features. The pricing pages tell you what they actually are.
HubSpot: “Free for up to 2 users” with 1,000 contacts, then Starter Customer Platform at “$7/mo/seat” on promotion from US$20, Sales Hub Professional at US$90 to US$100 a seat a month depending on billing term, and Enterprise at US$150 a seat (HubSpot Sales Hub pricing, fetched 3 September 2026). Professional carries a “required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $1,500” and Enterprise a “required, one-time Enterprise Onboarding for a fee of $3,500”.
GoHighLevel: Starter at US$97 a month with three sub-accounts and unlimited users, Unlimited at US$297 with unlimited sub-accounts, Agency Pro at US$497 with SaaS mode, and “Unlimited Contacts” on every tier (GoHighLevel pricing, fetched 3 September 2026). No onboarding fee is listed. Neither vendor publishes AUD pricing.
Which side of this page is experience and which is documentation
We have built against GoHighLevel in production. We have read from HubSpot in older work — pulling contacts out of it into something else — but we have never built an integration against its API in production, and we have never run a HubSpot portal for a client. Treat the HubSpot column as documentation, fetched and linked. Treat the GoHighLevel column as documentation plus scar tissue.
That asymmetry matters more here than on most comparison pages, because HubSpot publishes a great deal and we can only tell you what it says, not what it does. Where HubSpot’s documentation is clearer than GoHighLevel’s — and on rate limits it is — we have said so.
Neither of these is a product we would recommend a five-person trade business start with. A job management system with a customer list usually does the job — choosing job management software is that conversation. This page is for the business that has already decided it needs a marketing and sales platform, or the agency choosing what to run clients on.
What each API publishes
HubSpot publishes tiered limits for private apps: 100 requests per 10 seconds and 250,000 a day on Free and Starter; 190 per 10 seconds and 625,000 a day on Professional; 190 per 10 seconds and 1,000,000 a day on Enterprise. An API add-on lifts the burst to 250 per 10 seconds and adds 1,000,000 a day, purchasable at most twice. Public OAuth apps get 110 requests per 10 seconds per installed account; the search API is capped at five requests a second and 200 records a page; the daily limit resets at midnight in your account’s time zone (HubSpot API usage guidelines, fetched 3 September 2026).
GoHighLevel publishes 100 requests per 10 seconds burst and 200,000 a day, counted per marketplace app per location — so an integration serving forty sub-accounts has forty allowances — with response headers exposing both limits, more than 80 webhook events signed with Ed25519, up to 12 delivery retries, and an endpoint health monitor that pauses delivery to URLs failing more than ten percent of the time (GoHighLevel API documentation, fetched 3 September 2026; full detail on our GoHighLevel page). What it does not publish is the status code you get when you exceed the limit.
| HubSpot | GoHighLevel | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing unit | Partly Per seat per month, by hub and tier. Contact tiers on Marketing Hub. | Yes Flat per agency account: US$97, US$297 or US$497. Unlimited users and contacts. |
| Entry price published | Yes Free to two users and 1,000 contacts. Starter from US$7 a seat on promotion, US$20 list. | Yes Starter US$97 a month (US$970 a year), three sub-accounts. |
| Mandatory onboarding fee | No US$1,500 at Professional, US$3,500 at Enterprise, stated on the pricing page. | Yes None listed. |
| Rate limit published | Yes 100 to 190 per 10 seconds by tier; 250,000 to 1,000,000 a day. 429 above it. | Partly 100 per 10 seconds, 200,000 a day per app per location. Error status not published. |
| Webhooks | Partly Published and signed. Not assessed by us; we have not built a HubSpot webhook handler. | Yes 80+ events, Ed25519 signed, 12 retries, endpoint health monitoring that can pause delivery. |
| Hosting region offered | Partly AWS US East by default; an EU data centre in Frankfurt for new customers since 19 July 2021. | No United States. No Australian or EU region offered. |
| AUD pricing published | No US dollars. | No US dollars. |
| Assessed by us | No Read from in older work. Never built against in production. Documentation only. | Yes Built against in production. |
Where HubSpot wins, from its documentation
Clarity of limits. HubSpot tells you the burst, the daily cap, what you get for the add-on, what the public-app limit is and what the search API is capped at, tier by tier, in one document. GoHighLevel’s limits are published too, but the error behaviour above them is not. If you are building something serious, knowing what happens at the ceiling before you hit it is worth a lot.
A hosting choice. “HubSpot’s product infrastructure is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States East region”, and since 19 July 2021 new customers can choose “our EU data center located in Frankfurt, Germany” (HubSpot security, fetched 3 September 2026). Neither is Australia. One is a choice; GoHighLevel offers none.
And the free tier is a real product for a very small business: two users and a thousand contacts for nothing, no onboarding fee, no annual contract on Starter. GoHighLevel’s entry point is US$97 a month and it assumes you are an agency.
Where GoHighLevel wins, from experience
The price does not scale with your headcount or your database. Unlimited users and unlimited contacts on every plan means the tenth salesperson and the fifty-thousandth contact cost nothing extra. On HubSpot the tenth seat at Professional is another US$90 to US$100 a month and the onboarding fee has already been paid (HubSpot, fetched 3 September 2026).
Webhook engineering. More than 80 events, Ed25519 signatures, up to 12 retries and — unusually — a health monitor that watches whether your endpoint is actually working and pauses delivery if it is not. That last one is a double-edged feature: it protects the platform, and it means a flaky endpoint gets switched off rather than flooded. We have built against it and it behaves as documented.
And the per-location rate limit. Two hundred thousand calls a day per app per location means a multi-client integration does not have its clients competing for one allowance. That is better than most of the nine systems in our register and it deserves credit.
Both host your customer list in the United States
GoHighLevel’s own security overview places its data in the United States with no Australian region (GoHighLevel, fetched 3 September 2026). HubSpot’s default is AWS US East, with Frankfurt as the alternative. Neither offers Sydney.
A customer list is personal information. Whether that matters legally depends on whether the Privacy Act covers you, and for most trade businesses it does not (OAIC, fetched 3 September 2026). We would rather say that than invent an obligation. We are not a law firm; if you are covered, ask one, and ask the same question about anything we build for you — our answer is on ownership and security, including where our own servers are. Offshore versus local developer works through APP 8 in more detail.
- KNDR·01Covered: turnover over $3 millionPutting a customer list in either system is a cross-border disclosure. Australian Privacy Principle 8 requires reasonable steps first, and you remain accountable for what the recipient does.
- KNDR·02Covered regardless of sizeHealth service providers, businesses trading in personal information, Commonwealth contractors, credit reporting bodies and a handful of other categories the OAIC lists.
- KNDR·03Not covered: most trade businesses under $3 millionNo APP 8 obligation. Choose on price, API and product. The hosting fact is still worth knowing, because clients and insurers sometimes ask.
What we have not assessed
HubSpot as a product and as an API. We have never built a HubSpot integration in production, never run a portal, never handled a HubSpot webhook or hit its rate limit. Everything in its column is HubSpot’s own pricing, developer and security pages, fetched on one day and linked. Where its documentation is better than GoHighLevel’s we have said so; we cannot tell you whether the product is.
GoHighLevel as a marketing tool. We know its API. Whether its funnels convert, whether its email deliverability is good, whether its calendar is pleasant to use — we have no measured view and neither does most of what is written about it.
Marketing Hub pricing, which meters by contacts rather than seats and which we have not put in the table because the sales page we worked from did not render it. If you are comparing marketing rather than sales, get HubSpot’s Marketing Hub page and read the contact tiers before anything else. The capability register lists the systems we have actually built against; HubSpot is not one of them.
The questions people actually ask.
01We are a trade business, not an agency. Why would we look at GoHighLevel?
Usually you would not, unless an agency you work with runs you on it — which is common, and is often how a small business ends up with a GoHighLevel sub-account without choosing it. If that is you, the relevant facts are that your data is in the US, that the API is decent, and that you can get your contacts out. Ask the agency what happens to the sub-account if you part ways.
02Is HubSpot’s onboarding fee negotiable?
We do not know, and we would not guess. The pricing page calls it “required” at Professional and Enterprise and states the amount. Treat it as part of the year-one cost until HubSpot tells you otherwise in writing.
03You have built on GoHighLevel and not HubSpot. Is this page fair?
It is fair on what it can verify and it says where it cannot. HubSpot comes out ahead on rate-limit clarity, hosting choice and the free tier, all from its own documentation. GoHighLevel comes out ahead on flat pricing and webhook engineering, which we have seen. If HubSpot behaves better than its documentation, we would not know, and we have said so.
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