What a CRM costs per year: six options, one table, no rounding
Monthly prices are easy to compare and easy to get wrong. Annual cost is what actually leaves your bank account, and it exposes currency, seat minimums and tier jumps that a monthly figure hides. Here is the full year for six realistic options — including the ones that are free, because free is a legitimate answer and it is usually the right one at one user.
The table
| Option / tier | 1 user | 3 users | 5 users | 10 users | 20 users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Free | $0 | Not available — free plan caps at 2 users | |||
| HubSpot Starter | — | Per seat + metered contacts | Per seat + metered contacts | Per seat + metered contacts | Per seat + metered contacts |
| Pipedrive Lite (€14/seat/mo) | €168 | €504 | €840 | €1,680 | €3,360 |
| Pipedrive Growth (€39) | €468 | €1,404 | €2,340 | €4,680 | €9,360 |
| Streak Pro ($49/seat/mo) | $588 | $1,764 | $2,940 | $5,880 | $11,760 |
| ClickUp Core ($9) as CRM | $108 | $324 | $540 | $1,080 | $2,160 |
| Notion Plus ($10) as CRM | $120 | $360 | $600 | $1,200 | $2,400 |
| systeme.io Unlimited (flat) | $1,164 | $1,164 | $1,164 | $1,164 | $1,164 |
| systeme.io Startup (flat) | $204 | $204 | $204 | $204 | $204* |
What that table actually says
- Free is the correct answer at one or two people. HubSpot's free CRM includes contacts, deals, tasks, tracking and dashboards. Everything below $500/year on this table is buying convenience, not capability.
- Pipedrive is cheaper than Streak at every headcount, by a lot. At ten users, €1,680 against $5,880. Streak's premium buys one thing: pipelines that live inside Gmail. That is a real benefit and an expensive one.
- Streak is the only option here whose annual cost exceeds $10,000 at twenty users. Any team that size should be asking whether the inbox-native thesis is worth five figures a year.
- Flat pricing inverts with headcount. systeme.io Startup at $204 is the second-cheapest option at three users and the cheapest at twenty — but only until its contact cap.
The three numbers not in the table
- Currency. Pipedrive prices in euros. On the largest line in your budget, exchange-rate movement is a real annual variance, and we have deliberately left the figures nominal rather than converting at a rate we cannot vouch for.
- Add-ons. Pipedrive's LeadBooster is €32.50/month — at five seats that is €390/year, which is 46% on top of a Lite subscription. Campaigns €13.33, Projects €16, Web Visitors €41, Smart Docs €32.50. Most teams buy at least one.
- HubSpot's metered lines. Starter includes 1,000 marketing contacts and a monthly send allowance. Exceed either and the per-seat figure stops describing your bill.
The number nobody puts in a spreadsheet
Administration. A CRM needs someone to keep the pipeline honest, and that is roughly 20 minutes a week per team — about 17 hours a year. At $75/hour that is $1,275, which is more than a year of Pipedrive Lite at three users and more than ClickUp at ten.
That reframing matters: the subscription is rarely the expensive part of a CRM. The expensive part is the human attention required to keep it true, and it is the same regardless of which tool you pick. Which means the cheapest CRM is the one your team will actually keep updated — a conclusion that pricing tables cannot reach.
How to use this table
- Find your headcount column. Ignore the rest.
- Cross out anything that needs a feature you would not use. A CRM at twenty users is a different purchase from a CRM at one.
- Add 20% for add-ons and 100% for the first year's mistakes. Both are near-universal.
- Compare against one closed deal. If the annual cost is less than the value of one customer, the decision is not really about money — it is about whether the tool gets used. We wrote about that in when an upgrade pays for itself.
What we cannot verify
Prices come from vendor pricing pages verified October 23, 2026, on annual billing, and we re-check quarterly. Figures are per plan tier as published; none of them include taxes, add-ons, or overage. Pipedrive's euro figures and Streak's dollar figures are nominal, not converted. HubSpot's Starter pricing was served in Singapore dollars due to geo-detection, so we describe its structure rather than printing a currency total we cannot stand behind. Our hands-on testing cycle is in progress — we have not run a full twelve-month billing cycle on any of these, so renewal behaviour is unverified. See How We Test.