Best CRM for Freelancers: The Feature You Came For Is One Tier Up

Six CRMs aimed at freelancers advertise entry prices between $0 and about $29 a month. Read the plan tables instead of the plan cards, though, and a pattern shows up in five of the six: the feature that earns the tool its reputation is not on the plan whose price you remember.

Bonsai’s Basic plan lists “CRM” at $9 per user per month — but the deals pipeline, the drag-a-lead-through-stages view people actually mean when they say CRM, appears two tiers up on Premium at $29. HoneyBook’s Starter at $29 a month gives you invoices, proposals and a client portal, and no automations at all; the automated inquiry sequences it is known for start on Essentials at $49. Dubsado’s Starter plan is $335 a year and does not include automated workflows either — those are Premier, $525.

That gap is the single most useful thing to know before you pick one, and it is invisible if you compare the six headline numbers. So this comparison is organised around a different question: what does the tier that does the job you are hiring it for actually cost?

All prices below were re-read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 17 October 2026, in USD, on annual billing unless stated otherwise. Software pricing moves fast: Pipedrive’s Growth plan, for example, is listed at $39 per seat today against the $24 we recorded on 9 September. Check the linked page before you buy, and see Wikipedia’s entry on customer relationship management if you want the category definition rather than the vendors’ versions of it.

What each tool costs at the tier that does the job

Tool	Entry plan	What entry actually includes	The feature most people come for	Tier that unlocks it
HubSpot	Free, $0	Contact management, deals and email logging; free with no time limit	Deal pipeline	Included on Free
Pipedrive	Lite, $14/seat/mo ($168/yr)	Pipeline, leads, calendar, 500+ integrations	Automations, full email sync	Growth, $39/seat/mo ($468/yr)
Bonsai	Basic, $9/user/mo	Time tracking, tasks, client records — no invoices or contracts	Deals pipeline	Premium, $29/user/mo
HoneyBook	Starter, $29/mo	Invoices, proposals, contracts, client portal, 2 lead forms	Automations, scheduler	Essentials, $49/mo
Dubsado	Starter, $335/yr	Unlimited projects, invoicing, form and email templates	Automated workflows, scheduling	Premier, $525/yr
Streak	Free tools, $0	Email tracking, snippets, mail merge — no pipelines	Pipelines and records	Pro, $49/user/mo (annual billing)

Sources: Bonsai pricing, HoneyBook pricing, Dubsado pricing, HubSpot pricing, Pipedrive pricing and Streak pricing, all consulted 17 October 2026.

The three all-in-ones, and where their price really sits

Bonsai, HoneyBook and Dubsado are not really CRMs. They are client-operations suites that happen to include a CRM, which is why freelancers keep landing on them: one login for the lead, the contract, the invoice and the hours. The trade-off is that the tier ladder is built around bundling, so the piece you want tends to sit above the piece you were quoted.

Bonsai: cheapest door, most expensive pipeline

Bonsai’s four tiers are Basic $9, Essentials $19, Premium $29 and Elite $49, all per user per month billed annually, with Elite requiring a three-user minimum. Basic is the plan people cite, and it genuinely includes client records, unlimited projects and time tracking. What it does not include is invoicing, contracts or proposals — those begin on Essentials — and it does not include the deals pipeline, which is a Premium feature alongside custom fields, Gantt view and the QuickBooks and Zapier integrations.

So the realistic Bonsai number for a freelancer who wants the all-in-one experience is $19 a month if you mainly need billing and paperwork, or $29 if lead-stage tracking is the actual reason you are shopping. Bonsai’s own page lists monthly-billing rates of $15, $25, $39 and $59 for the same four tiers, so the annual commitment matters. Its invoicing side is compared with standalone tools in our invoicing software comparison.

HoneyBook: you are paying for the automations, so budget for Essentials

HoneyBook’s Starter is $29 a month billed yearly and is a complete client-facing kit — unlimited clients and projects, invoices and payments, proposals and contracts, calendar, client portal, up to two live lead forms. It is a good plan. It also has no automations and no scheduler, and automations are the thing HoneyBook is genuinely best at.

Essentials at $49 a month adds the automations; Premium is $109. Payment processing is a separate line item on every tier, and HoneyBook’s own page is not consistent about it: the FAQ quotes card payments from 2.7% + 10¢, the plan comparison table says 2.9% + 25¢, and bank transfers are 1.5%. Model the fees against your real monthly invoicing before comparing totals, because they can outweigh the subscription itself.

If the fee structure is the sticking point, our Dubsado vs HoneyBook comparison shows how the two handle payments and automations.

Dubsado: flat annual pricing, automations on the upper plan

Dubsado lists flat plan prices rather than per-user pricing: Starter is $335 a year and Premier is $525 a year, and its page says annual billing saves two months’ worth. Starter covers unlimited projects and clients, invoicing with payment plans, and form and email templates. Premier is where the automated workflows, scheduling, public proposals and Zapier integration live.

A flat annual price is easier to forecast than per-seat pricing, which is worth something once a subcontractor or VA joins you. 17hats vs Dubsado puts the automation ceiling side by side with its closest competitor.

If you are still deciding whether a CRM belongs in your setup at all, do freelancers need a CRM works through that question before you spend anything.

The two pure CRMs, where the pricing is more honest

HubSpot and Pipedrive do one job: track leads and deals. Neither pretends to send your contracts, and they are the two tools here that sell as standalone CRMs rather than client-operations suites, which says a lot about who each product is built for.

HubSpot’s free tier is the genuine exception to this article’s whole thesis: its pricing page calls the CRM “100% free. Forever.” and the free tools cover contacts, deals and email logging. Paid tiers are priced on a separate HubSpot page that we did not price here. If your only problem is that leads go quiet because you forgot them, the free tier solves it for nothing, and it sits comfortably inside a freelance stack under $30 a month.

Pipedrive follows the pattern again: Lite is $14 per seat per month billed annually ($168 a year) and gives you the pipeline, leads, calendar and integrations. Automations, nurturing sequences and full email sync with tracking begin on Growth, $39 per seat per month ($468 a year); Premium is $59. If you are choosing between these two specifically, Pipedrive vs HubSpot for freelancers works through which side of that decision you are on.

Streak’s free CRM is gone, and that changes the old advice

For years the standard recommendation for a Gmail-native freelancer was Streak’s free plan. That plan no longer includes a CRM. Streak’s pricing page now offers its email tools free forever — link and open tracking, snippets, mail merge capped at 50 a day, thread splitter — while records, private and shared pipelines, custom fields and email sharing all start on Pro at $49 per user per month billed annually, or $59 billed monthly. Pro+ is $69 and Enterprise $129 on annual billing.

At $49 a month, Streak is the most expensive way in this comparison to get a basic pipeline, and it is worth saying plainly: if you found Streak on a list written before 2026, the reason it was on that list has been removed. HubSpot’s free tier now occupies the position Streak used to hold as the free pipeline option.

Twelve months, one person, cheapest plan that actually tracks a pipeline

Tool	Cheapest plan with a working pipeline	Cost for 12 months, 1 seat
HubSpot	Free	$0
Pipedrive	Lite (annual)	$168
Dubsado	Starter (annual)	$335
HoneyBook	Starter (annual)	$348
Bonsai	Premium (annual)	$348
Streak	Pro (annual)	$588

Add the tier you would realistically upgrade to and the ranking shifts again: HoneyBook Essentials is $588 a year, Dubsado Premier $525, Pipedrive Growth $468. Bonsai Premium already is the upgrade. Only HubSpot stays at zero, and only because it is not trying to sell you contracts.

Which one fits, and when none of them do

You want lead tracking and nothing else: HubSpot Free. It costs nothing, it does not expire, and pairing it with a standalone invoicing tool from our invoicing software comparison is cheaper than any all-in-one on this page.

You pitch a lot and lose deals in follow-up: Pipedrive Lite at $168 a year, upgrading to Growth ($468 a year) only once you can name the specific sequence you want automated.

You want one login for leads, contracts and invoices, and you work internationally: Dubsado Starter at $335 a year, because a flat annual price is easy to forecast as your client list grows.

You are US or Canada based and client experience is the selling point: HoneyBook — but price it at Essentials, $49 a month, and model the card processing fees against your actual invoicing volume before committing. Dubsado vs HoneyBook covers the comparison people run next.

You should skip a CRM entirely if: you take on fewer than three or four new clients a year and most of your work is repeat business. A spreadsheet with a follow-up date column and a recurring calendar reminder does the same job for free. A CRM starts earning its subscription somewhere around five to ten live conversations at once — before that, the tool becomes another thing you forget to open. If paperwork rather than leads is the bottleneck, the proposal software guide and our Better Proposals review are the more useful place to spend the money, and the rest of the proposals, contracts and CRM section covers the surrounding decisions.

Questions worth asking before you pay

Does Bonsai’s cheapest plan include a CRM or not?
Both answers are technically true, which is the problem. Basic at $9 includes client records and a service library, so Bonsai calls it CRM. The deals pipeline — stages you drag a lead through — is a Premium feature at $29. If you want the pipeline, budget for Premium.

Is HubSpot’s free CRM really free, or does it expire?
It does not expire: HubSpot’s pricing page says the CRM is free forever. The upsell to paid tiers is real, but it is an upsell, not a countdown.

Why is Dubsado cheaper than it looks?
Because the annual plan is a flat $335 for Starter and Dubsado’s page says annual billing saves two months’ worth. Automated workflows only arrive on Premier, $525 a year.

What replaced Streak’s free CRM?
Nothing at Streak: pipelines now start at Pro, $49 per user per month on annual billing. For a freelancer who wants a free pipeline, HubSpot’s free tier is the closest equivalent.