The best genuinely free CRM software for UK businesses in 2026 is Zoho CRM. It gives up to 3 users full contact management, workflow automation and 5,000 API calls a day at £0/month, forever. This guide covers CRMs with a real free tier, not a 14-day trial dressed up as “free”. It also covers the cheapest paid plans once you outgrow free, because most small teams do within a year.
Free CRM tiers exist for one reason: to get you hooked on the wider platform before you hit a wall. Zoho, HubSpot and Freshsales each give away a genuinely usable free plan capped at 2-3 users. Salesforce, Pipedrive and monday CRM don’t offer a permanent free tier at all, only a trial, so if low monthly cost matters more than £0, their cheapest paid plans matter more than any free-vs-paid debate. We checked every provider’s live UK pricing page in July 2026 and only cite what’s published there.
- Best genuinely free: Zoho CRM - £0/month forever for up to 3 users, plus 5,000 API calls a day.
- Also free: HubSpot and Freshsales - HubSpot covers 2 users and 1,000 contacts; Freshsales covers 3 users with built-in calling.
- Cheapest paid entry: £7/seat a month - HubSpot Starter and Freshsales Growth both start there, billed annually.
- Next cheapest step up: monday CRM at £10/seat/month - Basic tier, billed annually, once you outgrow a free plan’s 2-3 user cap.
- Watch the upgrade trigger - most free tiers cap you at 1-3 users or a single pipeline before automation locks behind a paid plan.
Free CRM Software Comparison Table
Every price below is verified from each provider’s live UK pricing page in July 2026. The Free-Tier Limits column shows exactly what you get for £0; the Cheapest Paid Tier column shows where the money starts once you outgrow it.
| Provider | Free-Tier Limits | Cheapest Paid Tier | Catch / Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM PICK | 3 users, forever free | £12/user/mo (Standard, annual) | Automation and AI features locked behind paid tiers |
| HubSpot | 2 users, 1,000 contacts | £7/seat/mo (Starter, annual) | Free tools carry HubSpot branding; onboarding fees on paid tiers |
| Freshsales | 3 users, basic contacts | £7/user/mo (Growth, annual) | No automation or AI on the free tier |
| Salesforce | None – limited “Free Suite” line only | £20/user/mo (Starter Suite) | No genuine free tier; jumps to £80+/user/mo at Pro Suite |
| monday CRM | None – 14-day trial | £10/seat/mo (Basic, annual) | 3-seat minimum; no permanent free plan |
| Pipedrive | None – 14-day trial | £14/seat/mo (Lite, annual) | No free tier; prices shown are ex-VAT |
| Close CRM | None – 14-day trial | $9/user/mo (Solo, annual, USD) | USD pricing; Solo capped at 1 user |
| Creatio | None | ~$55/user/mo (Platform + Sales module, USD) | $10,000/year minimum purchase; not built for small teams |
Zoho CRM EDITOR’S PICK
Zoho CRM is our pick because its free plan isn’t a crippled trial. Three users get real workflow automation, not just a contact list.
Zoho CRM’s free plan runs £0/user/month forever for up to 3 users. It includes contact management, follow-up reminders, workflow automation, up to 10 custom email templates, task, meeting and call tracking, data import and up to 10 exports, standard reports, 5,000 API calls a day and the mobile apps. That is a genuinely usable toolkit for a very small team, not a stripped-down demo. Once you need a fourth seat, or features like AI agents, CPQ or territory management, you move to a paid tier: Standard £12/user/month, Professional £18, Enterprise £35 and Ultimate £42, all billed annually with VAT added on top.
If you’re weighing Zoho against every other option first, our full CRM software comparison covers all ten providers side by side. Zoho’s free tier suits solo founders or very small teams migrating off spreadsheets; once you outgrow the 3-user cap, the jump to £12/user/month Standard is still one of the cheaper paid steps on this list.
HubSpot
HubSpot’s free CRM is generous on paper: 2 users, 1,000 contacts, no credit card. The branding on free tools and the onboarding fees on paid tiers are worth knowing before you commit.
HubSpot’s free Smart CRM covers up to 2 users with 1,000 contacts and up to 1 million records across other object types, at £0/month indefinitely. It bundles basic free versions of HubSpot’s Sales, Marketing, Service, Content and Data tools too, including live chat, email and a single deal pipeline, though these carry HubSpot branding until you upgrade. Starter removes the branding at £7/seat/month billed annually (£18/seat/month if paid monthly), the cheapest paid CRM entry point on this list alongside Freshsales.
Professional jumps to £77/seat/month annually plus a mandatory one-time £1,310 onboarding fee, and Enterprise is £135/seat/month plus a £3,050 onboarding fee, costs that rarely show up in headline pricing comparisons. HubSpot’s Trustpilot score is 1.7/5 from over 1,100 reviews, with recurring complaints about upselling and contract lock-in, though it scores considerably higher on G2 and Capterra (around 4.4/5), which suggests the Trustpilot sample skews toward complaint-driven reviewers. If you want a lighter, cheaper way to run a small pipeline, see how it compares to Pipedrive in practice.
Freshsales
Freshsales matches Zoho’s 3-user free cap and adds something neither Zoho nor HubSpot includes for free: a built-in phone system.
Freshsales’ free plan covers up to 3 users with Kanban views for contacts, accounts and deals, email templates, a built-in phone, live chat and basic contact management, no credit card required. That is a strong toolkit for a small sales team that wants to call and message leads without buying separate software. Paid tiers add AI: Growth is £7/user/month billed annually, matching HubSpot Starter as the cheapest paid entry on this list, Pro is £29/user/month, and Enterprise is £49/user/month.
Freshsales’ own Trustpilot score is 1.4/5 from 117 reviews, though that profile is merged with the wider Freshworks brand rather than Freshsales specifically, and Freshsales rates around 4.5/5 on G2 and Capterra, so treat the Trustpilot figure as directional rather than definitive. If your free-tier shortlist comes down to Zoho, HubSpot or Freshsales, our best CRM for small business guide compares all three against paid alternatives for teams past the free-tier ceiling.
Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Free CRM
Free CRM plans are built to be outgrown. Four caps force the move to paid: user count, contact volume, pipeline count and automation depth. Zoho and Freshsales cap free users at 3; HubSpot caps at 2. HubSpot’s free plan also limits you to 1,000 contacts and a single deal pipeline, so a second product line or a growing contact list forces an upgrade long before the user cap does. None of the three free plans include AI-assisted forecasting, territory management or multi-step workflow automation. Those sit behind Zoho’s Professional tier (£18/user/month), HubSpot’s Professional tier (£77/seat/month plus a £1,310 onboarding fee) and Freshsales’ Pro tier (£29/user/month). If your team is still under 3 seats, a single pipeline and basic follow-ups, a free plan will hold. The moment you need a second pipeline, more contacts than the cap allows, or automated lead routing, budget for a paid step instead of stretching the free plan past its limit.
Mapping these limits against your actual headcount and pipeline count before you commit to a free plan saves a mid-year scramble. Our CRM software costs guide breaks down what you should expect to pay at each stage of growth, from the cheapest paid seat to Enterprise-level pricing.
Cheap CRM Software When Free Isn’t Enough
None of Salesforce, Pipedrive or monday CRM offer a permanent free tier, only a trial. If a genuine £0 plan isn’t the priority and low monthly cost is, these three are the cheapest credible paid entry points once you need more seats than a free plan allows.
monday CRM
monday CRM’s Basic tier undercuts Pipedrive and Salesforce on price, and bundles quoting and invoicing that neither includes at the entry tier.
monday CRM has no permanent free tier for the CRM product itself (its separate Work Management product has an unrelated free plan, don’t confuse the two). The Basic tier starts at £10/seat/month billed annually (£13/month billed monthly), with a 3-seat minimum. It covers 1,000 active contacts and deals, one custom dashboard, 20 quotes and invoices a month and mass email. Standard steps up to £14/seat/month for 10,000 contacts and 250 monthly automations; Pro is £24/seat/month for 100,000 contacts and 25,000 monthly automations.
For a small sales team that wants built-in quoting without a separate tool, monday CRM’s Basic tier is the cheapest way onto a proper CRM once a free plan’s user cap runs out. Read our full monday CRM review for the interface and automation detail before you commit to a seat count.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive doesn’t pretend to have a free plan. What it offers instead is a straightforward, VAT-exclusive per-seat price and a full-access 14-day trial to test it first.
Pipedrive’s Lite tier starts at £14/seat/month billed annually (£168/seat/year), covering lead, calendar and pipeline management, AI-powered report creation and 500+ integrations. Growth adds full email sync and automation at £39/seat/month; Premium adds lead generation and e-signatures at £59/seat/month; Ultimate adds account security and sandbox testing at £79/seat/month. All figures are VAT-exclusive, and Pipedrive’s own pricing page states annual billing saves up to 42% against the monthly rate, though the exact monthly figure isn’t published.
Pipedrive rates highly on independent review platforms: Capterra 4.5/5, G2 4.2/5 and Gartner 4.3/5. It’s the more visual, pipeline-first option next to Salesforce’s broader but pricier platform. If you’re deciding between the two, our Salesforce vs Pipedrive comparison goes through the feature and price gap in detail, and the full Pipedrive review covers the interface hands-on.
Salesforce
Salesforce lists a £0 “Free Suite” in its pricing comparison table, but the page doesn’t itemise what it actually includes. Treat it as a marketing line-item, not a usable free CRM.
The practical Salesforce starting point is Starter Suite at £20/user/month, the only tier billed the same whether you pay monthly or annually, with a 30-day free trial across all editions and no credit card required. It covers lead, account, contact and opportunity management, built-in sales flows and lead routing. Beyond that, Pro Suite is £80/user/month billed annually, Enterprise £140/user/month, Unlimited £280/user/month and the AI-heavy Agentforce 1 Sales tier £440/user/month, a steep climb that puts Salesforce well above every other provider on this list once you scale past Starter Suite.
Salesforce suits UK SMEs that expect to outgrow a lighter CRM and want forecasting, pipeline AI and deep customisation built in from the start, rather than teams looking for the cheapest possible entry point. G2 rates it 4.4/5 across more than 95,000 reviews. Read the full Salesforce review for how Starter Suite holds up against Enterprise-tier features.
Two more providers are worth ruling out if cheap is the priority. Close CRM prices in USD, from $9/user/month (approximately £7, conservatively converted) for a single-seat Solo plan billed annually, jumping to $35/user/month for unlimited seats on Essentials. Creatio is priced in USD too, and isn’t built for small budgets at all: a working seat costs from roughly $55/user/month, a $40 Platform fee plus a $15 Sales module, with a $10,000/year minimum purchase and a standard 3-year contract. Neither has a free tier.
How to Choose Free or Cheap CRM Software
The right pick depends on whether zero cost or lowest cost matters more, and how many seats you need today versus in twelve months.
Choose Zoho CRM if you have 3 or fewer users and want the most complete free toolkit, including workflow automation. Choose HubSpot’s free CRM if you’re already leaning toward its Marketing or Service tools and can live with 2 users and branded free tools. Choose Freshsales if built-in calling matters and you’re comfortable with 3 users. Choose monday CRM if you need a paid plan today and want the cheapest per-seat entry with quoting built in. Choose Pipedrive if a visual, pipeline-first interface matters more than a low headline price. Choose Salesforce Starter Suite if you expect to scale into Enterprise-level forecasting and customisation within a year or two.
If none of the free tiers fit because you need more than 2-3 users, more contacts, or real automation, comparing paid platforms properly beats stretching a free plan past its limit. If you’re still deciding whether you need a CRM in the first place, start with what is a CRM. Teams that also want to keep spend under control alongside a new CRM might find our expense management software comparison useful too.
Last updated: July 2026. Pricing is verified against each provider’s live UK pricing page at the time of writing, and can change; always confirm current rates and free-tier limits directly with the provider. Prices for Close CRM and Creatio are shown in USD because neither publishes a GBP rate card.
