HubSpot vs Marketo: Pricing, Features and Fit in 2026

These two get compared because they meet in the middle of B2B marketing automation. HubSpot sells Marketing Hub from a free plan up to Enterprise, on top of its own CRM. Adobe sells Marketo Engage as an enterprise marketing automation product that connects to the CRM you already run. Both score leads, nurture them with email, and hand them to sales. The differences sit in pricing transparency, who has to run the platform, and where your customer data lives.

Quick facts

Pricing

HubSpot (as of October 2026). HubSpot's Marketing Hub page lists four editions in USD, each price billed monthly. Free is $0. Starter starts at $20 a month per seat. Professional starts at $890 a month with 3 seats included, and Enterprise starts at $3,600 a month with 5 seats included. For extra core seats on Professional and Enterprise, HubSpot's own pages differ: the Marketing Hub product page lists $45 per additional core seat a month, while HubSpot's product and services catalog lists additional core seats at $50 a month on Professional and $75 on Enterprise, so confirm the seat price in your quote. Professional includes 2,000 marketing contacts, and each extra block of 5,000 contacts starts at $250 a month, with the per-block price falling as you add more. Contact growth is the line to model: a database that doubles can move your bill more than the seat count does.

Marketo Engage (as of October 2026). Adobe's pricing and packaging page lists four packages and a "Get pricing" button on each, with no prices shown. Growth covers core email, segmentation, automation and measurement. Select is "essential marketing automation and measurement". Prime adds lead- and account-based marketing with journey analytics and AI personalization. Ultimate adds premium attribution. Growth includes 10 users and 20,000 API calls a day; the other three include 25 users and 50,000 API calls a day. To compare total cost with HubSpot, you need an Adobe quote for your database size and user count.

Channels

HubSpot lists email, social media management (publish, monitor and respond from one inbox), ads, WhatsApp and SMS through its mobile messaging tools, and website personalization based on CRM data. Marketo Engage lists email, web, mobile, chat, events, webinars and digital advertising, and its packaging page includes Interactive Webinars and Dynamic Chat as line items. In practice both are email-first B2B tools. Marketo leans harder into events and webinars; HubSpot leans into social and messaging inside the same app as the CRM.

Automation and journeys

Marketo Engage is built around multi-step campaigns that react to behavior and data changes, automatic updates to field values and lead scores, and cloning of successful campaigns and assets. Its packaging page also lists workspaces and partitions (included on Prime and Ultimate), and Adobe describes partitions as a way to separate leads and data for different teams. HubSpot automates email and nurture inside the same system as deals and tickets, and its Enterprise edition is the one that lists journey mapping and A/B testing on the Marketing Hub page.

• Lead scoring. Both score leads. Marketo describes "sophisticated lead scoring"; our predictive lead scoring roundup covers HubSpot's scoring.
• Account-based marketing. HubSpot's ABM tools come with Professional and Enterprise; Marketo includes Target Account Management and Predictive Audiences on Prime and Ultimate.
• Attribution. HubSpot lists multi-touch attribution under Advanced Marketing Reporting; Marketo lists attribution and ROI dashboards and Marketo Measure.

Data, CRM and integrations

This is the deciding question for many teams. HubSpot's marketing tools run on HubSpot's own CRM, so contacts, companies and deals are the same records marketing and sales both use. If sales lives in Salesforce, HubSpot's Salesforce integration syncs contacts, companies, deals and activities, and it is available with Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise. Marketo Engage keeps its own lead and account database and relies on a CRM integration for the sales side: Adobe lists a native CRM integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and Veeva in every package, plus custom data objects (10 objects, 2 million records) on Select, Prime and Ultimate.

AI features

HubSpot's Marketing Hub page lists Breeze Assistant (inside its Marketing Studio) and a set of AI agents: a content agent for blog posts, social content and landing pages, a nurture agent that rewrites each nurture email for the contact receiving it, a campaign agent that plans a campaign from a goal, and prospecting and customer agents. Adobe describes Marketo Engage as having an agentic experience with a conversational interface, generative email copy and subject lines, Firefly-powered images, two newer AI offerings called Marketo Optimizer and Marketo Qualifier, and a Marketo Engage MCP server for connecting outside AI tools. Adobe marks its AI onboarding assistant as coming soon.

Who each is for

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Startups and mid-size B2B companies that want marketing, CRM and service in one place, can start free, and expect marketers to run the system without a dedicated admin. It also suits teams that want to see the price before they talk to anyone. See the product at HubSpot Marketing Hub.

Adobe Marketo Engage

Mid-market and enterprise B2B teams with marketing operations specialists, a Salesforce or Dynamics CRM they will not replace, heavy webinar and event programs, and a need for attribution across many campaigns. Product details are at Adobe Marketo Engage.

Limits of each

HubSpot. Costs climb with contacts and seats, and the Salesforce integration and ABM tools need Professional or Enterprise, so the free and Starter plans are not a fair test of the full product. If your CRM is Salesforce and will stay that way, you are syncing two systems of record.

Marketo Engage. No published prices, so budgeting starts with a sales cycle. The Growth package includes 10 users and 20,000 API calls a day, and several features (webinars, Dynamic Chat, attribution dashboards) are not included in Growth. The platform assumes someone owns programs, tokens, scoring rules and CRM sync, and sales pipeline lives in a separate CRM.

Which should you choose

Choose HubSpot if you want one system, a price you can read today, and a team of generalist marketers. Choose Marketo Engage if your CRM is Salesforce or Dynamics, you have or will hire marketing operations staff, and your programs are complex enough that partitions, webinars and attribution packages matter more than a short setup. If you cannot decide, price both against the same brief: your contact count in 12 months, the number of people who need logins, and the three programs you run every quarter. Our guide to marketing automation software for SaaS covers that brief from the product-led side.

Alternatives worth a look

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot): B2B automation built on Salesforce CRM, with published edition prices. Our Pardot alternatives list explains it and its rivals.
• Oracle Eloqua: enterprise B2B automation with lead and account scoring and a Salesforce Integration app. It appears in our Marketo alternatives roundup.
• ActiveCampaign: email marketing and automation with published prices; see our HubSpot Marketing Hub alternatives for other options at that end.

If you are weighing HubSpot against an ecommerce-focused tool instead, our Klaviyo vs HubSpot comparison covers that decision, and our ABM platforms roundup covers dedicated account-based advertising and intent data, which sit on top of either tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is HubSpot cheaper than Marketo?
You can only compare list prices on one side. HubSpot publishes Marketing Hub prices: Starter from $20 a month per seat, Professional from $890 a month with 3 seats and Enterprise from $3,600 a month with 5 seats, all billed monthly in USD as of October 2026. Adobe does not publish Marketo Engage prices; each of its four packages is quoted through sales.

Is Marketo still called Marketo?
Adobe sells it as Adobe Marketo Engage, in four packages named Growth, Select, Prime and Ultimate. This post uses Marketo and Marketo Engage for the same product.

Do HubSpot and Marketo both work with Salesforce?
Yes. Adobe lists a native CRM integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and Veeva in every Marketo Engage package. HubSpot's Salesforce integration syncs contacts, companies, deals and activities and is available with Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Which is better for account-based marketing?
Both cover the basics. HubSpot's ABM tools (target accounts, buying roles, account lists) come with Marketing Hub and Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise. Marketo Engage includes Target Account Management in its Prime and Ultimate packages, and Adobe describes Prime as lead- and account-based marketing. Dedicated ABM platforms add account-based advertising and intent data on top of either one.

Does HubSpot have a free plan and Marketo a free trial?
HubSpot has a free Marketing Hub plan at $0 and offers a 14-day free trial of its marketing tools. Adobe's Marketo Engage pages offer a demo and custom pricing and do not list a free plan or a self-serve trial.