October 18, 2026
HubSpot Contracts vs. Subscriptions: Which One Should You Use?
HubSpot now gives you two ways to manage recurring revenue: Subscriptions and Contracts. Both can bill a customer on a schedule. They are built for different jobs, though, and the choice affects how you handle renewals, failed payments, and revenue reporting.
We recently helped a client on Revenue Hub Enterprise decide whether to move from Subscriptions to Contracts. Management needed exact answers before they would approve the change, and HubSpot’s public documentation did not have all of them. We took the questions to the client’s HubSpot Customer Success Manager and then to HubSpot Support, and we received written answers from HubSpot’s internal teams. This article includes those answers.
Contracts include features that are still in beta. Everything here reflects HubSpot’s documentation and the answers we received from HubSpot Support in October 2026. Test any billing change in a sandbox before you make it in production.
What is a Subscription in HubSpot?
A Subscription is a record that automates recurring billing. HubSpot creates one when a buyer purchases a recurring line item through a quote or a payment link, and you can also create one by hand. To charge a Subscription through HubSpot Payments, you need a paid HubSpot subscription (Starter or higher on any hub) and a business in the US, UK, or Canada. With Stripe, Subscriptions work on any plan. Subscriptions created from quotes need Revenue Hub, because quotes do.
A Subscription collects payment in one of two ways. With automatic collection, HubSpot charges a stored card or bank account on each billing date. With manual collection, HubSpot sends an invoice on each billing date and the buyer pays it.
Subscriptions work well for simple recurring billing. Two problems come up as a business grows.
Failed payments stop billing. When an automatic payment fails, HubSpot retries it and emails your admins, and your team can also retry the payment manually. Until the failed payment is resolved, however, HubSpot does not create the next invoice. Our client saw this directly: a customer whose payment failed received one notice, and then no new invoices were created. Their team had to find and follow up on each of these accounts by hand.
Revenue reporting does not match the agreement. A Subscription records what you bill, not what the customer committed to. Our client signs three-year agreements. Even with delayed billing start dates for years two and three, HubSpot reported annual recurring revenue equal to the total contract value.
What is a Contract in HubSpot?
HubSpot describes Contracts as the central record of committed revenue. When a buyer accepts or signs a quote, HubSpot creates a Contract and associates it with the quote, the deal, the contact, and the company. It also creates an order linked to the Contract.
The Contract record shows total contract value, annual contract value, monthly and annual recurring revenue, when the Contract ends, and the total billed so far. Contracts support renewals, changes during the term, and scheduled terminations, which is useful for agreements with opt-out dates. Revenue Hub also adds Contract-based reports, such as an MRR waterfall and booked total contract value.
Contracts require Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise, and creating a Contract from an accepted quote requires a Revenue Hub seat.
What is generally available, and what is in beta
Creating a Contract from an accepted quote is available now. Outside the beta, the Contract records the commitment, but payment collection stays on the quote or on a standalone invoice.
Billing, invoice creation, and payment collection on the Contract itself require one of two betas: Connected CPQ, Billing, and Payments, or Direct Create, Edit, and Renew. Creating a Contract directly, without a quote, is also in beta. The failed-payment behavior below applies to Contracts billed through these betas with HubSpot Payments.
Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise?
Contracts are included in both Revenue Hub Professional and Enterprise. HubSpot’s documentation does not list any Contract, billing, or revenue reporting feature that is available only on Enterprise. The differences are in quoting:
- Approvals. Professional supports approval workflows with up to 10 approvers. Enterprise adds multi-step approvals with up to five steps.
- Quote rules. Enterprise adds a quote rules engine to CPQ.
- E-signatures. Professional includes 25 per user per month, and Enterprise includes 50.
At the time of writing, Professional costs about $85 to $95 per seat per month, and Enterprise starts at $140 per seat per month. If Contracts and billing are your main reason to buy Revenue Hub, Professional covers them. Choose Enterprise if you need multi-step approvals or quote rules.
How Contracts handle failed payments
This was the question that mattered most for management approval. HubSpot Support confirmed the following in writing in October 2026.
Invoicing continues. A Contract creates an invoice at every billing interval, whether or not earlier payments succeeded. Invoicing stops only when the billing schedule ends or the Contract is terminated.
Each open invoice gets its own reminders. Reminders follow each invoice’s due date and your portal’s reminder settings, up to 10 reminders per invoice. A reminder is skipped if the invoice has been paid or voided, if a payment is processing or scheduled, or if the invoice is managed by HubSpot’s AR agent.
The customer receives one “Payment failed” email per invoice. The email includes a link to update the payment method.
Updating the card collects everything that is owed. When the customer updates their payment method, HubSpot charges every failed or overdue invoice on the Contract, starting with the oldest. Invoices that are already due are charged right away, invoices that are not yet due wait for their due date, and future invoices use the new payment method.
A failed payment does not change the Contract. The Contract’s status stays the same and billing continues. The billing schedule shows Past due or Delinquent, but that status is for display only.
Failed payments on Contract invoices are not retried. This is the important gap. HubSpot does not retry a failed Contract invoice, automatically or manually. Manual retries currently work only for Subscriptions. Each new invoice makes its own attempt to charge the card on file, but an invoice that fails stays open until the customer pays it or updates their card. HubSpot told us that automatic and manual retries for invoices are on the roadmap, without a date.
One more detail is worth knowing. HubSpot’s own support AI first told us that failed Contract payments are retried up to four times in 30 days. A HubSpot Support specialist later corrected this: that schedule comes from the Subscriptions documentation and does not apply to Contract invoices. If you are making a decision based on billing behavior, ask HubSpot Support for written confirmation from a person.
How the Contract term affects your numbers
The term you set on each line item decides what the Contract can report.
If a line item is set to Automatically renew until canceled, the term has no end. The Contract shows “Until canceled” as its end date. It calculates monthly and annual recurring revenue, but total contract value and annual contract value stay empty, because an agreement with no end has no total.
If every line item has a fixed term, the Contract ends on the latest line item’s end date, and HubSpot calculates total and annual contract value. If you report on contract value, use fixed terms.
Side-by-side comparison
| Subscriptions | Contracts | |
|---|---|---|
| Required plan | Any paid hub (Starter or higher) with HubSpot Payments, or any plan with Stripe. Subscriptions created from quotes need Revenue Hub. | Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise |
| How it is created | From a quote, a payment link, or by hand | When a quote is accepted; directly in beta |
| Billing on the record | Yes | In beta |
| Invoicing after a failed payment | Stops until the payment is resolved | Continues on schedule |
| Retries after a failed payment | Automatic and manual | None yet (on HubSpot’s roadmap) |
| Reminders after a failed payment | Stop with the paused billing | For each open invoice, up to 10 each |
| Total and annual contract value | Not on the record | Yes, with fixed terms |
| Pause and resume | Yes | Not yet (workaround with change quotes) |
What Contracts do not solve yet
Contracts fixed most of our client’s problems, but not all of them.
- No payment retries. As described above, your team needs to follow up on failed invoices until HubSpot releases retries for invoices.
- No pause and resume. HubSpot’s documented workaround is a change quote that removes the recurring line items, and a second change quote that adds them back.
- Annual price increases. Revenue Hub does not have a setting for yearly price increases. For a multi-year agreement, you can build the increases into the quote with a separate line item for each year, each with its own price and a delayed billing start date. This works with Revenue Hub alone if you are comfortable creating a new Contract each time an agreement ends. If you want the increases to continue automatically with no end date, you need custom code, which requires Data Hub.
When to choose each one
Choose Contracts when you sell through quotes, when your agreements run longer than a year, or when leadership needs to see committed revenue and not only what has been billed. Contracts are also the better choice if failed payments are causing billing to stop and accounts to fall through the cracks.
Stay on Subscriptions when billing is simple and self-serve: month-to-month plans, payment links, and no quotes. Subscriptions also make sense if you do not have Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise, or if automatic payment retries matter more to you than continued invoicing.
If you already use Subscriptions
HubSpot does not convert existing Subscriptions into Contracts. When you turn on the beta, new accepted quotes create Contracts, and existing Subscriptions keep running until they end or you cancel them. For a period, your team will manage both.
If you want to move active agreements to Contracts instead of waiting for them to end, the work needs to be planned and tested in a sandbox first. HubSpot’s documentation recommends a full test in a sandbox, especially if you import revenue history, because historical MRR waterfall data cannot be corrected after it is imported. Confirm with HubSpot Support how stored payment methods carry over for your account, so customers do not have to re-enter their card details.
Timing matters as well. Our client planned the change for after a busy financial period, with the setup done in advance in the sandbox and the switch in production done over a single weekend. We will cover the full process in a separate article.
Common questions
Do I need Revenue Hub to use Contracts?
Yes. Contracts require Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise, and the user who creates a Contract from a quote needs a Revenue Hub seat.
Can I use Contracts without HubSpot Payments?
Yes. A Contract can record the commitment, and you can record payments manually. Automatic billing and payment collection on the Contract require one of the betas described above.
What happens to my existing Subscriptions if I start using Contracts?
Nothing. They keep billing until they end or you cancel them.
Does a Contract retry a failed card payment?
Not as of October 2026. Each new invoice tries the card on file, and updating the card collects every overdue invoice, but a single failed invoice is not retried. HubSpot has said retries for invoices are on its roadmap.