Here is how to set up lead scoring in HubSpot: open Marketing > Lead Scoring, click Create score, pick contacts, companies, or deals, add fit and engagement rules that add or subtract points, set thresholds, and turn it on. Two conditions come with it. The tool needs Marketing Hub or Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise, and it scores only what already sits in HubSpot.
That second condition is the expensive one. Job titles and email opens are easy to score because HubSpot already holds them, and they are also the weakest signals you own. Whether a lead pays you, what they complained about last week, and how often they log in all predict conversion better than any form fill, yet none of it reaches a contact record on its own.
This guide walks the native setup in five steps. The sixth covers the part HubSpot cannot do alone: a score built on billing, support, and product data, written into a custom property that works on every HubSpot tier, Free included.
To build that outside score while you read, connect HubSpot to a free workspace and pull your contacts in.
Where is lead scoring in HubSpot, and which plans have it
HubSpot's native scoring lives in the lead scoring tool, under Marketing > Lead Scoring (click More first if your menu shows it). It builds three kinds of score:
Fit, from property values such as job title or company size
Engagement, from actions such as site visits, email opens, and CTA clicks
Combined, which uses both, and is the only kind a deal can carry
The tool needs a Professional or Enterprise subscription to Marketing Hub or Sales Hub. Contact scores need Marketing Hub, and deal scores need Sales Hub.
Scores HubSpot builds for you with AI need Marketing Hub Enterprise. They also need a sample of at least 50 contacts, 25 that converted and 25 that did not.
If you run HubSpot Free or Starter, the menu item is not there at all. That reads like bad news and is actually the loophole, and step 6 below uses it.
For what it is worth, HubSpot Free is still one of the best free products in B2B software. They have to charge for something, and scoring is something. Anyway.
How to set up lead scoring in HubSpot: create the score
Manual lead scoring in HubSpot means you choose every rule and its points yourself. HubSpot's own instructions for building a lead score follow the order below. The first two steps take a minute, so write down your fit traits and the buying actions you want to reward before you start.
1. Open the lead scoring tool and create a score
Go to Marketing > Lead Scoring and click Create score. If More appears in your top menu, click it first.
2. Pick the object and the score type
Choose Contacts, Companies, or Deals. Contacts and companies take a fit, engagement, or combined score. Deals take a deal score, which is combined. Pick the type and click Create.
If you are unsure where to begin, start with a fit score on contacts. It is the easiest one to check by eye: sort by it, and the top of the list should look like your best customers.
How to set up lead scoring in HubSpot: fit criteria
3. Add fit criteria from property values
Name the score and set a score limit. The default maximum is 100 points, and the dropdown runs from a range of -100 to 100 up to -10,000 to 10,000.
Fit rules sit in property groups and read property values: job title, company size, industry, country. A rule such as "50 to 200 employees" earns points, and one such as "job title contains intern" can take them away.
A fit score reads only what is filled in, so a blank company size earns nothing. Fill the gaps first with HubSpot data enrichment, or the score ranks your emptiest records last for the wrong reason.
How to set up lead scoring in HubSpot: engagement
4. Add engagement criteria and set decay
Engagement rules sit in event groups: page views, email opens and clicks, form submissions. Turn on Decay scores to cut points by a percentage every 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. Decay keeps last year's webinar from propping up a lead that went quiet, so match it to your sales cycle.
Rules can subtract points too. If a contact's subtracted points outweigh the added ones, the score goes negative, which is why the score limits run below zero.
5. Set thresholds and turn the score on
Choose which records get scored: all of them, or only the segments you pick. Then set the thresholds:
Fit and engagement scores get High, Medium, and Low labels.
A combined score reads A1 to C3, where the letter is fit and the number is engagement, so an A1 is a strong fit who is active right now.
Click Review and turn on, then Turn on. For worked point tables and the owners, tasks, and reports a score should trigger, see these HubSpot lead scoring examples.
Legacy scores, the new tool, and a property for an outside fit score
Everything above is the new HubSpot lead scoring tool. The older HubSpot Score property stopped updating on August 31, 2025. Models built in it did not move across on their own, so any guide that tells you to edit it describes a retired tool.
The new tool still evaluates only what lives inside HubSpot: contact properties, form submissions, and the email and page activity HubSpot tracks itself. Most CRMs share this blind spot. Stripe knows who paid, the support desk knows who is frustrated, and only the product database can say who has gone quiet.
Signal | Where it lives | On the contact record? |
|---|---|---|
Job title, company size | HubSpot | Yes |
Email opens, form fills | HubSpot | Yes |
Plan and MRR | Stripe | No |
Trial end date | Stripe | No |
Open and escalated tickets | Support desk | No |
Last login, seats invited | Product database | No |
The signals marked No are the predictive ones. A lead on a paid plan who invited two teammates this week outranks any volume of email opens, which is the entire argument behind product qualified leads. The broader taxonomy of scoring models, demographic versus behavioral versus predictive, is covered in what lead scoring is.
6. Add an outside fit score in a custom property
A score computed outside HubSpot and written into a custom contact property behaves like a native one everywhere it matters, because custom properties work on every tier. You can sort on it, filter on it, and build lists on it without a Professional upgrade.
Create the properties in HubSpot first, because the export writes only to properties that already exist. That takes a few minutes in Settings, or one short script against HubSpot's CRM properties API.
HubSpot property | Type | Example value |
|---|---|---|
| Number | 87 |
| Single-line text | strong |
| Multi-line text | Stripe customer since 2024, 140 employees, VP of Sales |
Then build the score in Oneprofile. Plan on about 30 minutes the first time:
Connect HubSpot with a private app token and import your contacts. The same connection writes back at the end.
Import your Stripe customers into a table of their own. On the contacts, add Link to another table, match on email, and bring back the billing fields you need. Linking is free.
For your support desk and your product database, add a lookup from Look up your own data. A Zendesk user or an Intercom contact is found by email, and a Postgres or MySQL table by any unique column, such as email.
Describe your ideal customer in the workspace's business context. Apply the ICP scorer template from the template gallery and save your copy. Then click Add input for each billing, support, and product field, beside the company domain and job title it already reads.
Map the score, the band, and the reasons to the properties you created, and push the export.
If your fit turns on company size and industry alone, the HubSpot AI lead scoring guide scores companies on enriched firmographics instead.
Each contact comes back with three answers: a strong, possible, or poor band, a 0 to 100 fit score, and the two or three facts that drove it.
The reasons are the part worth fighting for. Picture the top result being an account you had mentally written off, with a reason that reads "upgraded last month, never onboarded".
A bare number would not get you to call that account today. Five words might, and a score only earns its keep when it changes who you write to.
"Low reply rates drag your deliverability down, and poor targeting is what causes low reply rates."
Utku Zihnioglu, CEO of Oneprofile
Earlier we said HubSpot scores only read what sits on the contact record. That constraint now works for you: HubSpot treats the exported score like any field it owns. Views sort by it, lists filter on it, and if you upgrade to Professional later, the fit criteria in step 3 can read these properties too, because fit scores read property values.
On Free, lead_score is your HubSpot lead score. Sort the contact view by it, descending, and read the reason before you write the first line of the email. Nothing limits you to the score, either. Any billing or product value you brought back can be mapped to a property of its own, which saves a rep a tab switch in the middle of a call.
To keep it current, schedule refreshes on the Stripe table from its Source button and set the ICP scorer to re-run on a schedule, then push the export after each pass. With Create or update records, scores and reasons update in place on the HubSpot record, so a lead whose Stripe record changes moves on your list after the next push.
What an outside HubSpot lead score costs with Oneprofile
The build above runs on the Team plan at $20 a month: 1,000 credits, unlimited seats, tables, and integrations, and up to 10,000 rows per table. Credits never expire, and extra credits are $20 per 1,000 on every paid plan.
Every operation shows its credit price before it runs. The ones that matter here:
Link to another table: free
Look up your own data: a small flat amount for each record it finds, and nothing when it finds none
ICP scorer, as shipped: 3 credits for each contact it scores
Your copy of the ICP scorer: what each contact used, up to the maximum its effort level shows before you run
The Free plan has 1 seat, 200 credits a month, and three integrations, which fits HubSpot, Stripe, and one more source, across three tables of 100 rows each. Run the ICP scorer as shipped first. At 3 credits a contact, those 200 credits score 66 contacts on job title and company, enough to see whether the reasons change who you call first. If they do, the support desk and the product database are a $20 upgrade away. Get started free and run the first scoring pass before your next outbound block.
