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The foundation of your HubSpot account is a database of your business relationships and processes, called the CRM (Customer Relationship Management). To manage this data, HubSpot accounts include objects, which represent types of relationships or processes. Individual instances of objects, called records, represent the individual entities under each object type (e.g., John Smith is a contact). To store data in each record, you’ll use properties (e.g., the email property) and to represent the relationships between individual entities, you can associate records with one another (e.g., associate John Smith with a company Smith & Co.). Records can also store information about interactions through associated engagements/activities, such as emails, calls, and meetings. In this article, learn about objects, records, properties, associations, pipelines, schemas, and searching the CRM. To learn more about managing your CRM database from within HubSpot, check out HubSpot’s Knowledge Base.

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Object APIs

You use the object APIs to create and manage an object’s records. For supported objects, you can use object endpoints and replace the {objectTypeId} in the request URL with the desired object. For example, to create contacts, you’d make a POST request to crm/objects/2026-03/0-1 and to create courses, you’d make a POST request to crm/objects/2026-03/0-410. Refer to this article for more information about using the object endpoints for various objects.

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Object type IDs

When using CRM and other APIs, you’ll need to use the objectTypeId field, which is a unique numerical value assigned to each object. For example, to retrieve records, you’d make a GET request to /crm/objects/2026-03/{objectTypeId}, or when creating a property for an object, you’d make a POST request to /crm/properties/2026-03/{objectTypeId}. Expand the section below to view objects and their object type ID values.
You can always use the numerical type ID value, but for contacts, companies, deals, tickets, or notes, in some cases you can also use the object’s fully qualified name (FQN). For example:
  • When starting an import with the imports API, the columnObjectTypeId specifies which object the data in your file belongs to. To import data for contacts, your value for columnObjectTypeId could be contact or 0-1.
  • When using the associations API, the fromObjectType and toObjectType values specify the objects and the direction of the association. To view association types for contacts to companies, your GET request could be to crm/associations/2026-03/contact/company/labels or crm/associations/2026-03/0-1/0-2/labels.

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Unique identifiers and record IDs

A unique identifier is a value that differentiates one record in the CRM from another, even if they have otherwise identical information. For example, a database might have records for two people named John Smith. To avoid accidentally sending money to the wrong John Smith, each record is assigned a number as their Record ID. When a record is created in HubSpot, its Record ID (hs_object_id) is automatically generated and should be treated as a string. Record IDs are unique within an object, so there can be both a contact and company with the same ID. For contacts and companies, there are additional unique identifiers, including a contact’s email and a company’s domain name. You can also create custom unique identifier properties. In the CRM APIs, you’ll use unique identifier values to identify and manage specific records. You can always use a record’s hs_object_id value, but can also use custom unique identifier properties for certain endpoints, specified by the idProperty parameter. For example, to edit a contact, you could make a PATCH request to /crm/objects/2026-03/0-1/{contactId} or /crm/objects/2026-03/0-1/{contactEmail}?idProperty=email. Learn more about how HubSpot handles deduplication in the Knowledge Base.

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Associations API

In HubSpot, you can show how objects are related to one another by associating their records. For example, you can associate multiple contacts with a company, and then associate the company and relevant contacts with a deal. You can use the associations API to manage which association types are supported between objects and to associate individual records within objects. The Associations API includes two sets of endpoints:
  • Association details endpoints: create, edit, and remove associations between records. For example, associate a contact record with a company record.
  • Association schema endpoints: view and manage your account’s association definitions (also known as types or labels) and set limits for associations. For example, create a custom Decision Maker association type to associate a contact record and a company record while labelling the contact as that company’s Decision Maker.
When using the associations API endpoints, you can substitute objects for {toObjectTypeId} and {fromObjectTypeId} in the request URLs and request bodies. Before associating records across objects, to understand which objects can be associated to one another, you can retrieve association types. If you have access to a HubSpot account, you can also review your account’s unique object relationships by navigating to the data model tool. Learn more about object relationships and managing associations in the associations API guides:

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Properties API

Information about records are stored in fields called properties. HubSpot provides a set of default properties for each object. In addition to each object’s default properties, you can store custom data by creating custom properties. When using the properties API, you can substitute objects in the endpoints to create and manage an object’s properties. For example, /crm/properties/2026-03/0-1 for contact properties or /crm/properties/2026-03/0-5 for ticket properties. Learn more about using the properties API in this article.

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Schemas API

Each object in HubSpot is defined by a schema, which is a set of configuration details that define what the object is (i.e. its name and ID), the data that it can store (i.e. properties), and its relationships with other objects (i.e. associations). The schemas API can be used to create custom objects, which includes setting up schema details such as display properties, searchable properties, unlabeled associations, and properties required to create records. Learn more about custom objects in HubSpot. The schemas API can also be used to retrieve schema details for custom objects, which will return those high-level object details. However, to manage an object’s properties and association types, you’ll use the properties and associations APIs.

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Search API

To filter and sort records and activities based on their properties and associations, you can use the search API. When using the search endpoints, substitute the {objectTypeId} value for the object within which you want to search. For example, to search calls, you’d make a POST request to /crm/objects/2026-03/0-48/search. Learn more about using the CRM search API in this article.

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Pipelines API

In HubSpot, you can use pipelines to track records through stages in your processes. For example, you can track deals through sales processes or tickets through support statuses. Using the pipelines API, you can create, retrieve, edit, and delete pipelines and pipeline stages. Learn which objects have pipelines and how to use the pipelines API in this article.
Last modified on June 4, 2026