Freshsales API vs Zoho CRM

Freshsales API

Contact upsert and bulk upsert of up to 100 records make creates safe to retry. No MCP server for Freshsales.

Zoho CRM

A public OpenAPI 3.1 description of 644 operations and OAuth scopes down to one module and one operation suit agent use, and the Free edition includes 5,000 API credits a day. The documented token refresh puts the client secret in the URL, and no SLA, deprecation policy or dated API changelog was found.

Freshsales API

1. Build the base URL from the bundle alias shown under the API key, https://<alias>.myfreshworks.com/crm/sales/api/
2. Use /api/contacts/upsert rather than create, so a retry updates instead of duplicating
3. Budget calls, since 1,000 an hour covers the whole account and 429s carry no Retry-After
4. Add include=owner,sales_accounts to pull related records in one call
5. Expect to see only what the key owner's role can see

Zoho CRM

1. Use the api_domain returned with the token, since each data centre has its own host (zohoapis.com, zohoapis.eu, zohoapis.in and others)
2. Send Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken <token> and refresh hourly. Put refresh parameters in the POST body, not the URL
3. Pass fields on every list call. Page with page up to 2,000 records, then page_token up to 100,000
4. Create through /{module}/upsert so a retry updates instead of duplicating
5. Budget credits. Convert Lead costs 5, Send Mail 20, a bulk read 50, and calls through the MCP servers draw on the same allowance