Getting Wrong Value from Persona in API

Developer Support APIs & Integrations
1

We are trying to pull the name of the selected Persona for a Contact using the API. When we pull the Persona, we are coming across two issues:

One is that, when I look at the property structure for the Persona, the HubSpot API is showing Personas that aren’t in our environment, and is showing the wrong description for our existing persona. We have one Persona in the field editor, but five in the API, and the description of the one Persona was correct in the field editor, but not the API.

Another is that, when trying to pull the Persona’s name, we get its description, instead.

Does anyone know why the list of Personas in the API doesn’t match what’s in the Property Editor or the HubSpot UI, and why we get the description of a Persona when pulling it through the API, instead of its name?

2

Hey, @EMeade :waving_hand: Quick question — what does your request URL look like? Can you share it here, along with a screenshot of what you see in-app when you look at Setting > Properties > Contact > Persona?

Thanks! — Jaycee

3

Hi Jaycee,

This is what the request URL looks like:

https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/contacts/{CONTACT_ID}?properties=hs_persona

And here’s the screenshot of the Personas in HubSpot:

154076i7CC950549C57A550.png
154076i7CC950549C57A550.png277×395 13.4 KB

When I tried adding a second Persona, the API still showed five Personas, but the first two had information that matched what’s in the HubSpot UI.

4

Hi @EMeade

You’re running into two quirks with hs_persona.

  1. The “extra” personas you see in the API aren’t really live objects. HubSpot keeps historical options for that dropdown, even if you only have one visible in the property editor. That’s why the API can show more than the UI. You’ll see this often if personas were renamed, merged, or deleted.
  2. The value you’re pulling is expected behavior: the hs_persona property stores the description string, not the persona’s display name. The field itself is just a dropdown-type property. If you want the actual label you see in the editor, you need to resolve it against the property’s metadatarather than expecting it directly in the contact record.
    (Accounts Dashboard | HubSpot )

So the right pattern is:

Use your contact request as you are doing to pull hs_persona.

Then call the Properties API for hs_persona to map the internal option values to their current labels in your portal. That mapping stays consistent with what’s in Settings > Properties.

That way you’ll always show the current persona name, even if old options exist in the backend.

Tiny side note: some teams avoid juggling these mismatched API values by running their CRM fields through a sync layer like Stacksync, which normalizes field options and keeps property values aligned across systems in real time.

Hope this helps.