Circle is live · pricing from $89/mo billed annually · last verified 23 Oct 2026 · viability healthy
Circle
Circle is a community platform for hosting discussions, courses, live events, and paid memberships under your own brand.
Circle is worth the money when member-to-member engagement is the product, not an afterthought — the feed, chat spaces, gamification, and Circle Plus native apps are real retention machinery. The catch is the tier ladder: AI agents, AI moderation, the knowledge engine, and unlimited workflows only switch on at Scale, $419/mo billed annually. Budget for Scale from day one or go in clear-eyed that $89/mo Professional buys a well-built forum with a 2,500-credit AI allowance.
Verdict generatedVerified 6d ago · liveness 81/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/circle-so
- Creators and coaches running a paid membership where retention depends on member-to-member engagement
- Digital businesses that want a branded iOS and Android app without a custom build
- Communities consolidating a forum, course host, events, and payments into one platform
- Teams that will budget for Scale to get AI agents, AI moderation, and unlimited workflows
- Hobbyist or free-only communities — the 14-day trial ends and Professional starts at $89/mo billed annually
- Solo creators who only need a simple forum or a single course landing page
- Teams whose priority is deep marketing funnels and CRM rather than community engagement
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Skip Circle if you want AI agents, AI moderation, or unlimited workflows without paying for the Scale tier at $419/mo billed annually — Professional and Business don't include them.
Running past your AI allowance costs $10 per 1,000 extra credits, and the pool is shared across Circle AI, workflow tasks, API calls, and agent tokens, so an active agent setup drains it faster than you'd expect.
Circle's sensible entry is Business at $199/mo billed annually: you get workflows, the AI content writer, transcriptions, and Circle MCP, which Professional at $89/mo lacks. Real automation starts at Scale, $419/mo billed annually, so compare that number against Kajabi or Mighty Networks rather than the headline $89. Circle Plus is custom-priced with negotiable limits for teams that want their own app.
In short
Circle — Circle is a community platform for hosting discussions, courses, live events, and paid memberships under your own brand. Best for Creators and coaches running a paid membership where retention depends on member-to-member engagement, Digital businesses that want a branded iOS and Android app without a custom build, Communities consolidating a forum, course host, events, and payments into one platform. Plans from $89/mo billed annually.
What is Circle?
Circle — Circle is a community platform for hosting discussions, courses, live events, and paid memberships under your own brand. Best for Creators and coaches running a paid membership where retention depends on member-to-member engagement, Digital businesses that want a branded iOS and Android app without a custom build, Communities consolidating a forum, course host, events, and payments into one platform. Plans from $89/mo billed annually.
Circle is an all-in-one community platform for creators, coaches, and digital businesses that want discussions, courses, events, and payments in one branded home. Members sign in once and get a personalized feed, chat spaces, direct messaging, a searchable directory, and course or membership access tied to the same record, so a purchase grants the right permissions without stitching tools together. Engagement tools go deeper than most rivals: gamification, activity scores on Business and up, live streams and live rooms (100 to 500 attendees depending on tier), and automated moderation. A visual website builder produces landing and sales pages that flow straight into branded checkout for one-time purchases, memberships, and recurring subscriptions, with transaction fees of 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus. Email Hub adds broadcasts, marketing automations, forms, and an audience CRM as an add-on. AI and automation are tiered. Circle AI runs on a metered credit pool — 2,500 credits/mo on Professional and Business, 5,000 on Scale, negotiable on Circle Plus, with extra credits at $10 per 1,000. The AI content writer, automated transcriptions, and Circle MCP start at Business; AI agents, AI workflows, AI moderation, the knowledge engine, and the AI inbox start at Scale. Circle Plus is where fully native branded iOS and Android apps live, with customizable screens, branded push notifications, and native in-app payments. That combination — engagement mechanics plus a real app — separates Circle from course-first tools like Kajabi and from forum-first platforms like Bettermode, which Circle itself compares against in recent posts.
Key features
- Discussions, posts, and comments with rich media
- Group chat spaces and direct messaging
- Personalized member feed and searchable directory with rich profiles
- Courses with affiliate tracking and conversion reporting
- Live events, live streams (100-500 attendees by tier), and live rooms
- Gamification with badges and points, plus activity scores on Business and up
- Branded checkout for one-time purchases, memberships, and recurring subscriptions
- Visual website builder for websites, landing pages, and sales pages
- Paywalls, dynamic access groups, and affiliates
- Circle AI assistant with metered credits and extra credits at $10 per 1,000
- AI agents, AI workflows, AI moderation, AI inbox, and knowledge engine (Scale and up)
- AI content writer and automated transcriptions (Business and up)
- Circle APIs, Circle MCP, webhooks, and custom SSO
- Custom branded iOS and Android apps with native in-app payments (Circle Plus)
- Email Hub broadcasts, marketing automations, forms, and audience CRM (add-on)
Behind the verdict
Where Circle bites hardest is the thing most community tools treat as a checkbox: keeping members in the room. Activity scores, chat spaces, badges, a personalized feed, and at Circle Plus a genuinely native branded app with push notifications — that stack is why creators like Exit Five and SPI stay put. If your retention story is 'members talk to each other,' Circle is built for that premise. Pick this when you want one login and one member record behind a forum, courses, live events, paywalls, and checkout. Adding a course purchase or membership that instantly grants the right access groups, without Zapier glue, is the kind of thing you stop noticing once it works. Pass if your priority is marketing funnel depth. Email Hub is an add-on charged on top of the community plan, and the heavy automation — AI agents, AI moderation, knowledge engine, unlimited workflows, webhooks, custom SSO — sits behind Scale at $419/mo billed annually. Teams that only need a forum or a single course landing page will find Professional's $89/mo billed annually hard to justify. Watch the credit math. Circle AI draws on a shared pool across Circle AI, workflow tasks, API calls, and agent tokens — 2,500/mo on Professional and Business, 5,000 on Scale — and overage runs $10 per 1,000. A community leaning on AI workflows daily will burn through that faster than the headline suggests. Against Kajabi, Circle gives up funnel sophistication and wins on engagement mechanics and native apps. Against Bettermode and forum-first platforms, Circle is pricier but bundles courses, events, and payments instead of asking you to integrate. In practice, the buying decision is rarely 'which has more features' — it's whether you intend to run Scale-level automation, because that determines whether the monthly number reads
Models under the hood
as of 2026-10-23
Limitations
- Paid plans start at $89/mo for Professional, $199/mo for Business, and $419/mo for Scale, priced in USD on annual billing (taxes excluded), and Circle Plus is custom pricing; the 14-day trial requires no credit card.
- Tier gating is steep: AI agents and AI workflows are Scale-only, Circle APIs and the MCP start at Business, and custom branded mobile apps require Circle Plus.
- AI credits are pooled across Circle AI, workflow tasks, API calls, and agent tokens, at 2,500/mo on Professional and Business and 5,000/mo on Scale.
as of 2026-10-19
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Is Circle still active?
Circle is live · pricing from $89/mo billed annually · last verified 23 Oct 2026 · viability healthy.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Circle? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →What's new in Circle
Checked 11 days agoAcross the latest 1 update: 1 news mention.
What do users say about Circle?
What people actually say about Circle — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
ResearchedDiscussed by users across 5 sources (Hacker News, Product Hunt, App Store, Stack Overflow, Lemmy) · researched Oct 11, 2026.
Weighted by the 79 posts each of 5 sources contributed.
- +App Store members consistently praise the UI and the quality of community interactions
- +All-in-one model means one login and one member record across courses, events, and chat
- +Branded iOS and Android apps with native payments are bundled into Circle Plus
- +Native monetization covers one-time, membership, and recurring payments in a branded checkout
- +Gamification with badges, points, and activity scores drives member engagement in real communities
- −Multiple App Store reviewers report navigation confusion and difficulty getting real support help
- −Chat video and reel uploads require clunky folder drag-and-import workflows, according to a 3-star review
- −Support is not evidenced anywhere positive in the available data, only negatively
- −Transaction fees of 2% on Professional and 1% on Business stack on top of the monthly fee
- −Email Hub costs an extra $99/mo per 10,000 contacts on top of the base plan
- • Email Hub costs an extra $99/mo per 10,000 contacts on top of your base plan
- • Additional AI credits cost $10 per 1,000 once you exhaust the monthly pool
- • Transaction fees of 2% on Professional and 1% on Business/Scale add up quickly on high-volume sales
- • Circle Plus for branded mobile apps is a separate add-on, not included in the base tiers
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Circle— pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 23 Oct 2026. Pages mix model-assisted synthesis with human review; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Circle 22 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed summary, our verdict, who should skip it, pricing tiers, who it suits, description, features, limitations, platforms, pricing page
- — changed our verdict, limitations, who should skip it, setup time, features, switching out, summary, pricing fit, hidden costs, use cases, integrations, description, switching in, pricing tiers, who it suits
- — changed our verdict, who should skip it, description, who it suits, summary, features, pricing tiers
- — changed pricing page
- — changed integrations, summary, description, who should skip it, features, who it suits, our verdict, pricing tiers
- — changed limitations, pricing page
Showing the 6 most recent of 22 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Circle cost in 2026?
Circle: Plans from $89/mo billed annually. Pricing last verified 23 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Circle tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | $89/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | A creator or coach launching a first paid membership with a few spaces and one or two admins.Adds: Starting tier at $89/mo billed annually: unlimited members, courses, events, website builder, payments, and 2,500 Circle AI credits, with a 2% transaction fee. |
| Business | $199/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | A growing community that needs workflows, custom profile fields, and API access without full AI automation.Adds: Adds 20 automations and 20 scheduled workflows, Circle APIs and MCP, activity scores, the AI content writer, and automated transcriptions, and cuts the transaction fee to 1%. |
| Scale | $419/mo billed annually | monthly, billed annually | An established business ready to hand moderation and member support to AI and integrate deeply with other systems.Adds: Adds AI agents, AI workflows, AI moderation, the knowledge engine, the AI inbox, unlimited workflows, webhooks, and custom SSO, plus 5,000 AI credits and 10 admins. |
| Circle Plus | Custom | quote | A digital business that wants its own branded iOS and Android app and negotiable limits.Adds: Adds custom branded mobile apps, customizable app screens, branded push notifications, native in-app payments, unlimited admins and spaces, Email Hub with 10,000 contacts, and a 0.5% transaction fee. |
| Email Hub add-on | $99/moVendor: “$99/mo for 10,000 contacts” | monthly | — |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Circle's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Circle's sensible entry is Business at $199/mo billed annually: you get workflows, the AI content writer, transcriptions, and Circle MCP, which Professional at $89/mo lacks. Real automation starts at Scale, $419/mo billed annually, so compare that number against Kajabi or Mighty Networks rather than the headline $89. Circle Plus is custom-priced with negotiable limits for teams that want their own app.
Has Circle's pricing changed?
No plan price for Circle has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Circle?
Pick Circle if you are Creators and coaches running a paid membership where retention depends on member-to-member engagement, Digital businesses that want a branded iOS and Android app without a custom build, Communities consolidating a forum, course host, events, and payments into one platform, Teams that will budget for Scale to get AI agents, AI moderation, and unlimited workflows.
Look elsewhere if you are Hobbyist or free-only communities — the 14-day trial ends and Professional starts at $89/mo billed annually, Solo creators who only need a simple forum or a single course landing page, Teams whose priority is deep marketing funnels and CRM rather than community engagement, Founders expecting AI agents or unlimited workflows on the entry plan — those start at Scale.
Skip it if Skip Circle if you want AI agents, AI moderation, or unlimited workflows without paying for the Scale tier at $419/mo billed annually — Professional and Business don't include them.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Circle actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Sets up a Professional plan, builds a sales page in the website builder, connects the branded checkout, and puts the course, live events, and a members-only space behind a dynamic access group.
Outcome: One login gives paying members the course, the events, and the discussion space, and a 2% transaction fee applies to each sale.
Loads the knowledge base into the knowledge engine, points AI agents at recurring member questions, and wires webhooks plus unlimited workflows into an existing CRM.
Outcome: Routine questions get answered around the clock while moderation and Space-level routing run without manual triage.
Ships a custom branded iOS and Android app with customizable screens, branded push notifications, and native in-app payments, while Email Hub handles broadcasts to 10,000 contacts.
Outcome: Members buy and engage inside your own app rather than a browser tab, with the transaction fee down to 0.5%.
Use cases
- Move a large Facebook Group into a branded paid community on your own domain with dynamic access groups.
- Run a multi-cohort coaching program with a separate space per cohort and shared resources.
- Sell a one-time course and a recurring membership from the same branded checkout.
- Deploy AI agents on Scale that answer common member questions from a knowledge base around the clock.
- Launch a branded iOS and Android app with native in-app payments instead of commissioning a build.
- Use activity scores and gamification to spot disengaging members and prompt them back in.
- Consolidate broadcasts, marketing automations, and contact segments into Email Hub alongside the community.
- Give a customer community role-based access with automated workflows and member tagging.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Circle — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
A single-space community with a paywall and a Stripe connection is realistically a day's work on Professional. Adding courses, live events, and a sales page takes a few days. Scale-tier AI agents and workflows need a couple of weeks including knowledge-base prep. Circle Plus branded apps are a project measured in weeks, and annual Scale and Plus plans include 60 and 90 days of Concierge
Switching to or from Circle
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Facebook Groups: recreate spaces, invite members, and route them through a branded checkout via the payments migration service where eligible.
- →From Kajabi: rebuild courses and landing pages in the website builder, then reconnect payments through the branded checkout.
- →From Mighty Networks: map existing spaces to Circle spaces and re-issue access with dynamic access groups.
- →From Memberful or MemberSpace: keep Stripe as the processor and move membership tiers into Circle's native checkout.
- ↗To Kajabi: export members and course content, then rebuild funnels in Kajabi's pipeline tools.
- ↗To Mighty Networks: move member records and re-establish paid access; expect to rebuild gamification and feed settings.
- ↗To a self-hosted forum plus Stripe: keep the payment processor and replace community features with open-source software.
- ↗To Email Hub-free stack: export contacts and segments before cancelling the $99/mo add-on.
Resources & guides
- Resourcecircle.so
Academy: Get Early Access
Build practical community skills, get Circle-certified, and learn how to know to build a transformational community. Apply for early access now.
- Resourcecircle.so
Circle Blog - Community Building Resources & Insights
Discover the latest insights, tips, and resources for building and growing your online community with Circle.
Tutorials & Learning
Circle.soの10の素晴らしい機能 - 2026年の最高のオンラインコミュニティプラットフォーム
Josh Hall
Circle.so初心者向けチュートリアル - 2026年にオンラインコミュニティを素早く構築する方法
Josh Hall
Circle.so 初心者向けチュートリアル (Circle.so ウォークスルー)
Marketing Island
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Circle”, and we withheld 3: 3 could not be judged, because “Circle” is a single word that other videos use for other things. Showing the 3 we can prove are about Circle.
Official links
What are the best Circle alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Circle we list are Kajabi, Heartbeat and Thinkific AI. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi | Paid | Pricing not published | — |
| Heartbeat | Paid | Pricing not published | — |
| Thinkific AI | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Circle
View all
Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one course platform for coaches and creators — courses, communities, payments, and AI in one dashboard.
Heartbeat
Build a paid membership community with Pulse AI — courses, events, and payments on your own domain.
Thinkific AI
Thinkific AI pairs AI course generation and a built-in teaching assistant with courses, community, and checkout in one platform.
Tools that pair well with Circle
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Circle, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one course platform for coaches and creators — courses, communities, payments, and AI in one dashboard.
Heartbeat
Build a paid membership community with Pulse AI — courses, events, and payments on your own domain.
Thinkific AI
Thinkific AI pairs AI course generation and a built-in teaching assistant with courses, community, and checkout in one platform.
Circle vs its closest rival
Circle's closest head-to-head is with Kajabi.
Our Circle vs Kajabi verdict written May 12, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
Head-to-head comparisons
Frequently asked questions
Best-of guides
Topics
Used Circle? Help shape our editorial sentiment research.