Circleback is live · free plan, paid from $15/user/mo · last verified 6 Nov 2026 · viability healthy
Circleback
Circleback turns meetings into AI notes, action items, and automations that write back into your apps.
Circleback's edge isn't the notes — plenty of tools produce good summaries now. It's that agents can write back: action items, tags, notes and meeting access through MCP, CLI and API, live since October 2026. If you'll wire Linear or HubSpot, the $15 Pro tier earns its keep fast. If you'll never connect anything, you're buying capability you won't use.
Verdict generatedVerified 7d ago · liveness 87/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/circleback
- Sales teams keeping HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or Attio records current after every call
- Product and engineering teams turning meeting decisions into Linear issues and Notion pages
- Teams giving AI agents read-write meeting context through MCP, CLI or the public API
- Support teams connecting Plain to search threads, open issues and past customer reports
- Teams that want video conferencing built into the same tool
- Buyers who only want cheap transcripts and will never connect an integration
- Organizations requiring fully on-premises or air-gapped deployment
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Skip Circleback if you only need a cheap transcript and will never connect Notion, Linear or a CRM — the automation and agent surface is what you'd be paying for, and the Free plan's 30-day history cap limits its use as an archive.
Free's 30-day meeting and recording history cap means you pay $15/user/month for Pro the moment you need to search last quarter's calls.
The ladder is unusually clean: Free for evaluation, $15/user/month billed monthly for Pro (unlimited history and all integrations), $25 for Business (admin controls, 2-year storage), $35 for Enterprise (SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, unlimited storage) with transparent volume discounts that apply automatically. Against Otter and Fireflies, the Pro tier is competitive on price, and Enterprise is cheaper than most competitors' SSO tiers.
In short
Circleback — Circleback turns meetings into AI notes, action items, and automations that write back into your apps. Best for Sales teams keeping HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or Attio records current after every call, Product and engineering teams turning meeting decisions into Linear issues and Notion pages, Teams giving AI agents read-write meeting context through MCP, CLI or the public API. Free to start; paid plans from $15/user/mo.
No head-to-head comparison for Circleback yet — the alternatives below are the closest matches we list.
What is Circleback?
Circleback — Circleback turns meetings into AI notes, action items, and automations that write back into your apps. Best for Sales teams keeping HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or Attio records current after every call, Product and engineering teams turning meeting decisions into Linear issues and Notion pages, Teams giving AI agents read-write meeting context through MCP, CLI or the public API. Free to start; paid plans from $15/user/mo.
Circleback is an AI notetaker built around the idea that a finished meeting should start work rather than end it. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebEx and GoTo as a bot, or records bot-free through a macOS and Windows desktop app, and captures in-person conversations via mobile and Apple Watch apps. Transcription handles over 100 languages with speakers identified by name, and whatever is shared on screen during a call — slides, dashboards, docs — lands in the notes and stays searchable. After the transcript, action items get captured, assigned and organized automatically, and two-way automations push outcomes into Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, Asana, Zoho, Monday, PostHog, Ashby, Intercom, Plain, Zapier and Make. Ask Circleback goes further than querying: since the October 2026 release it can create, edit, assign, complete and delete action items, manage tags, share and rename meetings and edit notes. The same write access now runs through MCP, the CLI and the public API, so ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other agents can act on meeting data, not just read it. Web search inside answers cites its sources when meeting and email context runs short, available on web, desktop, mobile and Slack. Pricing is self-serve across all four tiers — Free at $0, Pro at $15, Business at $25 and Enterprise at $35 per user per month — with Enterprise volume discounts that apply automatically as seats are added. Business and Enterprise include unlimited free viewers for teammates who only read shared notes. Set against Otter and Fireflies, Circleback competes on the automation and agent-access layers rather than on being the cheapest transcript per seat. It's for teams whose calls are supposed to change records in a CRM, issue tracker or wiki, and who want their AI assistants to hold write access to that context.
Key features
- Automatic AI meeting notes and action items after every call
- Ask Circleback creates, edits, assigns, completes and deletes action items
- Ask Circleback manages tags, shares and renames meetings, and edits notes
- Web search inside answers with cited source pages
- Write access via MCP, CLI and public API for action items, notes, tags and meeting access
- MCP connection for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other AI agents
- CLI access giving AI agents conversation context from the terminal
- Webhook support and public API for custom integrations
- Two-way automations with Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, Asana and Zoho
- Speaker identification by name across 100+ languages
- Bot-free desktop app for macOS and Windows
- Bot for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebEx and GoTo
- Mobile and Apple Watch apps for recording in-person meetings
- Apple Watch Ultra Action button shortcut to start a recording
- Screen content from slides, dashboards and docs included in notes
Behind the verdict
We'd reach for Circleback when a meeting is supposed to leave a trace in another system — an issue in Linear, a deal update in HubSpot, a page in Notion. The automations aren't a side feature here; they're the product's center of gravity. The October 2026 write-access release is the piece that makes this more than a transcript vendor: agents over MCP, the CLI or the public API can now create, assign and complete action items, manage tags and edit notes, not just ask questions about them. When to pass: if your team only wants cheap, accurate transcripts and has no intention of wiring an integration, Circleback is overbuilt for that job and a simpler notetaker will cost less for the same output. It also isn't a video conferencing tool, and it won't run on-premises or air-gapped. Against Otter and Fireflies, the split is honest. Those two compete hard on per-seat transcript pricing and broad meeting capture. Circleback leans on what happens after the call — bidirectional app updates, screen content folded into notes, and agent-readable meeting context. Fans of its summaries are loud about the quality, but I'd weight the automation layer higher in a buying decision than the note prose, because notes are easy to switch and integrations are not. Where it bites: importing past recordings is a per-person job from Settings, so there's no vendor-managed migration. And free viewers only exist on Business and Enterprise — on Free and Pro, anyone who reads a shared note needs their own paid seat. In practice, the tier that matters for most growing teams is Business at $25. That's where admin roles, custom data retention, default settings and unlimited free viewers kick in, which is the difference between a handful of power users paying and half the company paying just to read
Models under the hood
as of 2026-11-08
Limitations
- The Free plan caps meeting and recording history at 30 days, so anything older than a month falls out of reach unless you upgrade.
- Full automations across Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, webhooks and the rest require Pro at $15/user/month; Free gets limited automations only.
- Recording storage is capped at 1 year on Pro and 2 years on Business.
- Admin and member roles, custom data retention, default and enforceable settings and unlimited free viewers only arrive at Business ($25/user/month), while SSO via SAML or OIDC, SCIM provisioning, invoice/PO billing, HIPAA compliance and priority support are Enterprise-only at $35/user/month.
as of 2026-10-19
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Is Circleback still active?
Circleback is live · free plan, paid from $15/user/mo · last verified 6 Nov 2026 · viability healthy.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Circleback? 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: November 2026
How we score →What's new in Circleback
Checked 5 days agoAcross the latest 5 updates: 3 feature updates, 1 changelog entry and 1 news mention.
Enterprise-Managed Authorization for Circleback MCP
Admins can now control Circleback MCP access through their identity provider rather than per-member connections, with enforcement supported. Built on the open Enterprise-Managed Authorization standard; works with Okta and apps like Claude.
Speaker timeline added to recordings
Recordings now show a per-speaker row with bars marking when each person talked, ordered by talk time. Click a bar to jump to that moment or drag the playhead to scrub.
Folders released with rules-based sharing
Folders group related meetings and share them with added people. Rules auto-add matching meetings by tag, meeting-name word or participant domain; privacy rules keep matching meetings out. Available in the API, MCP and CLI.
Start recording with the Action button
Changelog entry announcing that recording can be started from the Action button.
How Circleback rebuilt its Electron recording engine in Swift
Engineering post on moving the desktop app's recording engine from the render process to native Swift, bridging ScreenCaptureKit and libobs with a Combine-to-Jotai tool.
What do users say about Circleback?
What people actually say about Circleback — is it worth it?
Our community sentiment research written Aug 5, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Circleback — 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 6 Nov 2026. Analysis is drafted with AI models and checked against our editorial standards before publishing; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Circleback 23 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 pricing page
- — changed who it suits, our verdict, summary, description, pricing tiers, who should skip it, features
- — changed summary, our verdict, who it suits, who should skip it, pricing tiers, integrations, description, features
- — changed pricing page, limitations
- — changed who should skip it, features, description, pricing tiers, summary, our verdict, who it suits
- — changed pricing page
Showing the 6 most recent of 23 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Circleback cost in 2026?
Circleback: Free to start; paid plans from $15/user/mo. Pricing last verified 6 Nov 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Circleback 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | FreeVendor: “$0/user/month” | — | A solo user or small team testing whether AI notes and action items fit their meeting habits, with no budget approval needed.Adds: Free entry point: $0/user/month with unlimited AI notes and action items, Ask Circleback, API/MCP/CLI access, but a 30-day meeting and recording history cap and limited automations. |
| Pro | $15/user/moVendor: “$15/user/month” | monthly, per seat | Sales, product and engineering teams that need every integration and want to search meetings older than a month.Adds: Adds unlimited meeting history, 1 year of recording storage, automations with all integrations including Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce and webhooks, custom AI insights and a personalized notetaker participant. |
| Business | $25/user/moVendor: “$25/user/month” | monthly, per seat | A team with an admin who needs to control workspace settings, retention and who gets access without paying per viewer.Adds: Adds admin and member roles, unlimited free viewers, custom data retention, default and enforceable settings, 2 years of recording storage and a usage dashboard. |
| Enterprise | $35/user/moVendor: “$35/user/month” | monthly, per seat | Organizations whose security review requires SSO, SCIM provisioning and HIPAA compliance, and who pay by invoice.Adds: Adds SAML or OIDC single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, invoice/PO billing, unlimited recording storage, priority support and HIPAA compliance, with volume discounts that apply automatically. |
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 Circleback's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
The ladder is unusually clean: Free for evaluation, $15/user/month billed monthly for Pro (unlimited history and all integrations), $25 for Business (admin controls, 2-year storage), $35 for Enterprise (SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, unlimited storage) with transparent volume discounts that apply automatically. Against Otter and Fireflies, the Pro tier is competitive on price, and Enterprise is cheaper than most competitors' SSO tiers.
Has Circleback's pricing changed?
No plan price for Circleback has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Circleback?
Pick Circleback if you are Sales teams keeping HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or Attio records current after every call, Product and engineering teams turning meeting decisions into Linear issues and Notion pages, Teams giving AI agents read-write meeting context through MCP, CLI or the public API, Support teams connecting Plain to search threads, open issues and past customer reports.
Look elsewhere if you are Teams that want video conferencing built into the same tool, Buyers who only want cheap transcripts and will never connect an integration, Organizations requiring fully on-premises or air-gapped deployment, Teams expecting a vendor-managed migration: imports run per person from Settings.
Skip it if Skip Circleback if you only need a cheap transcript and will never connect Notion, Linear or a CRM — the automation and agent surface is what you'd be paying for, and the Free plan's 30-day history cap limits its use as an archive.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Circleback actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You finish a discovery call and Circleback's automation updates the HubSpot contact and deal, while action items are captured and assigned to you and the prospect's champion.
Outcome: The CRM record is current before you leave the call, and nothing promised on the call sits in a notebook.
A roadmap review ends; Circleback creates Linear issues from the decisions, and Ask Circleback tags the meeting so it surfaces in a filtered view alongside other roadmap calls.
Outcome: Decisions become tracked issues without a manual summary, and the meeting is findable by tag and date later.
You point Claude or Cursor at Circleback through MCP with a read/write key, then ask the agent to pull last week's architecture discussions and file the open questions as action items.
Outcome: Meeting context reaches your agent directly, and the agent can act on it rather than just quote it.
Use cases
- Capture action items from a discovery call and auto-create Linear issues assigned to each attendee
- Ask 'what did we decide about pricing in Q1?' across past meetings and get a cited answer
- Route every client call's notes into the right Notion workspace automatically
- Use People and Companies spaces to see pending action items and recent meetings for a contact
- Give ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor conversational context from meetings via MCP or the CLI
- Import existing call recordings from your phone and get them transcribed and organized
- Share a meeting recap with an external stakeholder without giving them workspace access
- Build custom dashboards or workflows around meeting data via the API and webhooks
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Circleback — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Calendar connection and first bot-joined meeting: about 5 minutes on Free. Bot-free desktop app plus a first automation into Notion or HubSpot: 15-20 minutes. Wiring an AI agent through MCP or CLI with a read/write key: under an hour, longer if you're mapping fields in a CRM.
Switching to or from Circleback
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Otter.ai: import past audio and video files through Circleback's import flow, then connect Google or Outlook Calendar so new calls are captured automatically.
- →From Fireflies.ai: bring over recordings via import and rebuild automations in Circleback's automation builder, since field mappings don't transfer.
- →From manual notes: connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, let the bot or desktop app record, and let action items populate from the first meeting onward.
- ↗To Otter.ai: download meeting recordings and transcripts from each meeting, then upload them to Otter and reconnect your calendar.
- ↗To Fireflies.ai: export meeting data and transcripts per meeting, then re-establish integrations and automation rules in Fireflies.
- ↗To a self-hosted stack: use the Circleback API and webhooks to pull meetings, transcripts and action items before cancelling.
Integrations
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 3 videos for “Circleback”, and we withheld 1: 1 could not be judged, because “Circleback” is a single word that other videos use for other things. Showing the 2 we can prove are about Circleback.
Official links
What are the best Circleback alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Circleback we list are Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai and Read.ai. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Fireflies.ai | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Read.ai | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Circleback
View allOtter.ai
Otter.ai joins your meetings, transcribes them live, and turns each call into searchable notes, summaries and assigned action items.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai puts an AI notetaker in your Zoom, Meet and Teams calls, then pushes the notes into your CRM, ATS and inbox.
Tools that pair well with Circleback
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Circleback, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Otter.ai
Otter.ai joins your meetings, transcribes them live, and turns each call into searchable notes, summaries and assigned action items.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai puts an AI notetaker in your Zoom, Meet and Teams calls, then pushes the notes into your CRM, ATS and inbox.
Read.ai
Read.ai is an AI meeting assistant that turns Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls into summaries, action items, and searchable context.
Frequently asked questions
Categories
For makers of Circleback
- Get a Verified Listing for Circleback ($39): a written decision within 1 working day.
- Free listing for another tool: Free reviews are decided in order, within 3 weeks of the review starting.
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