Circle Review (2026)

Pricing (2026)

✓ Pricing re-verified 12 Oct 2026

(2026) Professional about $89/mo billed annually ($129 monthly), Business $199/mo annual, Scale $419/mo annual, plus a custom Circle Plus tier for fully branded apps. On top of the subscription Circle takes a commission on every sale you make through the platform (roughly 2% on Professional, 1% on Business, 0.5% on Plus) plus standard Stripe/PayPal processing, and the Email Hub is a paid add-on around $99/mo for 10,000 contacts. 14-day free trial, but no always-free option.

Re-verified 12 October 2026 on circle.so/pricing and its pricing.md: Professional $89, Business $199 and Scale $419 a month, all marked as annual-billing USD prices excluding tax, Circle Plus on custom pricing; transaction fees 2%, 1%, 1% and 0.5%; Circle AI credits 2,500, 2,500 and 5,000 a month, extra credits $10 per 1,000; Business includes 5,000 Admin API requests a month ($.005 per extra request), Scale 30,000 ($.002).

The $129 monthly figure is not printed on the page we read. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.

Category context: Growth & Revenue. Across the 85 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is about $30 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Circle’s entry price of $89 a month sits above that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →

Correction after re-checking: (2026) Three plans as printed on Circle's pricing page: Professional "$89/mo*", Business "$199/mo*" and Circle Plus at "Custom Pricing" — no separate Enterprise tier is listed. The asterisk is resolved by the pricing page's own footnote: "* Prices displayed in USD, based on annual billing and do not include applicable taxes.", so both amounts are annual-billing prices, not month-to-month prices. Circle keeps a platform transaction fee on every sale: 2% on Professional, 1% on Business, 0.5% on Circle Plus, and Circle's payments page states these fees are in addition to Stripe's standard processing fees, which vary by country. Extras are billed separately. Extra admins cost $10/mo per admin, extra moderators $20/mo per 10 moderators and extra spaces $20/mo per 10 spaces, and those amounts are printed the same in both the Professional and the Business column. Two rows are Professional-only add-ons: "Brand email notifications $40/month" and "Customizable profile fields $49/month", both listed as Included on Business and Circle Plus. There is also an Email Hub contacts slider that prints "10,000 +$99/mo", with the footnote "*Charged on top of community plan, first 30 days are free". A free 14-day trial covers Professional and Business, no credit card required, alongside a 30-day, 100% money back guarantee. (re-verified 2026-07-31) (Re-read 12 October 2026: the page now lists a fourth plan, Scale at "$419/mo*", between Business and Circle Plus, with AI agents, AI workflows, webhooks and custom single sign-on.)

Circle’s pricing page, as we read it

Watch the video review

The video version of this review, from our YouTube channel.

What Circle does

Community platform for creator businesses: discussions, courses, events, memberships and messaging in one branded home — plus a no-code website builder, branded iOS/Android apps, email marketing, a member CRM, built-in payments and AI agents that answer member questions.

What buyers report about Circle

Hands-on: tested 2026-10-31Reported by buyers: G2, Trustpilot and community-platform comparisons, read August 2026

Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We tested Circle ourselves on 2026-10-31, but one test is a narrow sample, so here is what other buyers report. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.

When the paid plan is worth it

Circle's tiers separate on staff seats and the platform's cut of sales — members are listed as unlimited on every plan. Both printed prices carry an asterisk that the pricing page's footnote resolves as annual billing in USD, excluding tax. Professional, $89/mo on that basis, carries courses, events, live streams and the website builder with 3 admins, 10 moderators, 20 spaces and 200GB of storage, and Circle keeps 2% of every sale.

Business, $199/mo on the same basis, adds the Admin API and the Headless Member API, which Circle's developer docs place on the Business plan and above. Seats rise to 5 admins and 15 moderators, spaces to 30, storage to 500GB, and the cut halves to 1%. Whether that step pays back turns on sales volume, since the smaller cut has to outweigh the higher price; extra staff costs $10/mo per admin and $20/mo per 10 moderators.

Scale, $419/mo on the same basis, is where AI Agents, AI workflows, webhooks and custom single sign-on start, with 10 admins, 100 moderators, 100 spaces, 1TB of storage and the same 1% cut; Circle Plus, priced on request, adds the branded apps (pricing page, read 12 October 2026). What upgrading never removes: the lowest fee Circle prints is 0.5%, on that custom-priced tier, and Circle states its transaction fees come in addition to Stripe's standard processing fees, which vary by country.

What we found running Circle ourselves

Questions we are still checking

How to actually use Circle

The trial runs 14 days on Professional and Business and asks for no credit card. Spaces are both the content container and the access gating mechanism, each set public, private or secret and typed as basic, chat, event, course, members or image. They are then bundled into space groups in the sidebar, which can mix types and access levels. Payments run through Stripe: Circle's payments page says paywalls are powered by Stripe and that you connect your existing Stripe account to begin accepting payments, with percentage or fixed-amount coupons on top and over 25 local currencies through Stripe.

Two paths are documented separately from the main setup. Moving an existing paid audience is one — bulk member import and migrating member payments onto Circle paywalls have their own articles. A custom domain is the other, with separate guides for subdomains and root domains. API tokens sit under Developers, Tokens; the Admin API itself is Business plan and above.

The natural comparison is Skool or Mighty Networks — Skool wins on radical simplicity and flat pricing, Mighty Networks on affordable entry; Circle wins on breadth: branded apps, email, CRM, AI agents and a real payments stack.

Visit Circle →

Frequently asked questions

Can you export your data from Circle?

Exit check 2026-10-31; route excerpt: Email-delivered audience export was not requested …; came along (excerpts): not_tested; lost (excerpts): not_tested; re-import: not tested.

Can I get my money back, and what happens when I downgrade or cancel?

Only in the first 30 days. Circle's refund policy (help.circle.so/p/administration/account/circle-s-refund-policy, read 12 October 2026) gives a 30-day money-back guarantee on monthly and annual subscriptions, counted from the original subscription start date; renewals and plan changes do not reset it, and after that no refunds are issued for the rest of the subscription or for unused service. Upgrades credit unused time; downgrades are scheduled for the end of the billing cycle with no credit. Cancelling under Settings, Plans, End your subscription also takes effect at the end of the current cycle.

What if I am over the smaller plan's limits when I downgrade?

Then the downgrade does not happen. 'Upgrade or downgrade your community plan' (help.circle.so/p/administration/account/upgrade-or-downgrade-your-community-plan, read 12 October 2026) says you can schedule it while over the target plan's limits on members, admins, spaces and so on, but if you are still over them on the scheduled date the downgrade is cancelled automatically and the current plan continues; Circle emails the owner and all admins both before and after. Changing only the billing interval, such as Business annual to Business monthly, is not limit-checked.

What happens to my members' subscriptions and my data if I cancel?

Your members keep paying until you stop them. 'Canceling your community plan' (help.circle.so/p/administration/account/canceling-your-community-plan, read 12 October 2026) says cancelling your Circle plan does not cancel members' paywall subscriptions: you cancel them and issue any refunds yourself, and the Stripe account stays connected through Circle. Community data is typically removed 90 days after cancellation; on request, support exports a CSV of members (without passwords), spaces, posts (without images) and comments, which Circle says is not easy to re-import.

Is this a hands-on review of Circle?

Yes. We tested Circle ourselves on 2026-10-31; the section above says what we tested, what we found and what we did not test, and where a figure comes from the vendor's own documentation instead. Most of our reviews are researched rather than run; we say which is which. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.

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