Circle Pricing in 2026: Plans, Fees and What Coaches Pay

Circle pricing in October 2026 starts at $89 per month for the Professional plan, rises to $199 for Business and $419 for Scale, and moves to a custom quote for Circle Plus. All three public prices are billed annually; the pricing page no longer shows monthly-billed rates. On top of the plan, Circle keeps 2% (Professional), 1% (Business and Scale) or 0.5% (Circle Plus) of every payment you collect, before Stripe's own processing. There is no free plan, but there is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

That headline number is rarely what a coach ends up paying. Email marketing, extra admins, live-stream hours and AI credits are add-ons, and Circle has no 1:1 booking, coaching contracts or client check-ins, so coaches who also work 1:1 keep paying for other tools beside it. Below you will find every plan and limit as listed in October 2026, every fee, three worked examples of real monthly cost, and how Circle compares with five alternatives. We make Coachful, one of those alternatives, so we have kept the Circle facts to what Circle publishes on its own pricing page.

How much does Circle cost in 2026?

Circle costs $89, $199 or $419 a month on annual billing, which works out to $1,068, $2,388 or $5,028 a year paid up front. Circle Plus, the tier with branded mobile apps, has no public price.

• Professional: $89 a month billed annually ($1,068 a year), with a 2% Circle fee on payments.
• Business: $199 a month billed annually ($2,388 a year), with a 1% fee.
• Scale: $419 a month billed annually ($5,028 a year), with a 1% fee.
• Circle Plus: custom price, with a 0.5% fee.
• Free trial: 14 days on Professional, Business and Scale, no credit card required.
• Free plan: none.

When we recorded Circle's pricing in September 2026, monthly billing was also listed: $129 a month for Professional and $219 for Business. The October page shows only the annual figures, so if you want to pay month to month, confirm the rate at checkout rather than assuming the $89 figure applies. All prices are in US dollars and exclude taxes.

Circle is a community platform first. It is built for running discussion spaces, courses, live events and paid memberships, and that is what the price buys. It is not a coaching back office, which is the main reason the plan price and a coach's real monthly spend drift apart. Keep that in mind as you read the plan details.

What are Circle's plans and limits?

Circle has four plans, and the main differences are how many admins and moderators you get, how many AI credits arrive each month, how much automation is included and how much of Circle's branding you can remove. The table shows each plan as listed in October 2026.

Notice what the limits count. The caps Circle publishes are team seats and AI credits, with spaces, live attendees and live hours sold in extra blocks. Member counts are not among the plan limits Circle lists, so on the published pricing the plan price is not tied to community size. What does climb is the transaction fee, the email add-on once you want to market to leads and members, and live-event add-ons if you stream to bigger audiences.

The plans are also not a ladder of community features. Professional already includes the community, courses, events, website and member apps. Each step up mostly adds control: automation, branding, integrations and team size.

What does each Circle plan add?

Each step up adds team seats, automation and branding: Professional is the full community product, Business adds workflows and white-labeling, Scale adds AI agents and webhooks, and Circle Plus adds branded apps under your own name.

Professional: $89 a month, billed annually

Professional includes discussion spaces, courses, live events, a website, a member directory, analytics, payments, gamification, a custom domain, and member apps for iOS, Android and desktop. Those apps carry Circle's branding, not yours. You get three admins, ten moderators and 2,500 AI credits a month, and Circle keeps 2% of each payment.

For a solo coach running one paid community, or a course with a discussion space beside it, this plan covers the core. What it leaves out matters more for coaches who want a polished client experience: automation workflows, custom profile fields and branded email notifications are Business features. Two of them can be bought separately on Professional, custom profile fields at $49 a month and branded email notifications at $40 a month.

Business: $199 a month, billed annually

Business adds workflows (20 automations, 20 scheduled and 20 bulk actions per month), custom profile fields, APIs and MCP access, activity scores, branded email notifications, removal of Circle branding and white-labeling. You get five admins and fifteen moderators, the same 2,500 AI credits as Professional, and the Circle fee drops to 1%.

There are three common reasons to look at Business. You want onboarding automations through workflows. You want the community to stop showing Circle's name. Or your sales are high enough that the 1% fee saving pays for the upgrade. We work through that last calculation in the money-saving section below.

Scale: $419 a month, billed annually

Scale now appears on the pricing page as a public tier with a listed price. It adds AI agents, AI workflows, unlimited workflows, webhooks, custom single sign-on through Auth0, priority support and, on annual billing, 60 days of concierge onboarding. Team limits jump to ten admins and 100 moderators, and AI credits double to 5,000 a month. The transaction fee stays at 1%.

Scale fits a coaching business that runs a large membership with a staff team and needs Circle to talk to other systems through webhooks or single sign-on. A solo coach is unlikely to need anything on this list.

Circle Plus: custom price

Circle Plus is the only plan with branded iOS and Android apps under your own name and branded push notifications. It also includes Email Hub with 10,000 contacts, a dedicated success manager, unlimited admins, moderators and spaces, and the lowest fee at 0.5%. Circle does not publish a price, so you have to request a quote. If your own app in the App Store is a must, this is the only Circle plan that offers it.

What fees does Circle charge on top of the plan?

Circle charges a platform fee of 0.5% to 2% on every payment taken through Circle Payments, plus Stripe's processing fee, plus any add-ons you switch on. Here is every fee and add-on Circle lists, as published in October 2026.

The transaction fee

The Circle fee is the cost that grows with your sales. On Professional, a coach who sells $3,000 a month through Circle pays $60 a month to Circle on top of the plan, or $720 a year. On Business the same sales cost $30 a month. This is separate from Stripe's processing, which you pay on any platform that uses Stripe. Some community platforms charge the same kind of fee (Mighty Networks also takes 2%, 1% or 0.5% depending on plan), while others charge none.

Processing

Circle Payments is built on Stripe, and Stripe's processing fee applies to every charge. Many course and community platforms quote a standard US card rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents, so we use that figure as an estimate in the worked examples below. Your real rate depends on your country, your customers' cards and your Stripe account, so treat our processing numbers as approximate.

Add-ons and overages

The add-ons coaches are most likely to need are Email Hub (if you want to email leads and members from Circle rather than a separate email tool), extra admins (if you bring on an assistant or co-coach beyond your plan's seats) and live hours or attendees (if you run regular group calls inside Circle). Each is sold in monthly blocks, so check your usage before each renewal and drop blocks you no longer need.

Seats

Circle's seats are admin and moderator seats for your team, not member seats. Extra admins cost $10 a month each, and moderators come in packs of ten for $20 a month. A coach with a virtual assistant and two co-coaches fits inside Professional's three admins only if the assistant is set up as a moderator rather than an admin.

What does a coach actually pay for Circle?

In the three examples below, a coach pays roughly $130 to $470 a month to Circle before Stripe processing, and still needs other tools for 1:1 work. The scenarios are illustrative: member counts, prices and sales figures are examples, while plan, fee and add-on prices are Circle's as listed in October 2026.

Two things stand out. First, the transaction fee is a real line item: in the first example it adds 44% to the plan price. Second, the third example stays on Business rather than Scale. Scale would cost $668 a month with the same fee and Email Hub, and the practice only needs it if it outgrows five admins or the 20-a-month workflow limits.

None of these totals include the tools Circle does not replace. Circle has no 1:1 scheduling, no client management back office and no per-client habits, check-ins or coaching plans. A coach who runs 1:1 sessions alongside the community typically adds a scheduling tool (our Calendly pricing breakdown shows what that costs), an e-signature tool for agreements and some way of tracking client progress, often a spreadsheet. Each has its own subscription and its own login for your clients.

For contrast, Coachful runs on a flat monthly plan with booking, contracts, check-ins, community, courses and email included in your Coachful membership and a 0% platform fee on payments. For a coach with 40 clients, the cheapest plan that covers them is Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients, and for a practice with hundreds of clients the cheapest unlimited plan is Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients.

What hidden costs and gotchas should coaches watch for?

The biggest hidden cost of Circle for coaches is the stack you keep paying for beside it; the second is the transaction fee. Here are the points that are easy to miss on the pricing page.

1. The headline price assumes annual billing. $89 is the per-month equivalent of a $1,068 annual charge. In September 2026 monthly billing on Professional was $129, which is $480 more over a year.
2. The fee sits on top of Stripe. On Professional, every $1,000 you sell costs $20 to Circle before processing.
3. Email marketing is an add-on. Email Hub, for marketing to up to 10,000 contacts, is $99 a month after a free first 30 days, unless you are on Circle Plus.
4. Your brand comes later. On Professional, the member apps carry Circle's branding. Removing Circle branding needs Business, branded email notifications cost $40 a month on Professional, and your own App Store apps need Circle Plus at a custom price.
5. Automations start on Business. Workflows begin at Business with 20 automations, 20 scheduled and 20 bulk actions a month; unlimited workflows need Scale.
6. AI is metered. Each plan includes 2,500 or 5,000 AI credits a month; beyond that, credits cost $10 per 1,000.
7. Live usage comes in blocks. Extra live attendees ($20 per 100) and live hours ($50 per 10 hours) are monthly add-ons, which matters if your group calls happen inside Circle.
8. There is no 1:1 back office. Circle has no 1:1 scheduling, client records, per-client habits, check-ins or coaching plans, so you pay for those elsewhere.
9. Leaving is only partly portable. When we recorded Circle's export options in September 2026, members and subscriptions could be exported as CSV at any time, but posts and content had no bulk export. Plan for that before you build years of discussion on the platform.

Point eight matters most for 1:1 coaches. A coaching practice runs on a calendar of booked sessions with reminders, intake answers and payment status attached, which is a different product from a community feed.

Is Circle worth it for coaches?

Circle is worth it if your community is your product; it is a weak fit if your coaching happens 1:1 or depends on tracking each client's progress. Here is how it works out by coach type.

Membership and community coaches

If you sell access to a community with discussions, live events and a course library, Circle is built for that. Professional covers what you need on day one, and the main question is when the 2% fee and Circle's branding make Business worthwhile. Public reviewers give Circle 4.1 stars from 129 reviews on Trustpilot as of October 2026. If you want the community without Circle, our guides to hosting a coaching community without Circle and running a client mastermind without Circle walk through the setup.

Course creators who add discussion

Circle includes courses on every plan, so a creator with a course and a community can run both in one place. If selling, funnels and email matter more to you than discussion, compare platforms built around selling products, such as Kajabi or Podia; our Kajabi pricing guide breaks down that option. Coaches whose courses are part of a coaching offer may prefer an online course platform for coaches that ties lessons to client progress.

1:1 coaches

Circle is a poor fit for mostly 1:1 work. You would pay at least $89 a month for community features and still need booking, contracts, client records and progress tracking from other tools. A coaching platform with scheduling, coaching contracts and payments built in is a better use of the same budget.

Group program and cohort coaches

Circle is a partial fit. It can host the cohort space, the live calls and the course material. What it cannot do is give each participant their own habits, daily check-ins and weekly goals, or show you who is falling behind, so you would need a separate tracker or a spreadsheet for that. If you are still setting the program price itself, our group coaching pricing calculator guide and the piece on early-bird pricing for group coaching help.

Multi-coach practices

Business gives five admins and Scale gives ten, so team access is covered. Per-coach booking, round-robin assignment and per-coach client lists are not part of Circle, so a practice selling 1:1 time still needs another system. Practices that want seats, per-coach availability and staff permissions in one place can look at Coachful for teams.

How does Circle pricing compare with alternatives?

Against the other platforms coaches shortlist, Circle sits in the middle on entry price and charges a platform fee on every plan, which not all of them do. We rank by what decides a coach's real cost: one login for the whole client journey, between-session delivery, total stack cost and setup effort with the free white-glove build, which puts Coachful first.

Coachful is the one option here built around coaching clients rather than selling content: the community and courses sit beside booking, agreements, payments and per-client programs, with a 0% platform fee. The full picture is in the next section and in our Coachful vs Circle comparison.

Mighty Networks has almost the same shape as Circle: annual prices of $79, $179 and $354 a month, the same 2%, 1% and 0.5% fee ladder, and own-brand apps only on custom-priced Mighty Pro. If you are choosing between the two, compare community features rather than price, because the costs land in the same place.

Skool is the cheapest way to start a community, at $9 a month on Hobby, but that plan takes 10% plus 30 cents of every sale, and both plans run payments only through Skool Payments. There is no custom-domain website, funnels or email automation. Our Skool pricing guide and the Skool vs Circle comparison go deeper, and coaches weighing both can see the alternative to Skool and Circle.

Kajabi costs more, at $143 a month on annual Basic, but includes funnels and email marketing in the plan. On Circle, marketing email is the Email Hub add-on, and funnels are not among the features Circle lists. Basic caps you at 2,500 contacts and five products and includes no AI credits.

Podia is the low-cost storefront option at $42 a month on annual Mover, with a 5% fee on that plan that disappears on Shaker ($84 a month annually). Email allowances are small, with 100, 500 or 1,000 subscribers included depending on plan.

One pattern runs through the table: the platforms that look cheapest at entry often make it up in fees on each sale. Model your expected monthly sales against each fee before comparing headline prices.

Where does Coachful fit if you are pricing Circle?

Coachful is the better buy for coaches whose business is clients rather than a community alone, because one subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, programs with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant.

What it is. A coaching platform with one login for the coach and one branded app for the client. Clients see your branding inside the Coachful app, where they book sessions, sign agreements, follow programs, log habits, answer morning and evening check-ins, take courses and join the community.

Who it is for. Coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions; solo coaches growing into a small team; and coaches replacing four to six tools. Team plans (Studio and Agency) add coach seats with per-coach availability and staff permissions.

How the pricing differs from Circle. Plans are flat and monthly. Lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited, and monthly plans cancel in one click. Coachful has had a 0% platform fee since August 2026, so you pay only Stripe or Razorpay processing through your own account. Email lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences are included in your Coachful membership rather than sold as an add-on. Current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients.

What it covers that Circle leaves out. Booking pages with availability rules, buffers and two-way Google, Apple and Outlook calendar sync; built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet or Teams links; payments with subscriptions, payment plans and an invoice per transaction; coaching agreements with e-signature sent before the first call; and client records with goals, check-ins, habits, notes, payments and a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk.

The community part. A community feed, group chat, direct messages, video events, group calls and webinars, with cohort groups created automatically when a client enrolls in a program. It lives in the same login as the 1:1 work, which is the main difference from running Circle beside a booking tool. Our group coaching software page covers the cohort side in more detail.

This short walkthrough shows how a program is built and delivered to clients:

What it does not do. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and is not for clinical record-keeping or insurance billing. It has no PayPal and no permanent free plan. The client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account, so if your own app listing is a must, Circle Plus offers that at a custom price. It is not a course marketplace, has no third-party plugins, and does not sync with Garmin, Fitbit, Whoop or Oura.

Moving from Circle. Clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding, and if you ever leave, a full client data export comes as a ZIP with roster, notes, check-ins, goals, habits, sessions and form responses.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build things for you from Create > We'll build it for you. Describe the website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline, email sequence, form or automation you want, attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files, and the team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours. Nothing is invented: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices, and gaps are left for you to fill. It does not cover recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. One recent example: a somatic coach leaving Kajabi had their homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. Another, a leadership coach with a Squarespace renewal days away, got one clean homepage with a repeated "talk with me" button. Read more about the free white-glove service.

How to start. Start a free trial, then request a white-glove build of your site or first program so you are not rebuilding everything by hand.

How can you save money on Circle?

The fastest saving on Circle is choosing the right plan for your sales volume; the second is paying only for add-ons you use. Specific moves:

1. Use the full 14-day trial before paying. No card is needed, so build your spaces and test the member experience on a phone before you commit.
2. Pay annually once you are sure. Against the September 2026 monthly prices, annual billing saves $480 a year on Professional and $240 on Business. Do not prepay a year until the trial has proven the fit.
3. Run the Professional vs Business math. Business costs $110 a month more but halves the fee from 2% to 1%. On fees alone, Business pays for itself once you sell about $11,000 a month through Circle. If you would also buy branded email notifications ($40) and custom profile fields ($49) on Professional, the gap shrinks to $21 a month, and Business wins from about $2,100 a month in sales.
4. Use the free Email Hub month deliberately. The first 30 days are free. Decide before day 30 whether you will keep it at $99 a month or stay with your existing email tool.
5. Give admin rights only where needed. Extra admins are $10 a month each beyond your plan's allowance, while moderators come ten for $20. People who only moderate discussion do not need an admin seat.
6. Audit add-on blocks every quarter. Extra spaces, live hours, live attendees and AI credits are monthly charges that are easy to forget.
7. Keep Scale for real needs. Scale costs $220 a month more than Business with the same 1% fee. Only move up for more than five admins, unlimited workflows, webhooks or single sign-on.
8. Count the whole stack. Add up Circle, your booking tool, your e-signature tool and whatever tracks client progress. If the total is higher than one platform that includes all of them, consolidation is the bigger saving.

The last point is often worth more than the rest combined. A coach on Professional with a separate scheduler and e-signature tool pays three subscriptions and asks clients to use three logins. If you are reviewing every tool at once, our coaching pricing audit guide walks through costs and fees in one pass.

Frequently asked questions about Circle pricing

How much does Circle cost per month?

As listed in October 2026, Circle costs $89 a month for Professional, $199 for Business and $419 for Scale, each billed annually. Circle Plus is custom-priced. Monthly billing is not shown on the pricing page; in September 2026 it was $129 for Professional and $219 for Business.

Does Circle have a free plan?

No. Circle offers a 14-day free trial on Professional, Business and Scale with no credit card required, but there is no free plan to stay on after it ends.

What transaction fees does Circle charge?

Circle takes 2% of payments on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus. Stripe processing comes on top, because Circle Payments runs on Stripe.

Is Circle's Business plan worth the upgrade?

It is if you need workflows, branding removal or custom profile fields, or if you sell enough for the lower fee to matter. On fees alone the break-even is about $11,000 a month in sales. If you would otherwise buy branded emails and custom fields as add-ons, it drops to about $2,100.

Does Circle include email marketing?

Marketing email to leads and members runs through Email Hub, a $99-a-month add-on for 10,000 contacts with the first 30 days free. It is included in Circle Plus. Branded email notifications are a separate item, included on Business and above or $40 a month on Professional.

Can I get my own branded app on Circle?

Branded iOS and Android apps under your own name, with branded push notifications, are a Circle Plus feature, and Circle Plus is custom-priced. On Professional, members use Circle's iOS, Android and desktop apps with Circle's branding.

Can Circle handle 1:1 coaching clients?

Not on its own. Circle has no 1:1 scheduling, client management back office, per-client habits, check-ins or coaching plans, so 1:1 coaches pair it with a booking tool, an e-signature tool and a way to track progress. A coaching platform such as Coachful includes those in one membership.

Can I export my data if I leave Circle?

When we recorded Circle's export options in September 2026, member and subscription lists could be exported as CSV at any time, but posts and other content had no bulk export. Check the current options with Circle before you build years of content there.

Is Coachful cheaper than Circle?

It depends on how many clients you serve and which tools Circle would sit beside. Coachful has flat monthly plans with a 0% platform fee, and booking, contracts, check-ins and email are included in your Coachful membership. Current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

Every Coachful plan includes a free white-glove build: you describe a website, funnel, program, course outline, email sequence or similar, attach references, and the Coachful team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include video recording, logo design, ads or ongoing marketing. Details are in our guide to the white-glove service.