Circle.so pricing starts at $89 a month for Professional, $199 for Business and $419 for Scale on annual billing, with Circle Plus on custom pricing. On top of the plan you pay a 2% or 1% Circle fee on payments, plus Stripe’s fees, and extras such as Email Hub and additional AI credits. The real monthly cost depends on your revenue as much as your plan.
Quick Summary
- Plans on annual billing: Professional $89, Business $199, Scale $419 a month. Circle Plus is custom. Prices exclude taxes.
- Circle’s own fee on payments is 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus. It stacks on top of Stripe’s fees.
- For a 100-member community paying $29 a month ($2,900 a month in revenue), Professional costs about $281.40 a month all in and Business about $362.40, before Email Hub.
- Business only becomes cheaper than Professional above $11,000 a month in payment volume.
- TrueCommunity, a community and LMS plugin for WordPress, has a free plugin and Pro from $119 a year with no per-member fees and no platform cut. It does not include subscription billing today.
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What does circle.so pricing look like in 2026?
Circle sells four tiers. Three of them have a public monthly price, and the top one is quoted by sales. Every tier includes unlimited members, so the plan price does not rise as your member list grows.
The figures below come from Circle’s official pricing page. The page states that prices are shown in USD, are based on annual billing and exclude applicable taxes.
| Plan | Price per month (annual billing) | Circle fee on payments | Admins | Moderators | Spaces | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | $89 | 2% | 3 | 10 | 20 | 200GB |
| Business | $199 | 1% | 5 | 15 | 30 | 500GB |
| Scale | $419 | 1% | 10 | 100 | 100 | 1TB |
| Circle Plus | Custom | 0.5% | Unlimited | Unlimited | Flexible | 1TB |
Prices checked on November 7, 2026, on circle.so/pricing.
What each plan adds
Professional covers the core product: community, courses, live events, a website, member directory, payments, gamification, a custom domain and Circle’s apps. It also includes Circle AI with 2,500 credits a month.
Business adds workflows, custom profile fields, APIs and MCP, activity scores, branded email notifications and the option to remove Circle branding. Scale adds AI agents, AI workflows, unlimited workflows, webhooks and custom single sign-on, plus priority support and 60 days of concierge onboarding on annual plans.
Circle Plus is the tier for your own branded mobile app, unlimited admins, moderators and spaces, an Email Hub with 10,000 contacts and negotiable limits. If you need a custom-branded app inside Circle, this is the only tier that includes one.
Watch out: the headline price is the annual-billing price. The page states it plainly in small print, so budget for the annual commitment, which is $1,068 a year on Professional and $2,388 a year on Business (12 times the monthly figure).
Does Circle have a free plan or a free trial?
Circle has no free plan. The pricing page offers a free 14-day trial and says no credit card is required. Professional, Business and Scale all show a “Start free trial” button, while Circle Plus goes through sales.
Two weeks is short for a community. You need members posting, a payment flow tested and workflows built before you know whether the platform fits. Compare that with a free WordPress plugin you can run for as long as you like, a point we come back to below.
What are Circle’s transaction fees, and do they stack with Stripe’s?
Yes, they stack. Circle takes an application fee on paywall payments: 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus. Stripe’s own processing fees are charged separately on the same payment.
Circle’s help documentation gives two examples. On Business, a paywall subscription costs 1% to Circle, plus 2.9% and $0.30 for Stripe Payments, plus 0.7% for Stripe Billing. On Professional, a buyer paying with Affirm costs 2% to Circle plus 6% and $0.30 to Stripe.
The practical reading: Circle’s cut is the smaller part of the fee stack, but it is the part that exists only because you use their platform. Stripe’s fees would apply on most hosted or self-hosted setups. The platform fee is what scales with your revenue and never goes away while you stay on Circle.
Fee rates in one table
| Fee | Professional | Business | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circle application fee | 2% | 1% | 1% |
| Stripe Payments (card example) | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Stripe Billing (subscriptions example) | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.7% |
Stripe rates are the ones used in Circle’s own help example. Prices and fees checked on November 7, 2026.
What is the real total cost of Circle for a 100-member paid community?
For 100 members paying $29 a month, the all-in cost is about $281.40 a month on Professional and $362.40 on Business. These numbers use the plan price plus Circle’s fee plus the Stripe example above.
Assumptions: 100 paying members at $29 a month, so $2,900 a month in payments. Every payment is a standard card subscription with Stripe Payments (2.9% plus $0.30) and Stripe Billing (0.7%). Annual billing, no taxes, no Email Hub, no extra AI credits.
| Line | Professional | Business |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (annual billing) | $89.00 | $199.00 |
| Circle fee (2% or 1% of $2,900) | $58.00 | $29.00 |
| Stripe Payments (2.9% = $84.10, plus 100 x $0.30 = $30.00) | $114.10 | $114.10 |
| Stripe Billing (0.7%) | $20.30 | $20.30 |
| Total per month | $281.40 | $362.40 |
That works out to $2.81 and $3.62 per member per month on Professional and Business respectively, before any add-ons. Of the $281.40 on Professional, $192.40 is fees and $89 is the plan. Fees are 68% of the Professional total in this example, so revenue growth moves your bill more than plan choice does.
Cost check: if you double to 200 members at the same price, payments reach $5,800 a month. On Professional the Circle fee alone becomes $116 a month, more than the $89 plan price.
When does the Business plan become cheaper than Professional?
Business becomes cheaper than Professional above $11,000 a month in payment volume. Business costs $110 more a month in plan price ($199 minus $89), and it saves 1 percentage point on the Circle fee (2% down to 1%).
The calculation is $110 divided by 0.01, which gives $11,000. Below that volume, Professional is cheaper on plan plus Circle fee alone. At exactly $11,000 a month the two cost the same, and above it Business wins.
| Monthly payment volume | Professional (plan + Circle fee) | Business (plan + Circle fee) |
|---|---|---|
| $2,900 | $147.00 | $228.00 |
| $5,000 | $189.00 | $249.00 |
| $11,000 | $309.00 | $309.00 |
| $20,000 | $489.00 | $399.00 |
Stripe fees are the same on both plans, so they are left out of this table. Prices checked on November 7, 2026.
Volume is not the only reason to move up. Workflows, APIs, custom profile fields, branded email notifications and removing Circle branding all start at Business. If you need those, the fee breakeven is only part of the decision.
Try TrueCommunity free, upgrade when you need more
What does Circle charge extra for?
Circle charges extra for Email Hub, additional AI credits, API requests above the included amount, and branded apps on Circle Plus. Several limits also push you to a higher plan rather than a one-off fee.
Email Hub
Email Hub is optional and is charged on top of your community plan. Circle lists it from $99 a month for up to 10,000 contacts, with the first 30 days free.
It covers email broadcasts, forms, marketing workflows, contact segments and campaign analytics. Circle Plus includes it with 10,000 contacts.
AI credits
Credits combine Circle AI, workflow tasks, API calls and agent tokens. Professional and Business include 2,500 a month and Scale includes 5,000. Extra credits cost $10 per 1,000 on those three plans.
Because workflow tasks and API calls draw from the same pool, a busy automation setup can use credits faster than you expect. It is worth estimating usage before you rely on workflows.
API requests and workflow limits
Professional has no workflows and no admin API. Business includes 20 automations, 20 scheduled workflows and 20 bulk actions a month, plus 5,000 admin API requests a month, with extra requests at $0.005 each. Scale has unlimited workflows and 30,000 admin API requests a month, with extra requests at $0.002 each.
Live streams, staff seats and spaces
Live stream limits rise by plan: 100, 200 and 500 attendees, and 10, 15 and 20 hours on Professional, Business and Scale. Admin, moderator and space counts are fixed per plan as shown in the first table, so a growing team or a many-space community pushes you toward a higher tier.
| Extra | Cost |
|---|---|
| Email Hub (10,000 contacts) | $99 a month, first 30 days free |
| Extra Circle AI credits | $10 per 1,000 |
| Extra admin API requests (Business) | $0.005 per request |
| Extra admin API requests (Scale) | $0.002 per request |
| Custom branded mobile app | Circle Plus only, custom pricing |
Prices checked on November 7, 2026, on circle.so/pricing.
Is monthly billing on Circle more expensive than annual billing?
The public pricing page shows annual-billing rates, and its small print says so. Treat the figures above as the best case: a month-to-month commitment is a separate price you should confirm at checkout before you plan around it.
The lock-in matters more than the discount. An annual plan on Business commits you to $2,388 for the year. If your community stalls, that is money spent regardless of member count or revenue.
Is Circle cheaper than other community platforms?
Circle’s cost is easy to model: a plan, a percentage of revenue and some extras. Other hosted platforms combine those differently, so compare the same four lines for each: plan price, platform fee on payments, payment processor fees and paid add-ons.
The useful test is the all-in monthly cost at your own revenue, using the same assumptions on every platform. A platform with a higher plan price and no platform cut can beat a cheaper plan with a 2% fee once revenue passes a certain point, exactly as the Business breakeven above shows.
How does circle.so pricing compare with owning a community on WordPress?
With a WordPress plugin you pay a flat license instead of a plan plus a percentage. TrueCommunity is a community and LMS plugin: a private social network (feed, profiles, groups, messaging, notifications) and a course builder (courses, lessons, quizzes) in one plugin, using your existing WordPress accounts. Data stays in your own database and there are no per-member fees.
The free plugin on WordPress.org is a complete community with basic courses and quizzes, and free features will not move to Pro. Pro adds advanced course rules, course selling and gamification. See the Free vs Pro comparison for the full list.
| Plan | Sites | Yearly | Lifetime | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | 1 | $119 | $249 | Email, about 2 business days |
| Studio (best value) | 5 | $199 | $399 | Priority, about 1 business day |
| Agency | 30 | $299 | $599 | Priority, about 1 business day |
Prices checked on November 7, 2026, on the TrueCommunity pricing page. Every plan includes all Pro features, and yearly plans renew at the same price.
The comparison, with its limits stated
One Solo yearly license costs $119 for the year, which is a little more than one month of Circle Professional at $89 plus its fee on our example volume. Over twelve months, the Professional example above comes to 12 times $281.40, or $3,376.80. That figure includes Stripe’s fees, which you would also pay on WordPress with a payment gateway.
To keep this fair, the WordPress side excludes subscription billing and hosting. TrueCommunity lets you sell courses through WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, and the course must be Private.
It does not process payments itself, so fees come from your store and gateway. Recurring paid memberships are not shipped yet, so a paid-membership community like the $29 a month example needs a separate billing layer today.
Key takeaway: the saving on WordPress is the platform cut and the plan tiers, not the payment processor’s fees. Check what your billing layer costs before you compare totals.
What the free plugin gives you instead of a 14-day trial
The free plugin has no time limit, so you can launch a community, create courses with auto-graded quizzes in the course features and test your members’ behaviour before paying anything. See the community features for the feed, groups, messages and notifications.
Pro has a 14-day money-back guarantee on every payment, including renewals, and no reason is needed (see the refund policy). If a license lapses, the plugin keeps working, but updates and support stop until you renew.
When TrueCommunity fits (and when it does not)
TrueCommunity fits when you already run or are willing to run a WordPress site, want to own members and data, and want a flat yearly or lifetime cost with no percentage of revenue. It suits coaches, creators, associations and schools who need community plus courses together. Agencies can run 5 sites on Studio at $199 a year or 30 on Agency at $299.
It is not the best choice in several cases:
- You need paid memberships and subscription billing built in today. TrueCommunity sells courses via WooCommerce or EDD, but recurring membership billing is planned, not shipped.
- You want a branded mobile app now. Circle Plus offers one today, while the TrueCommunity app is coming soon.
- You do not want to manage WordPress hosting, updates and a payment plugin. A hosted platform removes that work, and you pay for it.
- You need certificates, SCORM or large-scale reporting. TrueCommunity does not offer these today.
- You need events, CRM integrations or Zapier today. They are on the roadmap, not available.
Group creation and course creation are admin-only in TrueCommunity, which matters if you want members to start their own groups.
What’s coming next to TrueCommunity
The biggest gap against hosted platforms is the phone, and it is on the way. Here is what is planned.
- Mobile app: the TrueCommunity mobile app is coming soon, planned for late February. Each community gets its own branded app with its own name, icon and colours on iPhone and Android, bringing every free and Pro feature (feed, groups, messages, notifications, courses, quizzes, assignments, badges, challenges, leaderboards and rewards) to members’ phones. Members sign in with the same WordPress account and everything stays in sync. It is a separate product with its own pricing, announced later.
- Integrations and paid private groups: planned for early February, including MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro and WooCommerce Memberships access by level.
- Memberships and paid access: planned for late March, as an optional module that stays off until turned on.
Follow the roadmap, read about the mobile app, or request a feature at the contact page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Circle cost per month?
On annual billing, Circle costs $89 a month for Professional, $199 for Business and $419 for Scale, with Circle Plus on custom pricing. Those figures exclude taxes, payment fees and add-ons such as Email Hub. A paid community will pay Circle’s 1% or 2% fee and Stripe’s fees on top.
Does Circle have a free plan or a free trial?
There is no free plan, but Circle’s pricing page offers a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. The trial is available on Professional, Business and Scale. Two weeks is enough to test the product but often too short to judge how a paid community performs.
What are Circle’s transaction fees, and do they stack with Stripe’s?
Circle charges 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus, and Stripe’s fees are charged on top. Circle’s help example for Business shows 1% to Circle plus 2.9% and $0.30 for Stripe Payments plus 0.7% for Stripe Billing. Alternative payment methods can cost more, for instance 6% and $0.30 for an Affirm payment in Circle’s Professional example.
What is the real total cost of Circle for a 100-member paid community?
At $29 a month per member, which is $2,900 a month, the all-in cost is about $281.40 a month on Professional and $362.40 on Business. That includes the plan, Circle’s fee and the Stripe example rates. Email Hub, extra AI credits and taxes would be added to that.
When does the Business plan become cheaper than Professional?
Business becomes cheaper above $11,000 a month in payment volume, because the $110 higher plan price is offset by a 1 percentage point lower Circle fee. Below that volume Professional costs less in plan plus Circle fee. If you need workflows, APIs or branding removal, Business may be worth it regardless of the breakeven.
What does Circle charge extra for?
Email Hub is listed from $99 a month for 10,000 contacts, with the first 30 days free. Extra AI credits cost $10 per 1,000, and extra admin API requests cost $0.005 each on Business and $0.002 on Scale. A custom branded mobile app is available only on Circle Plus.
Is TrueCommunity a cheaper alternative to Circle?
It can be, because it has no platform fee and no per-member fees: Solo is $119 a year, and the pricing page lists Studio and Agency for multiple sites. You still need hosting and a WooCommerce or EDD store to sell courses, and it has no built-in subscription billing today. Start with the free plugin to test whether it fits before buying Pro.
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