Circle vs Zoom Pricing (2026)

How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.

Circle Zoom
Starts at $89/mo $14/mo
Number of plans 3 4
Free plan
Free trial
Pricing model hybrid per-seat

Professional

$89/mo
  • Circle AI
  • Unlimited members
  • Courses
  • Discussions
  • Events
  • Website Builder
  • Live streams
  • Live rooms
  • Custom branding
  • Reporting & analytics
  • Searchable member directory
  • Rich member profiles
  • Paid memberships
  • Gamification
  • Custom domain
  • Weekly community digest
  • Migration services for payments

Business

Popular
$199/mo
  • Workflows
  • Custom profile fields
  • Circle MCP
  • Headless Member API
  • Admin API
  • Branded email notifications
  • Content co-pilot
  • Automated transcriptions
  • Activity scores
  • Standard migration services
  • Remove Circle branding

Circle Plus

Custom
  • AI Agents & AI workflows
  • Custom single sign-on (SSO)
  • Highest limits (Live, Storage, Workflows)
  • 10k Email Hub contacts included
  • Lower transaction fees
  • Sandbox community

Basic

$0/mo
  • 40 minutes per meeting
  • 100 participants per meeting
  • Meeting summaries (for 3 hosted meetings per month)
  • AI queries (20 per month)
  • AI note-taking (3 uses per month)
  • Instant messaging
  • VoIP calling
  • 1 personal booking page
  • 3 editable whiteboards
  • 5 two-minute clips
  • Limited AI capabilities
  • Connect Gmail/Outlook in Zoom
  • Sync Google/Microsoft calendars
  • Surface, manage, and complete tasks
  • One place for your Zoom files

Pro

Popular
$14/mo
  • 30 hours per meeting
  • 100 participants per meeting
  • Unlimited AI note-taking
  • Basic AI queries
  • Agentic search
  • Workflows in Zoom
  • Group videos in channels (25 unique viewers)
  • Zoom recordings, Clips, and uploads
  • Unlimited AI document creation
  • Unlimited clips
  • Custom avatars (3 mins per month)
  • Zoom Mail
  • Zoom Calendar
  • 10 GB per user
  • Live Chat Support

Business

$18/mo
  • 300 participants per meeting
  • Unlimited booking pages
  • Unlimited whiteboards
  • SSO, managed domains
  • Multi-region storage and media control
  • Device management
  • Information barriers and other policies
  • Archival and data loss prevention APIs

Enterprise

Custom
  • 1000 participants per meeting
  • Full-featured PBX
  • 500 attendees
  • Rooms
  • Workspace Reservation
  • Visitor Management
  • Translated captions
  • Customer managed key
  • Hybrid cloud
  • Contact management network

Circle vs Zoom FAQ

Which one is cheaper?
Zoom is the cheaper option, starting at $14/mo vs $89/mo for Circle.
Can I use either one for free?
Zoom has a free plan. Circle doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
How do they charge?
Different approach here. Circle uses hybrid pricing, while Zoom goes with per-seat. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
Which one is a better deal?
Depends on what you need. Circle: At $89-199/mo before the custom enterprise tier, Circle sits mid-to-upper market compared to scrappier community tools but undercuts full-blown LMS or membership platforms bundled with marketing suites. They're chasing serious creators and businesses who've outgrown Discord/Slack hacks but aren't ready for a bloated enterprise stack. Zoom: Zoom sits in the mid-market sweet spot — not the cheapest (Google Meet is bundled free with Workspace, Teams with M365) but far from premium. At $14-18/seat they're competing on brand trust and reliability against Microsoft and Google, who are essentially giving away comparable functionality to existing customers.

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