Circle vs Mighty Networks
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedCircle compared with Mighty Networks
These two are the closest match in the category: both do courses, events, memberships, custom domains, mobile apps, and a tiered transaction fee of 2 percent falling to 0.5 percent. Mighty Networks is cheaper at the entry point at $79 and stronger on cohort-based courses and its Community Design methodology, while Circle has the deeper monetization and email stack and a more developer-friendly API. Pick Mighty Networks if the product is a course or cohort with a community around it, and Circle if the community is the product and billing complexity is your problem.
Mighty Networks compared with Circle
The closest match in this category, with near-identical features and an identical 2 percent to 0.5 percent fee curve. Mighty Networks starts $10 cheaper, handles cohort courses better, and has a more established branded-app programme. Circle has the stronger monetization and email stack, a better API, and a larger, better-funded company behind it. Choose Mighty Networks if your product is a course or cohort with a community around it; choose Circle if the community itself is the product and you want the deeper commercial tooling.
Choose Circle if
Creators, coaches, and small businesses running a paid membership or cohort program who want courses, events, discussion, and billing in one branded product on their own domain, and who are doing enough revenue that a 1 to 2 percent platform fee is a rounding error rather than a tax.
Choose Mighty Networks if
Coaches, educators, and creators whose product is a course or a cohort program with a community around it, especially those running structured cohorts on a schedule, and larger creators who want their own branded app in the App Store with a services team behind the launch.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Circle | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Community | Community |
| Starting price | $89 per month (Professional) (14 days trial) | $79 per month, or $950 per year (Launch) (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly platform subscription with unlimited members, plus a percentage transaction fee on every paid membership, course, or event sold through Circle checkout, plus paid add-ons for email marketing. | Flat monthly platform subscription with unlimited members on every tier, plus a percentage transaction fee on everything sold through the platform's checkout, falling as you move up tiers. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | 14 days on Professional and Business | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Creators, coaches, and small businesses running a paid membership or cohort program who want courses, events, discussion, and billing in one branded product on their own domain, and who are doing enough revenue that a 1 to 2 percent platform fee is a rounding error rather than a tax. | Coaches, educators, and creators whose product is a course or a cohort program with a community around it, especially those running structured cohorts on a schedule, and larger creators who want their own branded app in the App Store with a services team behind the launch. |
| Setup time | A working community in an afternoon. Signing up, creating spaces, connecting a custom domain, and wiring Stripe are all self-serve and take a few hours combined. Getting the content and the onboarding sequence right is the part that takes weeks. | A live network in an afternoon. Spaces, a custom domain, payment setup, and a first course outline are all self-serve. Designing the actual member rhythm the company's methodology calls for takes considerably longer than the software configuration does. |
| Learning curve | Moderate for the admin, low for members. The spaces model, permission layers, and paywall rules interact in ways that reward reading the docs before you build, and communities that improvise their structure usually rebuild it once. Members need no instruction. | Moderate for hosts. The spaces and permissions model and the cohort-course scheduler both reward planning before building, and networks that improvise their structure usually rebuild it. Members need no instruction. |
| Platforms | Web app, Native iOS app, Native Android app, Branded iOS and Android apps on Circle Plus, Custom domain hosting | Web app, Native iOS app, Native Android app, Fully branded iOS and Android apps on Mighty Pro, Custom domain hosting |
| Compliance | GDPR, Payment processing handled through Stripe | GDPR, Payment processing handled through a third-party processor |
| Founded | 2019 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Remote-first US company | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Circle
Strengths
- The broadest feature set on a published price in this category: discussion, courses, events, live streaming, chat, payments, affiliates, a website builder, and native mobile apps all on the $89 tier.
- Unlimited members on every plan, so growth does not trigger a pricing cliff the way it does on Heartbeat or Bettermode.
- Custom domain and a white-labeled member experience from the entry tier, which is the thing free chat platforms fundamentally cannot offer.
- Native iOS and Android apps with push notifications keep engagement materially higher than a browser-only forum.
Limitations
- No free plan at all, which makes Circle a poor fit for a small free community and a hard sell for anyone testing whether a community is worth running.
- The transaction fee stacks on Stripe and is charged on gross, so a low-margin membership business pays Circle more than the subscription costs and cannot reach the 0.5 percent rate without a sales conversation.
- Branded mobile apps and custom SSO are both locked behind the unpriced Circle Plus tier, so the two things a maturing community most wants next are exactly the two things with no published cost.
- Admin and moderator seat caps of 3 and 10 on Professional are tight for a volunteer-moderated community and force an upgrade for reasons unrelated to features.
Mighty Networks
Strengths
- The best cohort-based course engine in this category, which matters because timeline-based cohorts are what most coaching and education businesses actually sell.
- Unlimited members on every published tier, so growth never triggers a pricing cliff the way it does on Heartbeat and Bettermode.
- A custom domain included on the $79 entry plan, which several competitors hold back for higher tiers.
- Native iOS and Android apps on every tier, plus a genuine branded-app programme through Mighty Pro with a services team behind the launch.
Limitations
- Mighty Pro, the platform's flagship differentiator, is entirely unpriced and requires a demo request, so the reason many buyers choose Mighty Networks cannot be budgeted from the website.
- No SSO on published tiers, no support-desk integrations, no knowledge base or ideas portal, so a B2B customer community is out of scope.
- The API exists but is not a strength; teams needing deep programmatic control will find Bettermode's GraphQL or Discourse's REST API in a different class.
- Streaming hours are metered on published tiers, which constrains networks running daily live programming without moving to Mighty Pro.
Pricing compared
Circle
Flat monthly platform subscription with unlimited members, plus a percentage transaction fee on every paid membership, course, or event sold through Circle checkout, plus paid add-ons for email marketing.
- Professional$89
- Business$199
- Circle PlusCustom
For a community that is genuinely a business, Circle is fairly priced and hard to assemble from parts. Courses, events, live streaming, native mobile apps, a custom domain, recurring billing, affiliates, and search over unlimited history at $89 a month would cost more than that in separate tools, and the tools would not share a member identity. For a community that is not yet a business, Circle is expensive in a way the sticker hides: $89 plus 2 percent plus Stripe plus $99 of Email Hub is a real monthly commitment for a group that could sit on a free Discourse instance or a Discord server. The cutoff is roughly whether the community produces revenue. Above that line Circle is good value, below it the fee structure works against you.
Mighty Networks
Flat monthly platform subscription with unlimited members on every tier, plus a percentage transaction fee on everything sold through the platform's checkout, falling as you move up tiers.
- Launch$79
- Scale$179
- Mighty ProCustom
Mighty Networks is priced almost exactly where it should be relative to Circle: $10 a month cheaper at the entry point with an identical 2 percent fee, unlimited members on both published tiers, and a better cohort-course engine. For a creator whose product is teaching, that combination is the best value in the category on a published price. The weak spot is the top of the range. Scale at $179 is fine, but Mighty Pro is entirely opaque, and since a branded app is the single most-cited reason to choose this platform over Circle, the fact that its price is invisible is a real problem for planning. Judged only on what you can actually buy without a call, Launch at $79 is excellent value and Scale is a rational margin upgrade.
Editorial verdict on each
Circle
Category LeaderCircle is the safe default for a community that is actually a business. Nothing else on a published price puts discussion, courses, events, live streaming, payments, affiliates, a custom domain, and native mobile apps in one product, and the company behind it is large, profitable, and shipping. Buy it if you are charging members and want the whole membership experience under your own brand without stitching five tools together. Do not buy it for a free community, because there is no free plan and the value proposition collapses without revenue to justify it. And go into the pricing with clear eyes: the honest monthly cost is the $89 plus a percentage of everything you sell plus Email Hub, and the exit cost is a discussion archive that will not move anywhere useful. Those are acceptable terms for a real membership business and bad terms for an experiment.
Read the full Circle profileMighty Networks
Mighty Networks is the right pick when teaching is the point. The cohort-course engine is the best in this category, live streaming is included, members are unlimited on every published tier, the custom domain starts at $79, and the fee curve matches Circle's while the base price undercuts it. Two decades of thinking about what makes members talk to each other rather than to the host shows in the product. The reservations are about transparency and scope. Mighty Pro, which is the flagship reason large creators choose this platform, has no published price at all, and there is no SSO, no support-desk integration, and no meaningful search visibility, so a B2B customer community should look at Bettermode or Discourse instead. For a coach, an educator, or a creator running structured cohorts under their own brand, this is the strongest published-price option available and a genuine alternative to Circle rather than a lesser one.
Read the full Mighty Networks profileCircle profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Mighty Networks last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.