# Circleback

> Circleback is an AI meeting assistant from a small Y Combinator-backed San Francisco team that produces unusually well-written meeting notes and action items, transcribes in more than 100 languages, records with or without a bot through a desktop app, and connects to more than 1,000 applications so meeting outcomes automatically create tasks, update CRM records, and trigger workflows.

- Category: AI Meeting Note Takers (https://saastracker.org/categories/ai-meeting-notes)
- Website: https://circleback.ai
- Starting price: $20.83 per user per month (Individual, billed annually)
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: 7 days with full access to all features
- Founded: 2023, HQ: San Francisco, California, United States, Ownership: Venture-backed (Y Combinator)
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/circleback

## Overview

Circleback is the smallest company in this category and one of the best-regarded. Founded in 2023 by Ali Haghani, previously an engineer at Stripe who led the first integration of large language models into its support experience, and Kevin Jacyna, previously a senior engineer working on predictive analytics at Tableau, it raised a $2.5M seed in November 2024 led by Y Combinator and still runs on a team of roughly ten people.

The product's pitch is quality rather than breadth: notes 'a perfectionist would be proud of', in the company's own phrasing, plus action items that are actually assigned rather than merely listed. Underneath that sits a serious automation layer, with more than 1,000 app integrations, an API, webhooks, a CLI, and an MCP endpoint, so a meeting can create a Linear issue, update a HubSpot deal, post to Slack, and write to a Notion database without anyone touching a keyboard afterwards.

The commercial catch is that there is no free plan. Circleback runs a 7-day full-access trial and then charges from roughly $20.83 per user per month on annual billing for Individual and $25 for Team, which makes it the only product in this comparison set that a startup cannot run on for zero dollars. Against that, it is the only product here that combines 100-plus language transcription, bot-free desktop capture, and HIPAA compliance, which is a combination the larger vendors split across tiers.

## How it works

1. You connect Google Calendar or Outlook and choose which meetings Circleback should attend. It can join as a bot, or you can install the desktop app and have it record locally from any meeting on your computer, which covers Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral without a vendor-named participant appearing in the call.

2. Transcription runs across more than 100 languages with speaker identification, and the company is specific about technical accuracy, meaning product names, jargon, and acronyms that generic speech models mangle. In-person conversations are captured directly, and existing recordings can be imported rather than lost.

3. After the meeting, Circleback produces structured notes and a set of action items with owners attached, plus custom insights you define for the kinds of meetings you run repeatedly. Search then works across the whole archive, and on Team plans across the whole team's archive with shared AI search rather than only your own calls.

4. The automation layer is where Circleback separates from prettier notetakers. Rules can create tasks in Asana, Linear, or Monday, update records in HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, or Zoho, post notes into Slack or Notion, and fire arbitrary webhooks. An API, a CLI, and an MCP endpoint mean the same data is reachable programmatically and from AI assistants, which is unusual tooling depth for a ten-person company.

## Best for

Teams of 2 to 50 who care more about note quality and post-meeting automation than about paying nothing, especially multilingual teams and anyone in healthcare or another regulated field who needs HIPAA without buying an enterprise tier.

## Not the right fit for

- Startups with a zero-dollar tooling budget; there is no free plan, only a 7-day trial, and Fathom or Granola will cover basic notetaking for nothing.
- Sales managers who want call scoring and coaching analytics; Circleback does notes, action items, and automation, not playbook adherence or rep performance metrics, so tl;dv or Fathom Business fit that job better.
- Buyers who need vendor scale as a procurement criterion; a ten-person company with $2.5M raised is a real concentration risk regardless of how good the product is.
- Teams whose main need is a large recorded-video library for onboarding and demo review; playback exists, but this is not built as a call library the way tl;dv is.

## Features

### Capture

Bot optional, platform agnostic, including in-person and imported audio.

- **Bot-free desktop recording**: The desktop app records any meeting running on your computer without Circleback joining as a participant, covering Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral.
- **Bot-based joining**: For meetings you are not attending, Circleback can still join as a participant, so you are not locked into local capture.
- **In-person recording**: Face-to-face conversations are captured directly, included on every paid tier rather than gated upward.
- **Slack huddle support**: Huddles are treated as first-class meetings on the Team plan, which most competitors ignore entirely.
- **Import existing recordings**: Audio and video from elsewhere can be imported and processed, which makes a partial archive migration possible.

### Notes and transcription

The craft layer, and the reason people switch to Circleback from bigger tools.

- **100-plus language transcription**: Broad multilingual coverage with speaker identification, matching Fireflies and well ahead of Fathom's 38 or tl;dv's 30-plus.
- **Technical accuracy**: The company explicitly targets correct handling of product names, jargon, and acronyms, which is where generic transcription tends to fail in engineering and healthcare meetings.
- **Structured AI notes**: Notes are written to be read by someone who was not in the meeting, rather than being a bulleted transcript compression.
- **Assigned action items**: Tasks are captured with an owner and organized, not just listed at the bottom of a summary, which is what makes the automation layer useful.
- **Custom insights**: Define recurring things to extract from your particular meeting types and Circleback pulls them out every time.
- **Video and audio playback**: Recordings remain reviewable alongside the transcript for the moments where wording mattered.

### Search and collaboration

Individual on the lower tier, genuinely shared on Team.

- **AI search across meetings**: Query the archive conversationally rather than keyword-hunting through transcripts.
- **Shared AI search**: Team plans search across the whole team's meetings, which is the difference between personal notes and institutional memory.
- **Note sharing**: Share individual notes outside the team, available from the Individual plan.
- **Inline comments**: Team members can comment directly on parts of a meeting record rather than discussing it in a separate thread.
- **Access controls and participant customization**: Team-tier controls over who sees which meetings and how participants are handled by the assistant.

### Automations and integrations

The strongest reason to pay for Circleback rather than admire it.

- **1,000-plus app integrations**: Direct connections and automation-platform coverage spanning CRM, project management, documentation, and communication tools.
- **CRM automation**: HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, and Zoho records update automatically from what was said, rather than from what a rep remembers to log.
- **Task and project automation**: Asana, Linear, and Monday tasks are created from action items with owners already attached.
- **Team automations**: Automation rules defined once at team level rather than rebuilt by each user, a Team-tier capability.
- **API, webhooks, CLI, and MCP**: Four programmatic surfaces including a command line interface and a Model Context Protocol endpoint, which is unusual depth for a company this size and a clear signal about who built it.

### Security and administration

Compliance coverage that punches above the company's headcount.

- **SOC 2 and GDPR**: Both advertised on the marketing site rather than gated behind a sales conversation.
- **HIPAA**: Available for healthcare use, positioned within the Enterprise offering; competitors typically reserve HIPAA for their most expensive tier too, so confirm scope for your plan.
- **Data retention settings**: Team-tier control over how long meeting data is kept, which many small vendors do not offer at all.
- **Centralized billing and usage dashboard**: Team administration basics including a view of who is actually using their seat.
- **Invoice and PO billing**: Enterprise adds purchase-order and invoice billing for buyers whose finance team will not accept a card subscription.

## Use cases

- **Consultant or fractional executive across several clients**: Notes have to be good enough to send to a client unedited, and a bot named after a vendor joining the call looks unprofessional. Outcome: Bot-free desktop capture keeps the meeting clean, and Circleback's notes are polished enough to forward as the meeting record without a rewrite, with action items already assigned.
- **Operations lead automating post-meeting admin**: Every weekly sync generates the same five follow-ups that someone then manually types into Linear, Notion, and HubSpot two days later. Outcome: Team automations create the Linear issues, update the HubSpot record, and post the summary to Slack the moment the call ends, removing the admin job rather than speeding it up.
- **Multilingual product team**: User interviews run in six languages and the current tool only handles English well, so half the research is transcribed badly and never used. Outcome: Transcription across more than 100 languages with speaker identification means the whole research set becomes searchable, and custom insights extract the same fields from every interview regardless of language.
- **Healthcare or regulated-industry startup**: Notetaking is obviously useful but the compliance requirement rules out most tools, and the ones that qualify want an enterprise contract. Outcome: Circleback offers SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA alongside data retention settings, with self-serve pricing that does not require a procurement cycle to start.

## Pricing

Per-seat subscription across three tiers with no free plan; a 7-day full-access free trial precedes payment. Displayed rates are annual-equivalent monthly.

- **Individual**: $20.83 per user per month, billed annually. AI notes, action items, and transcription in 100-plus languages; Automations and 1,000-plus app integrations; Video and audio playback, search, and note sharing; In-person recording and recording import; Custom insights. Unusually complete for an entry tier: automations and the full integration catalogue are not held back for the team plan.
- **Team**: $25 per user per month, billed annually. Everything in Individual; Team meeting sharing and shared AI search; Team automations, settings, and access controls; Data retention settings and Slack huddle support; Inline comments, centralized billing, and a usage dashboard. Only about $4 a seat more than Individual, so there is little reason for a team of two or more to stay on the lower plan.
- **Enterprise**: Custom contact sales. Everything in Team; Invoice and purchase-order billing; Priority support and onboarding assistance; Advanced security; HIPAA compliance.

Billing notes:

- There is no free plan. The 7-day trial is the only way to evaluate without paying, which is the shortest evaluation window in this comparison set.
- The published $20.83 and $25 figures are annual-equivalent monthly rates (roughly $250 and $300 per seat per year); the vendor's page offers a monthly toggle but does not clearly publish the monthly-billed rate, so confirm it at checkout if you do not want an annual commitment.
- HIPAA is listed under the Enterprise tier, so healthcare buyers should not assume the self-serve plans cover it.
- Invoice and purchase-order billing require Enterprise; the self-serve tiers are card-billed.
- Figures are as published as of August 2026.

Value assessment: Circleback is priced like a premium tool and mostly earns it, but the absence of a free plan changes the calculus for early-stage teams. At about $21 a seat you get 100-plus languages, bot-free capture, and a full automation layer with API, webhooks, CLI, and MCP, which Fireflies charges $19 a seat for and Fathom gates behind a $25 Business tier. Where it loses is the floor: Fathom gives away unlimited recording and Granola charges $14 for unlimited history, so a cost-driven founder has cheaper options that are good enough. Buy Circleback when note quality and post-meeting automation are the point, not when you are shopping on price.

## Strengths

- Note quality is the best-regarded in the category, polished enough to send to a client without editing, which is what most of the 500-plus testimonials on the site are actually about.
- Action items are assigned and organized rather than merely listed, which is the prerequisite that makes the automation layer worth anything.
- More than 1,000 integrations plus an API, webhooks, a CLI, and an MCP endpoint gives it more programmatic surface than any comparably sized vendor here.
- Bot-free desktop capture works across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral, and bot-based joining is still available when you need to send it somewhere you are not.
- More than 100 transcription languages with explicit attention to technical vocabulary, jargon, and acronyms.
- SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance from a ten-person company, with data retention settings on the Team tier.
- Team plan costs only about $4 more per seat than Individual while adding shared search, team automations, and access controls, which is honest packaging.

## Limitations

- No free plan at all, and a 7-day trial is a short window to evaluate a tool whose value compounds with archive size.
- The company is roughly ten people with $2.5M raised, which makes vendor risk a legitimate concern for anyone standardizing a whole organization on it.
- No sales coaching layer: no call scoring, no playbook adherence, no rep analytics, so revenue teams will need a second tool.
- HIPAA is positioned within Enterprise rather than the self-serve tiers, so the regulated-industry pitch requires a sales conversation after all.
- Monthly-billed rates are not clearly published; the pricing page shows annual-equivalent monthly figures with a toggle, which is exactly the pattern that produces surprises at checkout.
- Recorded-video library features are thin next to tl;dv, so if the goal is a searchable call library for onboarding new reps, this is not the right tool.

## Comparisons

- **Circleback vs Granola**: Both are craft-focused and both avoid bots, but they differ on model and price: Granola enhances notes you type yourself, has a free tier, and charges $14 a seat, while Circleback writes the notes for you, transcribes in 100-plus languages, and charges from about $21 with no free plan. Take Granola if you think by writing and want the cheapest good option; take Circleback if you want polished notes with no input from you plus a real automation layer.
- **Circleback vs Fathom**: Fathom gives away unlimited recording and transcription for free and adds CRM field sync and coaching scorecards on its Business tier; Circleback charges from day one but delivers better-written notes, 100-plus languages against Fathom's 38, and far deeper automation through 1,000-plus integrations plus API, CLI, and MCP. Cost-driven startups should start with Fathom; teams whose bottleneck is post-meeting admin should pay for Circleback.
- **Circleback vs tl;dv**: tl;dv is built for sales management, with recorded video, playbook adherence scoring, coaching clips, and euro billing from a German entity; Circleback is built for note quality and workflow automation and does no coaching at all. A sales manager reviewing rep performance should pick tl;dv; an operations, consulting, or product team that wants meetings to update their systems automatically should pick Circleback.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Ten minutes to first notes: connect a calendar, install the desktop app if you want bot-free capture, and take a meeting. Building the automation rules that justify the price is a further afternoon.
- Learning curve: Low for capture and notes. The automation layer rewards someone who thinks in terms of triggers and fields, and the CLI and API assume a technical user, though nothing requires them.
- Onboarding: Self-serve on Individual and Team, with a 7-day trial. Enterprise adds onboarding assistance and priority support. The support site carries per-feature articles rather than a heavyweight implementation guide.
- Migration: Circleback can import existing recordings, so a partial archive migration from another notetaker is possible where most competitors offer none. Exporting outward is straightforward given the API, webhooks, and CLI. The realistic migration cost is rebuilding automation rules, not moving data.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web app, Desktop app for macOS and Windows, Mobile apps, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Discord, RingCentral, and Slack huddles, In-person recording
- API: REST API, webhooks, a command line interface, and an MCP endpoint, alongside more than 1,000 app integrations and automation-platform coverage through Zapier and Make.
- Compliance: SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA (positioned within the Enterprise tier)
- Data residency: Not published; ask directly if you have a residency requirement.
- SSO: Not published on the pricing page; advanced security is listed as an Enterprise capability, so confirm SSO availability with the vendor.
- Security notes: Team-tier data retention settings and access controls are meaningful for a company this size. The bot-free desktop path is also a practical privacy control, since nothing announces itself in the participant list.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, Support site, Priority support on Enterprise
- Documentation: Support site at support.circleback.ai with per-feature articles covering desktop recording, integrations, automations, and account management.
- Community: No formal community forum; the company publishes comparison and how-to content on its own site.

## Company

- Founded: 2023
- Founders: Ali Haghani (previously an engineer at Stripe, where he led the first integration of large language models into the support experience), Kevin Jacyna (previously a senior software engineer at Tableau working on predictive analytics)
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
- Ownership: Venture-backed (Y Combinator)
- Employees: Approximately 8 to 10 (third-party estimates, 2026)
- Funding: $2.5M seed round closed in November 2024, led by returning investor Y Combinator with Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, and Transpose Platform Management participating.

Funding history:

- Seed (2024): $2.5M. Led by Y Combinator, with Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, and Transpose Platform Management.

Timeline:

- 2023: Founded in San Francisco by Ali Haghani (ex-Stripe) and Kevin Jacyna (ex-Tableau), going through Y Combinator with a focus on note quality rather than feature breadth.
- 2024: Closes a $2.5M seed round led by Y Combinator with Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, and Transpose Platform Management.
- 2025: Ships the desktop app, enabling bot-free recording across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral, plus in-person capture.
- 2025: Expands the automation layer past 1,000 integrations and adds API, webhook, CLI, and MCP surfaces.
- 2026: Operating with roughly ten employees, advertising SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance and citing usage by people at TikTok, Samsung, Harvard, and Stanford.

## Integrations

Google Calendar, Gmail, and Outlook, Slack, Notion, Asana, Linear, Monday, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, Zoho, Intercom, Ashby, PostHog, Zapier and Make, API, webhooks, CLI, and MCP, 1,000-plus apps overall (vendor count)

## FAQ

### What is Circleback?

Circleback is an AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and writes structured notes and assigned action items from your meetings, transcribing in more than 100 languages. It is built by a roughly ten-person Y Combinator-backed team in San Francisco and pairs high note quality with an automation layer connecting to more than 1,000 applications.

### Does Circleback have a free plan?

No. It offers a 7-day free trial with full access, after which the Individual plan starts at about $20.83 per user per month billed annually and the Team plan at $25. It is the only product in this category comparison without a permanent free tier, which matters if your tooling budget is currently zero.

### How much does Circleback cost?

Individual is about $20.83 per user per month and Team about $25 per user per month, both quoted as annual-equivalent monthly rates (roughly $250 and $300 per seat per year). Enterprise is custom priced and adds invoice billing, priority support, advanced security, and HIPAA compliance.

### Does Circleback join meetings as a bot?

It can, but it does not have to. The desktop app records any meeting running on your computer, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral, with no Circleback participant appearing in the call. Bot-based joining remains available for meetings you are not personally attending.

### How many languages does Circleback support?

More than 100, with speaker identification, which puts it level with Fireflies.ai and well ahead of Fathom (38) and tl;dv (30-plus). The company also emphasizes accurate handling of technical vocabulary, jargon, and acronyms, which is where generic transcription models usually fall down.

### What can Circleback automate after a meeting?

Action items can create tasks in Asana, Linear, or Monday, notes can post to Slack or Notion, and CRM records in HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, or Zoho can update from what was said. Beyond the 1,000-plus prebuilt integrations there is an API, webhooks, a CLI, and an MCP endpoint for custom work.

### Is Circleback HIPAA compliant?

HIPAA compliance is advertised, but it sits within the Enterprise tier alongside advanced security rather than the self-serve Individual and Team plans. SOC 2 and GDPR compliance are stated more broadly. Healthcare buyers should confirm which plan their compliance requirement actually falls under before subscribing.

### Is a ten-person company safe to standardize on?

That is the honest risk. Circleback has roughly ten employees and $2.5M raised, against competitors with $19M to $192M and far larger teams. The product is excellent and the API, webhook, and CLI surfaces make your data portable, but a company standardizing hundreds of seats should weigh vendor durability alongside product quality.

### Who founded Circleback?

Ali Haghani and Kevin Jacyna founded Circleback in 2023 in San Francisco. Haghani was previously an engineer at Stripe where he led the first integration of large language models into the support experience; Jacyna was a senior software engineer at Tableau working on predictive analytics. The company went through Y Combinator and raised a $2.5M seed in November 2024.

### Circleback or Granola for a small team?

Granola is cheaper at $14 a seat, has a free tier, and suits people who type their own notes during calls and want them enhanced. Circleback costs from about $21, writes the notes for you, transcribes in far more languages, and has a much deeper automation layer. If your problem is post-meeting admin rather than note-taking itself, the extra money goes to the right place.

## Editorial verdict

Circleback is the connoisseur's pick in this category: the notes read better than anything else here, the action items are assigned rather than listed, and the automation surface, with 1,000-plus integrations plus API, webhooks, a CLI, and MCP, is deeper than companies twenty times its size ship. The two honest objections are the absence of a free plan, which puts it out of reach for a founder with no budget when Fathom and Granola exist, and the fact that ten people and $2.5M is a thin foundation for an organization-wide standard. Buy it if meetings generate real downstream admin you want automated away, if you work across languages, or if you need notes polished enough to forward to a client. If you just want decent notes for free, this is not the tool to argue yourself into.

## SaaSTracker awards

- Momentum (AI Meeting Note Takers, Summer 2026): "A ten-person team out-writing the funded competition on note quality, then automating what the notes say."

---

Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology