Circleback

Circleback takes notes of your meetings, but the interesting part starts afterwards. After the meeting it puts action items in Linear, updates a deal in HubSpot or posts a recap in Slack. That makes it less a notes app and more a link between your conversations and the rest of your work.

Circleback was founded in San Francisco in 2023 by Ali Haghani and Kevin Jacyna. The company was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch. The team is small, but new features arrive at a fast pace. In the months before this review, it added a public API, importing meetings from other apps and drafting emails.

The basics are what you expect from any note-taker. Circleback writes a transcript with each speaker's name. Then come notes and action items, which according to the maker are assigned automatically. It works in more than 100 languages. With Ask Circleback you can ask questions about all your past conversations, such as what a client said about the schedule three weeks ago.

The difference is in the automations. Each automation has two parts: conditions and actions. A condition can be the meeting name, a participant or the invitees' domain. The action might be a summary to Slack, a page in Notion or an update in your CRM. If you set no condition, the automation runs after every meeting.

Circleback has three ways to record. The first is the familiar bot. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Webex, automatically through your calendar or with a pasted link. Participants then see an extra attendee in the call.

If you don't want that, there is the desktop app for macOS and Windows. It records the audio from your microphone and your computer. That means it works with any meeting app on your computer, including Discord or RingCentral. Nobody sees a bot join.

The third way is for conversations around a table. With the app for iOS or Android, or with the Apple Watch, you record an in-person meeting. You can also upload earlier recordings and import phone calls you recorded with your phone's built-in recording feature.

If you have lots of external calls, this is where you save time. Circleback integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio and Zoho. After a sales call it can update contacts and opportunities. For project work there are integrations with Linear, Asana and monday.com, so action items show up as tasks on the board.

Anything without a direct integration runs through Zapier, Make or a webhook. For developers there is an API, an MCP server and a CLI. With MCP you pull your meetings into other AI apps, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. Notably, the API, MCP and CLI are also included in the free plan.

Automations are limited in Free, though. You only get all integrations from Pro. If you want to see first whether it fits your workflow, the free plan is a good way to test the quality of the notes. For the full automations, you pay.

Circleback charges per user. Since 31 August 2026 there has been a free plan. Before that the service was paid only, with a trial.

Free gives you unlimited meetings and members, but you can only look back over the last 30 days. Pro costs $ 18 per user per month, or $ 15 per month billed yearly ($ 180 per year). With it your meeting history stays and recordings are kept for 1 year. Business costs $ 29 per user per month, or $ 25 per user per month billed yearly ($ 300 per year). Then you get roles, a custom retention period, free viewers and recordings that are kept for 2 years.

Enterprise costs $ 35 per user per month and is yearly only. With more users the rate drops per tier, down to $ 15 per user above 5,000. That plan has SSO, SCIM, unlimited recording storage and is HIPAA-ready.

According to Circleback you can cancel at any time with one click. A plan change is prorated.

According to its own security page, Circleback is SOC 2 Type II certified and part of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The company says it doesn't use customer data to train AI models. Data is processed in the United States. For European companies, the transfer is covered by that Data Privacy Framework and a data processing agreement.

For many teams that is enough. If everything has to stay within the EU, that is something to discuss with your privacy officer beforehand. In Business, as an admin you decide how long data is kept.

Within this guide, Circleback has three logical competitors. Granola AI runs on your own computer without a bot and builds on the notes you type yourself. Choose Granola if you like to take notes yourself and only want AI to fill them in.

CirclebackFrom $ 15/moFree planGranola AIFrom $ 14/moFree plan

Fathom and Fireflies mainly work with a bot in your video call and focus on the meeting notes themselves. Circleback stands out with its automations, the combination of bot, desktop app and phone, and the MCP integration. If your work revolves around what needs to happen after the meeting, that difference is worth it.

Yes, since 31 August 2026 there has been a free plan with unlimited meetings and members. You can only look back over the last 30 days and automations are limited.

Yes. The desktop app for macOS and Windows records your computer's audio, without a bot joining the call. That works with any meeting app on your computer.

Yes, with the app for iOS or Android or with the Apple Watch you can record in-person meetings. You can also import earlier recordings and phone calls.

According to the security page, no: Circleback doesn't use customer data to train models. The data is, however, processed in the United States.