Skool vs Circle (2026): $99 Simple Against $89 Configurable
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The closest comparison in the category. Circle has more features and a lower headline price; Skool has fewer decisions and a $9 entry plan. Checked 30 August 2026.
By Jack Gandolfo · Reviewed
Last updated
Pricing verified Aug 30, 2026 — prices, fees and feature lists were read by hand from skool.com/pricing and circle.so/pricing on 30 August 2026. They are reported figures, not captures from our marketplace collectors.
Disclosure of bias, up front: we hold an affiliate relationship with Skool and none with Circle. The recommendation on this page is one-sided by construction, so read the table — every number comes from the two vendors' own pricing pages — rather than the verdict.
Direct answer: Circle has the longer feature list and the lower headline price. Skool has the shorter feature list, a $9 entry plan Circle has no answer to, and far fewer decisions to make. Choose Circle if you want configurable spaces, gamification, a website builder, analytics and eventually workflows and an API. Choose Skool if you want one feed, one classroom and no setup project.
Circle Professional is $89/month and Circle Business is $199/month; Circle's own footnote states those prices are based on annual billing. Skool Pro is $99/month.
How do Skool and Circle compare?
Read from skool.com/pricing and circle.so/pricing on 30 August 2026.
| Skool Hobby | Skool Pro | Circle Professional | Circle Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $9/month | $99/month | $89/month (annual billing) | $199/month (annual billing) |
| Transaction fee | 10% | 2.9% | 2% | 1% |
| Members | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Courses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Yes | Yes |
| Live calls / streams | Unlimited live calls | Unlimited live calls | Live streams and live rooms | Live streams and live rooms |
| Custom domain | Custom URL | Custom URL | Custom domain | Custom domain |
| Gamification | not on feature list | not on feature list | Yes | Yes |
| Website builder | not on feature list | not on feature list | Yes | Yes |
| Reporting and analytics | not on feature list | not on feature list | Yes | Yes |
| Workflows and automations | not on feature list | not on feature list | — | Yes |
| Admin and Headless APIs | not on feature list | not on feature list | — | Yes |
| Remove vendor branding | not stated | not stated | — | Yes |
| Storage | not stated | not stated | 200GB | 500GB |
| Email marketing | not on feature list | not on feature list | Email Hub add-on, +$99/mo at 10,000 contacts | Email Hub add-on, +$99/mo at 10,000 contacts |
| Free trial | offered, length at sign-up | offered, length at sign-up | 14 days | 14 days |
Is Circle cheaper than Skool?
On the headline number, marginally — $89 against $99, and Circle's fee is 2% against Skool's 2.9%. But Circle's $89 is the annual-billing price by its own footnote, and Skool's $9 Hobby plan undercuts anything Circle sells by an order of magnitude. If you are running a free or small paid community, Skool is dramatically cheaper. At scale on a paid community, Circle's lower fee starts to matter.
Which has more features, Skool or Circle?
Circle, clearly and by a wide margin. Circle Professional lists gamification, a website builder, a searchable member directory, rich member profiles, reporting and analytics and a weekly digest. Circle Business adds workflows, custom profile fields, an Admin API, a Headless Member API, branded email notifications, automated transcriptions and the ability to remove Circle branding. None of those appear on Skool's pricing page.
So why choose Skool over Circle?
Because a longer feature list is a longer setup. Skool ships one structure — feed, classroom, calendar, members — and you cannot misconfigure it. Circle gives you spaces, permissions, a website builder and analytics, all of which are genuine capability and all of which are decisions you have to make before anyone posts. For a solo operator whose bottleneck is shipping rather than configuring, that is the whole argument, and it is the reason we recommend Skool to that person.
If your bottleneck is capability rather than time, that argument does not apply to you and Circle is the better product.
Which is better for a paid membership?
At meaningful volume, Circle's 2% fee beats Skool Pro's 2.9%, and Circle Business at 1% beats both. On $10,000 of monthly member payments that is $290 to Skool Pro, $200 to Circle Professional and $100 to Circle Business. Set against the plan prices, Circle Business at $199 + $100 in fees is $299 against Skool Pro at $99 + $290, which is $389. The fee difference is not a rounding error at that size.
The verdict
Choose Skool unless you specifically need what Circle has that Skool does not. Concretely: gamification, a website builder, configurable spaces, reporting, workflows or an API. If you can read that list without wanting any of it, Skool at $9 or $99 is the better buy and the shorter setup, and we would start on Hobby today rather than spend another week comparing. If two or more of those items are things you know you need, Circle is the right product and you should buy Circle.
At $10,000+ a month in member payments the fee gap is real money and tips toward Circle Business — that is the one case where scale, not features, decides it.
What we could not verify
Skool's pricing page does not state storage limits, admin seat counts, branding removal or card processing rates, which is why those cells read "not stated". Circle's displayed prices carry its own annual-billing footnote; we did not confirm the month-to-month prices.
Read next
- Full Skool review
- Skool pricing and break-even maths
- Is Skool worth it?
- Skool vs Kajabi
- Skool alternatives — six platforms priced against Skool
- Skool vs Discord — free chat server against a $9 classroom
- Skool vs Teachable — where the 10% and the 7.5% bite
Questions
Is Circle cheaper than Skool?
Circle Professional is $89 a month on annual billing against Skool Pro at $99, and Circle's transaction fee is 2 percent against Skool's 2.9 percent. But Skool's $9 Hobby plan is far cheaper than anything Circle sells.
Which has more features, Skool or Circle?
Circle, by a wide margin. Circle Professional lists gamification, a website builder, a member directory and analytics, and Circle Business adds workflows, an Admin API and branding removal. None of those appear on Skool's pricing page.
Why would you choose Skool over Circle?
Because Skool ships one fixed structure of feed, classroom, calendar and members, so there is nothing to configure. Circle's extra capability is also extra setup decisions before anyone posts.
Which is better for a paid membership at scale?
Circle, on fees. On $10,000 of monthly member payments Skool Pro costs $99 plus $290 in fees, Circle Professional costs $89 plus $200, and Circle Business costs $199 plus $100.
Does Skool have gamification and analytics like Circle?
Skool's pricing page does not list gamification, a website builder or reporting and analytics. Circle lists all three on its Professional plan.
Does this comparison have a bias?
Yes, and it is stated at the top of the page. We hold an affiliate relationship with Skool and none with Circle. Every figure in the comparison table comes from the two vendors' own pricing pages so you can verify it independently.
What real users are saying — updated Aug 31, 2026
Source: Trustpilot · observed external data
51 of 51 reviews on the Trustpilot profile, pulled Aug 31, 2026, covering Feb 2, 2024 to Aug 25, 2026. This is a small sample, so treat the percentages as indicative rather than precise.
Trustpilot rating: 1.7 / 5 (mean of the retrieved reviews: 1.59)
- 5★ — 6 reviews (12%)
- 3★ — 1 review (2%)
- 2★ — 4 reviews (8%)
- 1★ — 40 reviews (78%)
Most-mentioned themes, counted across the 51 retrieved reviews
- Support slow, unhelpful or silent — 16 reviews (31%)
- Hard to cancel or unsubscribe — 12 reviews (24%)
- Refund refused or unresolved — 11 reviews (22%)
- Dispute with the community owner, not the platform itself — 10 reviews (20%)
- Charges the reviewer says they did not authorise — 9 reviews (18%)
Themes are matched by keyword against the stored review text. Each count is a count of specific reviews, not a summary of them, and the matched reviews are stored so every figure here can be checked.
I paid $19.00 for a membership in a community hosted on Skool ("%1 YouTube Kulübü") on August 6, 2026. After finding the course quality unsatisfactory, I requested a refund directly from the community owner. Instead of responding, the owner cancelled my membership and removed me from the group — without issuing any ref
— 1★ on Trustpilot, Aug 25, 2026
Cult-ish. Poor customer service. Public humiliation. A Black Hole. The CEO does not acknowledge Skool community owners as paying customers = so they don't have any quality customer service skills either. Skool does not allow us to leave reviews, but they recently forced a review feature onto our communities. Althoug
— 1★ on Trustpilot, Aug 13, 2026
Excelente oportunidad, tengo una comunidad llamada Skool David Mentoría y esta espectacilar su plataforma de skool, buenas herramientas muy sencillas.
— 5★ on Trustpilot, Apr 5, 2026
Important context: many of these reviews appear to come from members of paid communities rather than community owners, so the reviewer population may not represent Skool's primary customer base. That selection effect could influence the rating, but it does not invalidate the complaints themselves. Trustpilot's own profile count for www.skool.com was also 51 at the time of the pull.