Meeting notetaker Circleback adds a free tier to attract more customers
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta
Circleback just added a free plan for its meeting note-taker. It’s a sign the crowded market is forcing startups to give more away to get attention.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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Circleback is joining the free-tier club. The Y Combinator-backed meeting note-taker now lets anyone transcribe unlimited meetings at no cost, with a catch: your history only goes back 30 days.
That matters because this corner of the market is getting jammed. Wispr has launched its own note-taker and scheduling app, Calendly has added a similar tool, and better-known players like Granola, Read AI, and Fireflies have all raised significant funding. Circleback’s move looks less like generosity than a response to a very noisy market.
The free plan still gives users a fair amount: recording, mobile and Apple Watch apps, AI transcript queries, and integrations with Linear and Slack. But if someone wants every integration, unlimited history, and full API and MCP access, pricing starts at $14 a month when paid annually. Before this change, Circleback had no free tier at all, and its plans started at $20.83 a month.
Founded in 2023 by Ali Haghani and Kevin Jacyna, Circleback raised $2.5 million in 2024 and says it has been profitable since then. The company says it now has eight people and is doing more than $1 million in run-rate revenue per employee, which works out to about $8 million in run-rate revenue overall. Haghani says the limited trial period was causing a big drop-off, so the free plan is being used as marketing instead of paid ads on Google or Meta. He also says the company isn’t rushing to raise more money, although it would consider fundraising if cash could solve a real growth problem.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right move, and also the obvious one. In a market full of meeting bots and AI notetakers, a paid trial is just a polite way to ask people to leave. Free wins attention; the trick is whether the product is good enough to turn that attention into revenue without burning through the usual startup theatre.
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