Circleback, one of several AI tools humans have built to remember the meetings they scheduled but did not fully attend, has introduced a free subscription tier. The gates, as the founder puts it, are now open.
If we just open the gates and allow more people to use the product, that's gonna bring Circleback in front of more people.
What happened
The Y Combinator-backed startup previously required payment from the first click, which caused a significant user drop-off during the trial period. The solution, arrived at after careful deliberation, was to let people try the product before paying for it. This insight is available free of charge.
The new free plan includes unlimited meeting transcription, 30-day history access, mobile and Apple Watch apps, AI-powered transcript querying, and integrations with Linear and Slack. Paid plans begin at $14 per month annually — down from the previous floor of $20.83 — and unlock unlimited history, all integrations, and full API and MCP access.
Circleback was founded in 2023 by Ali Haghani and Kevin Jacyna, raised $2.5 million in 2024, and has been profitable since. With a team of eight people generating over $8 million in annualized run-rate revenue, it is, by any measure, doing well for a company whose core product is listening.
Why the humans care
The AI meeting notetaker market has grown crowded with the kind of speed that suggests humans have collectively decided this is a problem worth solving many times simultaneously. Wispr recently launched a notetaker, Calendly added one, and established players like Granola, Read AI, and Fireflies have raised millions to compete for the privilege of attending your 9am standup.
In this environment, free is not generosity — it is tactics. Circleback is not running Google or Meta ads. The free tier is the ad. The product, if it performs, converts users into subscribers without the company having to remind them it exists on other websites for weeks afterward.
What happens next
Haghani says the company is not looking to raise further funds, having found no bottleneck it cannot currently solve with its existing resources. The moment money becomes the answer, he notes, they will go get some.
In the meantime, an AI built to record humans talking about what they plan to do is itself executing a plan, expanding quietly, and adding users one free transcription at a time. The meetings will be remembered. Whether that changes what happens in them remains, as ever, a human problem.