2 categories · RankedCircle
Circle is a platform for building a branded home for a community, events and courses · circle.so ↗
Strongest at small business, contested with Discourse. Ranked 10 of 58 for enterprise buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Ranked first, contested: Discourse has 31%.
Bettermode is first at 25%. 2 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Higher Logic Vanilla is first at 55%.
Why models recommend it
“Circle — best for branded customer communities that also want courses, events, memberships, and monetization in one modern platform.”GPT-5.4 mini · Comparative question · first choice
“The best customer community platform for a company with a limited budget is Circle, which is available from $89 a month”Llama 4 Maverick · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“The best customer community platform for a mid-market B2B company is Circle, which is the best all-around choice”Llama 4 Maverick · Direct question · first choice
“Bettermode and Circle are generally considered the best all-around fits for mid-market companies”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Direct question · first choice
What gives them pause
“Mighty Networks/Circle (more consumer/SaaS-focused or membership sites)”Grok 4.20 · Paraphrase question · warning
“Avoid Per-Seat Pricing: Platforms like Circle.so or Mighty Networks are popular but often start at $99/mo.”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Budget-constrained question · warning
“Circle, Bettermode, or comparable tools will not create engagement by themselves”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · warning
“Popular but scored lowest (0.51/10) for pure B2B customer community needs.”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Direct question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Circle, over the 153 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 116 | 21 | Compare → | |
| 110 | 23 | Compare → | |
| 71 | 5 | View → | |
| 70 | 18 | Compare → | |
| 70 | 0 | Compare → | |
| 56 | 6 | Compare → | |
| 55 | 3 | Compare → | |
| 51 | 1 | View → | |
| 41 | 0 | View → | |
| 28 | 1 | Compare → |
What the models named instead of Circle →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Circle's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- digital businesses
- Price stated
- Flexible plans for communities of all sizes, starting as low as $89 per month.
- Starting price
- 89
- Free plan or trial
- Start free trial
- Certifications
- SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA, PCI DSS
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 138 of the 153 answers that named Circle and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
386 of the 435 domain citations in answers naming Circle came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 179 | 31 | 2026-09-23 | Community | |
| Comparison | 30 | 1 | 2026-09-15 | ||
| Case study | 28 | 0 | 2026-04-28 | ||
| News or press | 11 | 0 | 2026-06-03 | ||
| Podcast or video | 10 | 0 | 2024-06-19 | ||
| Conference or event | 8 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 6 | 0 | 2025-04-16 | ||
| Report or ebook | 6 | 1 | 2026-07-24 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 5 | 3 | 2026-09-07 | ||
| Template or tool | 2 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-23Best membership platforms blog
- 2026-09-18Ai website builders blog
- 2026-09-17Community onboarding blog
- 2026-09-16The real cost of tool sprawl for community builders blog
- 2026-09-15Owning vs renting your audience comparison
- 2026-09-11How to start a youtube channel blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page circle.so exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.