Skool vs Circle 2026: I Ran the Fee Math on Both

Skool wins for solo creators who want a paid community running this week; Circle wins for brands that need the community to look and behave like their own product. Skool starts at $9 a month with an all-in payment fee. Circle starts at $89 a month billed annually, plus a 2% platform fee and card processing on top.

I run Skool for this site and re-verified both pricing pages on July 16, 2026. The short version: Skool is cheaper to start, Circle is deeper to build in, and the fee structures cross over depending on your member revenue.

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What Skool and Circle Each Are

Skool is a deliberately simple community platform: one feed, a classroom, a calendar, gamification, and native payments, priced at $9 or $99 a month. It was built by Sam Ovens and is heavily promoted by Alex Hormozi, which is why every coach on the internet seems to run one.

Circle is a community platform for brands that outgrew Facebook Groups. Its core unit is the space: chat spaces, post spaces, event spaces, and course spaces you assemble into a customized member area. Its pricing page lists three tiers, and every displayed price is based on annual billing per Circle’s own footnote.

Skool vs Circle Pricing: The Crossover Math

The subscriptions differ by $80 a month at entry, and the fee models differ in kind. Skool’s fee is all-in: 10% + $0.30 on Hobby or 2.9% + $0.30 on Pro, with no separate processing charge. Circle charges a 2% platform fee on Professional, and card processing lands on top of it.

Processing estimated at Stripe’s standard 2.9% + $0.30; flat per-transaction cents are excluded on all three columns.

Two takeaways. Under roughly $1,000 a month, Skool Hobby is the cheapest seat in the game. Past $1,268 a month, Skool Pro beats everything here on total cost, because its 2.9% already includes processing. The exact switch point for your numbers is in the Skool pricing breakdown.

Circle’s Plan Ladder: Professional, Business, Circle Plus

Circle sells three tiers, and the platform fee falls as the subscription rises: 2% on Professional at $89 a month, 1% on Business at $199, and 0.5% on Circle Plus at custom pricing. Every price is the annual-billing rate; Circle does not publish monthly-billing prices on the page.

Two line items deserve attention before you compare totals. Email is not included: Circle’s Email Hub add-on starts at $99 a month for 10,000 contacts, charged on top of the community plan. And the branded mobile app most brands actually want sits behind Circle Plus as an optional, sales-quoted extra.

Community Experience: Circle’s Spaces vs Skool’s Leaderboard

Skool gives every community the same fixed tabs and makes engagement the product: points for contributions, levels that unlock courses, and a leaderboard that keeps members visible. Circle gives you the keys instead: space types, layouts, member segments, and a look that matches your brand rather than Skool’s.

Circle now lists gamification among its core features, so the old "Circle has no game layer" line is outdated. The difference is emphasis. On Skool, points and levels are the culture; the leaderboard sits one tab from every conversation. On Circle, engagement flows from structure: the right space, segment, and workflow for each member group.

That difference decides most real purchases. A coach selling a $49-a-month mastermind benefits from Skool’s enforced simplicity, because members never get lost. A company running a customer community around a product usually needs Circle’s structure, because one feed cannot hold support, announcements, and cohorts at once.

Courses, Events, and Feature Depth

Both platforms ship courses, events, and paid memberships natively, so the checklist tie is real. Depth differs by lane. Skool runs one classroom with drip schedules and level-gated access, plus native calls whose recordings expire after 14 days. Circle packages courses as spaces and scales live streams by tier: 100 attendees on Professional, 200 on Business.

• Skool ships: classroom with drip and level gates, calendar with native calls, points economy, USD-only checkout.
• Circle ships: space-based courses, live streams and live rooms, website builder, custom domain, workflows on Business, APIs for headless builds.
• Neither ships: a full email marketing suite in the base plan. Circle sells Email Hub separately; Skool leaves email to your existing tool.

Fees, Payouts, and Refunds in Practice

Skool pays owners every Wednesday, with the first payout landing within 14 days, and bills members in USD only. Its fee is final: transaction fees stay with Skool even when you refund a member. Circle’s platform fee scales by plan instead, from 2% on Professional down to 0.5% on Circle Plus.

• Skool: USD-only checkout, weekly Wednesday payouts, single charges capped at $100,000.
• Circle: the 2% fee is the entry rate; bigger communities negotiate it down a full plan tier at a time.
• Refund reality: Skool keeps its transaction fee on refunded payments, so budget fees into your churn math.

If Circle’s structure appeals but the $89 entry does not, the middle path is usually Mighty Networks, which I break down in the Skool vs Mighty Networks comparison.

Who Actually Buys Which: Two Real Profiles

Most Skool vs Circle stalemates dissolve when you price the job, not the features. The two profiles below cover the bulk of real purchases I see in creator communities, and each lands on a different winner for reasons that have nothing to do with the marketing pages.

The coach with 80 members at $49 a month. That is $3,920 in monthly billing. Skool Pro costs $99 plus 2.9% + $0.30, about $213 a month all-in. Circle Professional runs $89 plus 2% plus processing, about $286. Skool saves roughly $73 a month, and the leaderboard does the retention work a solo coach has no time for.

The SaaS company moving 2,000 users off a Facebook Group. Membership is free, so fees are irrelevant and the subscription is noise against payroll. What matters: support spaces separated from announcements, segments by plan, SSO on Circle Plus, and a look that matches the product. Circle wins before Skool gets an at-bat, because one gamified feed cannot hold a support operation.

Choose Skool or Circle: The 30-Second Version

• Choose Skool if: you are a solo creator or coach, want gamified engagement, and care about the lowest all-in cost under about $5,000 a month in member billing.
• Choose Circle if: brand control, flexible space structure, and a customer-community layout matter more than $80 a month and a leaderboard.
• Still deciding? My full Skool review covers who should skip Skool entirely.

Switching Between Skool and Circle

Expect a weekend of work, not a click. Courses rebuild manually on either side, member payments need a fresh checkout (subscriptions do not transfer between processors), and your members must re-onboard. Time the move against billing: Skool refunds nothing mid-period, so cancel at the cycle edge using the cancellation guide, and run both trials in parallel before moving anyone.