What is Circleback?
Circleback records, transcribes, summarizes, searches, and automates work from meetings. Unlike products committed to one capture method, it can join a call as a visible bot, record locally with a Mac or Windows desktop app, capture in-person audio on iOS, Android, or Apple Watch, or import an existing audio/video file. It produces notes, a transcript, assigned action items, custom insights, and—when enabled—playable audio or video.
The platform also treats meetings as an automation and agent data source. Workflows can update CRM and project tools; integrations reach Slack, Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, Asana, PostHog, Intercom, Zapier, Make, and many others. MCP, CLI, and webhooks expose meeting context to AI assistants and custom systems.
Recording choices and consent
The bot works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex through calendar auto-join or a pasted meeting link. Desktop capture records microphone and system audio on any platform without a bot and can optionally capture the meeting window's video. It can detect microphone use, prompt to record, start after a countdown, and stop automatically. If bot joining is enabled but admission fails, the desktop app can fall back to local recording.
Each convenience needs a policy. A visible bot signals capture but does not explain purpose, recipients, retention, or rights and is not itself informed consent. Desktop, phone, watch, and automatic recording are even less visible. Notify every participant, state what is captured—including shared screens—explain storage and sharing, record the legal basis, and provide a meaningful way to decline.
Circleback's May 2026 screen-context feature can pull metrics, pricing, milestones, and other details from shared slides, dashboards, or documents into notes and AI search. That can capture information no one spoke aloud. Disable screen recording when unnecessary, close unrelated windows and notifications, and do not share a sensitive document merely because it is visible to meeting attendees.
Notes, recordings, sharing, and automation
Circleback supports more than 100 languages, speaker recognition, notes, actions, cross-meeting search, and custom insights. Accuracy still varies with noise, accents, overlap, names, and jargon. Review the transcript and source recording before treating an action owner, customer claim, date, price, decision, or legal statement as authoritative.
Audio/video saving is on by default. It can be disabled while preserving transcripts, notes, actions, and insights. Standard recording retention was increased to two years in 2026; Team admins can configure different retention for recordings, transcripts, and all meeting data. Deleted meetings move to Recently Deleted for 30 days. Set shorter, purpose-based periods rather than retaining everything because storage is available.
Sharing can grant Limited Viewer access to notes and actions, Viewer access to transcript and recording, or Editor access. Links and email sharing can reach people outside the workspace. Team defaults can be enforced, but admins should test the exact external experience, link revocation, downloads, forwarding, search engines, and what persists after a user leaves.
Automations and agents create the largest secondary risk. A meeting can update a CRM, create a Linear issue, write a Notion page, expose a downloadable recording to MCP or CLI, or trigger a webhook. For every connector, map data fields, destination access, training, retention, logging, deletion, write permissions, and approval requirements. Avoid granting an AI agent both broad meeting read access and unrestricted write actions without review.
Pricing and total cost
Individual costs $25 per user on monthly billing or $20.83 per user per month billed yearly. It includes unlimited AI meeting notes, recordings, transcription, actions, search, in-person capture, imports, automations, sharing, 100+ languages, and 1,000+ app integrations.
Team costs $30 per user monthly or $25 yearly. It adds shared meetings and search, custom retention, Slack Huddles, inline comments, team settings, shared automations, centralized billing, usage dashboards, participant customization, and access controls. Enterprise is quote-only, adding onboarding, automation help, priority support, and advanced security.
“Start for free” appears on pricing cards, but the public copy does not clearly establish a permanent free plan, trial duration, or refund window. Verify the order. Annual economics equal roughly $249.96 per Individual seat and $300 per Team seat before tax. Include inactive seats, implementation, connector governance, storage/export, security review, and renewal in total cost.
Security, ownership, and deletion
Circleback says it is SOC 2 Type II, EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certified, encrypted in transit and at rest, does not use customer data to train models, and can sign a BAA with enterprise customers. Request the SOC 2 scope, external penetration report, DPA, BAA, subprocessors, model providers, regions, key management, incident notice, recovery objectives, and retention evidence.
The terms say customers retain their User Submissions while granting a service-purpose license. Aggregated, anonymized Service Data can be used more broadly. The 2026 terms say account deletion or a post-termination request triggers deletion within 30 days, subject to the agreement, while inactive Free Version accounts may be deleted after a year. Align this with the 30-day Recently Deleted window, configurable retention, backups, destinations, and legal holds.
Verdict
Circleback stands out for capture choice and depth after the meeting. It can serve a solo professional who wants reliable notes or a team that turns every conversation into CRM, project, and agent context.
The cost of that flexibility is a larger governance surface. Pilot each capture mode, disable default media storage if unnecessary, set short retention, require explicit participant notice, restrict external sharing, scope every connector, and separate read-only agent access from write automation. Choose it for the controlled workflow, not merely for the word “unlimited.”
