Circle vs Swarm
Circle
circle.soSwarm
swarm.toSide by side
| Figure | Circle | Swarm |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $89/mo | $19/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Learning Community Platforms | 9.0 (#2) | 7.6 (#21) |
| Courses | Circle supports self-paced, structured, and scheduled courses with sections, lessons, and quizzes. | Course builders support ordered modules and lessons containing video, text, PDFs and embeds. |
| Integrations | Circle lists integrations including Airtable, Google Sheets, Memberstack, WordPress, Memberful, Typeform, and Slack through native connections, embeds, snippets, or Zapier. | The Scale plan includes Zapier, API access and SSO; Swarm’s help center describes syncing new space members to a CRM through Zapier. |
| Support | The pricing page lists standard support for Professional and Business, priority support for Scale, and premium support for Circle Plus. | Swarm provides a Help Center with guidance on getting started, member management, live events, billing, stores, courses and troubleshooting. |
Plans
Circle
- Professional$89 a month
- Business$199 a month
- Scale$419 a month
- Circle PlusPriced on request
Swarm
- Launch$29 a month
- Growth$89 a month
- Scale$199 a month
- Launch$228 a year
- Growth$948 a year
- Scale$1,788 a year
In their own words
Circle
Circle brings community, content, events, courses, payments, email and website tools into one platform. Its community features include discussions, chat, member profiles and directories, gamification and analytics. Courses can be self-paced, structured or scheduled, with sections, lessons and quizzes. Events, live streams and live rooms include Q&A, attendee participation and session recordings. Circle lists integrations such as Airtable, Google Sheets, Memberstack, WordPress, Memberful, Typeform and Slack through native connections, embeds, snippets or Zapier. It offers Admin and Headless Member APIs, with request limits varying by plan. Access includes Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and web; desktop apps are available to communities on all plans. Professional costs $89 a month with annual billing, Business costs $199 a month with annual billing, and Scale costs $419 a month with annual billing. A 14-day trial is listed, but there is no free plan. The pricing comparison lists live-stream attendee caps of 100, 200 and 500 for Professional, Business and Scale, respectively.
Swarm
Swarm is a video-first community platform for online experts and coaches, combining discussions, courses, live events and creator sales. Conversations can use threaded text, video, voice notes, images, GIFs, embeds, mentions and screen shares. Courses are organized into ordered modules and lessons with video, text, PDFs and embeds. Native events offer meeting or webinar modes, co-hosts and recordings that can be posted automatically. Creators can sell memberships, courses, downloads, event tickets and bookings through a branded storefront, with Stripe processing payments. Swarm provides an installable Progressive Web App for mobile and desktop with push notifications, without an app-store download. Its 14-day trial requires no credit card, but uses Launch and excludes the store, white label, Zapier and API integrations. Scale includes Zapier, API access and SSO. Swarm says most data remains while an account is active and six months afterward, and personal-data deletion begins within 10 business days of account closure.