Skip to content
circles
About Circles

A social network for the people you actually know.

Group chats got crowded, feeds got loud, and private moments ended up on servers that could read them. Circles is our answer: small, encrypted spaces for your people, that can also support the creators you love.
A community meetup in a loft lit with string lights
Why we built it

Your circles deserve better than an ad-funded feed.

Most of what matters happens in small groups: family updates, friends planning a trip, a club deciding where to meet, a teacher and their students. Those conversations deserve the same protection as a private message.

So in Circles, everything private is end-to-end encrypted by default, except games and AI personas. Posts, comments, photos, videos, files, messages, calls and livestreams are locked on your device, and our servers only ever handle their ciphertext and the minimum metadata needed to deliver them. Our servers see a game's moves, to referee it, and what an AI persona is given, to answer with it.

And because we can't sell what we can't read, Circles earns money a different way: a clear fee when creators sell memberships, posts, sessions and live tickets, and promotions that target public categories only.

What we believe

Six principles we build by.

Private means private

If it's shared with a circle, only that circle can read it. Not us, and not advertisers.

Honest about limits

We publish what our servers can see and the known weaknesses of our design, in plain language.

Creators paid fairly

One published platform fee. Payouts through Stripe. Revenue splits that run themselves.

Proven building blocks

Audited cryptography, established payment and media infrastructure, and open standards where they exist.

Safety without surveillance

Verified reports, child-safety obligations and clear enforcement, without scanning private content.

Small rooms, not a stage

Circles are designed for groups of people who know each other, not for maximising reach or time spent.
A grandmother, mother and child looking at a tablet together
A running club stretching together in a park at sunrise
A chef filming a cooking tutorial in a bright kitchen
A book club talking over coffee in a bookshop cafe
How it's built

Standing on well-tested shoulders.

We use established, widely reviewed components for the hard parts instead of inventing our own.
libsodiumEncryption for content, keys and backups
Stripe ConnectPayments, identity checks and payouts
LiveKitReal-time calls and livestreams, with frame encryption
Striped storageEncrypted media split across three separate buckets, with cold archives
Our security model Privacy policy
Five friends around a kitchen table at golden hour, sharing photos on their phones

Come build your circle.

Start a circle in a minute. Invite friends, family or your community, and keep what you share between you.

Create your circle Explore circles