CircleCare vs. MyTherapy: free pill reminder or family care circle?

The Quick Answer: MyTherapy is a free, well-reviewed medication reminder (4.8 stars, about 8,500 ratings) from smartpatient GmbH, a German health-tech company now part of Redcare Pharmacy, whose business is built on pharmaceutical partnerships rather than a caregiving subscription. It has offered a free Team feature for sharing a medication schedule since its 2016 launch. CircleCare is free to start and has a paid Premium plan, and it is built specifically for a family circle around one person, with a shared calendar, activity feed, and adherence reports the whole circle can see. Both are free for one person tracking their own medications with no cap. Choose MyTherapy if a personal reminder with optional light sharing is all you will ever need. Choose CircleCare if you need a coordination layer built for multiple caregivers, or want to be ready for one.

Last verified: September 2026. Everything we say about MyTherapy below was checked against its App Store listing, smartpatient.eu, and Munich Startup's company profile, all checked September 23, 2026. Prices and features change; confirm current details before you decide.

MyTherapy and CircleCare sit closer together than most of the comparisons on this site, since MyTherapy also has a family-facing feature. The real difference is what each company is actually built around, and it's worth understanding before you pick one.

A care circle is one person receiving care plus everyone helping them: their medications, appointments, tasks, notes and documents in one shared place, with one family member paying.

What MyTherapy Is

MyTherapy, from smartpatient GmbH, is a free medication reminder and tracker with roughly 8,500 App Store ratings averaging 4.8 stars, the highest rating of any app we've compared CircleCare against so far. Its published features, per the App Store listing and the company's own materials, include:

• Medication reminders and tracking, free to use
• A Team feature, which the company introduced at launch in 2016 as a way for family members to share a medication regimen with each other; we found this described as free at launch, but it has not been independently reconfirmed as free in 2026, so we're describing it as a feature MyTherapy has offered rather than one it currently offers
• An Ad-free Subscription, priced at $0.99 or $9.99 as shown on the App Store listing
• MyTherapy Plus, a one-time $49.99 lifetime purchase; what it unlocks beyond an ad-free experience is not itemized anywhere we could verify, so we're describing it only as an ad-free tier rather than guessing at additional features

MyTherapy's business model

This is worth knowing before you compare it to a subscription app like CircleCare. smartpatient GmbH is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and is now part of Redcare Pharmacy, Europe's largest online pharmacy platform. By the company's own account, MyTherapy has 12 million users globally, and smartpatient's stated business is partnering with pharmaceutical companies, including named partners like Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Merck, Bayer, and Sanofi, for patient support and remote monitoring programs. In other words, MyTherapy's free consumer app is monetized primarily through pharma partnerships, not through what you pay for Plus or Ad-free. smartpatient states that it meets GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 13485, and HIPAA compliance standards; that is the company's own statement on its corporate site, not an independently audited certificate we verified ourselves.

Where MyTherapy Is Genuinely Better Than CircleCare

It's free, including a sharing feature. MyTherapy's Team feature has offered family sharing at no cost since 2016, and base medication tracking has no subscription requirement at all. If cost is the deciding factor, that's a real advantage.

A larger, well-established user base. 12 million users globally and 4.8 stars across about 8,500 App Store ratings is a strong track record.

No paying owner required. Every CircleCare circle needs one person with a subscription. MyTherapy doesn't require anyone to pay for the core product to work.

Backed by a larger healthcare organization. Being part of Redcare Pharmacy means MyTherapy has resources and continuity that a smaller, independent app might not.

What CircleCare Is

CircleCare is a care coordination app for families sharing the work of caring for someone. Its organizing principle is per-person attribution: every medication confirmation, completed appointment, and finished task is recorded against the person who did it, and the whole circle sees it.

Where MyTherapy's Team feature is an add-on to a personal reminder, letting someone opt in to seeing your schedule, CircleCare is built the other direction: multiple people are inside the circle from the start, and the app is organized around what the whole family needs to coordinate, not just medication reminders for one person.

CircleCare includes:

• Care circles with roles: owner, members, and care recipient
• An activity feed showing who did what, in real time
• A shared calendar for appointments, medications, and tasks, with day and week views, filtering by person or type, recurring events, and one-way import from your device calendar
• Medication tracking with confirmations, on-time vs. late history, adherence statistics over 7 to 90 days, and a PDF adherence report you can hand a doctor
• Prescription label scanning to pull medication name, dosage, and directions from the bottle
• Task assignment with clear ownership
• Emergency info: doctors, insurance, allergies, conditions, advance directives
• Document storage for the circle
• An AI assistant for questions about the circle's schedule and medications, designed so your stored health records are never sent to an outside AI provider
• Full English and Spanish, throughout the app
• Timezone-aware scheduling, so a caregiver in California, a sibling in New York, and a parent in Florida all see correct times
• iOS, Android, and a web companion at my.circlecare.app

CircleCare pricing (checked 23 September 2026)

• $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan only; the monthly plan has no trial
• Up to 5 care circles and unlimited family members on Premium
• Only the circle creator needs a subscription. Everyone you invite uses CircleCare free
• A limited free plan exists: one care circle, you plus one caregiver
• The person receiving care never counts toward that caregiver limit
• Medications and reminders are unlimited on the free plan. CircleCare never paywalls a reminder.

Side by Side

Prices checked 23 September 2026.

Who Should Choose MyTherapy

• You want a free medication reminder with no subscription required
• Light sharing with one or two family members through the Team feature is enough
• You're comfortable with a company whose business model runs through pharmaceutical partnerships rather than a consumer subscription
• You don't need a shared calendar, task list, or document storage alongside medications

Who Should Choose CircleCare

• More than medication reminders need coordinating: appointments, tasks, documents, emergency info
• You want an activity feed that shows the whole family who did what, not just a shared reminder
• You want one subscription to cover unlimited family members instead of an ad-free upgrade per person
• You want an adherence report you can hand a doctor at the next visit

When You Should Not Choose CircleCare

Don't choose CircleCare if cost has to be zero and light sharing is enough. MyTherapy's Team feature covers that case for free. CircleCare's free plan is genuinely limited to one circle and two people.

Don't choose CircleCare if you only need reminders, not coordination. If medications are the whole problem and nobody needs a shared calendar or document storage, MyTherapy or a similar single-purpose reminder is simpler.

Don't choose CircleCare if your family will not adopt it. No coordination app survives a family that won't open it. If you haven't had that conversation yet, have it first.

Related Reading

• CircleCare vs. Medisafe: Which One for a Family?
• Is There a Medisafe Alternative for Family Caregivers?
• CircleCare Pricing
• The Best Apps for Coordinating Care for Aging Parents

Sources: the MyTherapy App Store listing (id662170995), smartpatient.eu, smartpatient.eu/platform, and Munich Startup's company profile of smartpatient GmbH, all checked September 23, 2026; and Irish Tech News's coverage of the MyTherapy 3.0 Team feature launch, used as historical context and flagged as not reconfirmed for 2026. CircleCare details reflect the app as shipped in September 2026. If you find something out of date here, tell us at support@circlecare.app and we will correct it.