What the paid rooms cost, and what this one does instead
The two best-known places a CEO can take a hard call are a Vistage group and a Hampton core group. Both are real, both work for the people they admit, and both are silent about price. Here is what they ask of you, with every outside number dated and sourced, next to what ceo.cafe asks.
| Dimension | VistageChief Executive programme | HamptonCore group | ceo.cafeThe archive and House Blend |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs a year | About $16,560, plus a $2,500 initiation fee Vistage publishes no price. Independent reviews, 2024 to 2026. [1][2][3] | $15,000, plus an initiation fee of an unpublished amount Hampton publishes no price. Independent reports, 2025 to 2026. [4][5] | $0 Reading and the weekly email are free and will stay free. |
| What it costs in time | One full day a month, plus a monthly one-to-one Cadence from vistage.com. Reviewers size it at 100 to 130 hours a year. [6][2][3] | About three hours a month, ten months a year From Hampton's FAQ. Optional events on top. [7] | Six minutes on a Thursday One email a week. A story reads in six to nine minutes. |
| Who is allowed in | Companies with $5M+ in annual revenue A separate programme covers $1M to $4M. [6][8] | $3M+ revenue, $3M+ raised, or a $10M+ exit, and one of 18 cities Hampton says about 2% of applicants are accepted. [9] | Anyone can read. You run the company to pull up a chair. No revenue floor, no age cap, no city, no funding test. |
| How you get in | A nine-step form with your mobile number, then an interview [10] | Screen, interview, member veto, then ten days to pay About ninety days to a seat. [7] | Click a link. Or type your email. |
| How you get out | Ninety days' notice after the initial term As described by a Vistage Chair. [11][3] | 45-day money-back guarantee [9] | Unsubscribe in one click |
| What happens to what is said | Stays in the room and in a members-only network Not searchable by anyone outside. [12] | Stays in a private Slack In Hampton's words: "you can't get this stuff on Google." [9] | Published, dated, with the numbers, under a real name Findable by the next CEO and by every search and answer engine. |
Vistage, Hampton, YPO and EO are trademarks of their owners. ceo.cafe is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a substitute for any of them. Nobody has paid to appear on this page.
What a paid room does that reading cannot
Reading will not make you show up. A table will. A fixed room of eight that meets every month and calls out the dodge is the one thing a paid group does that an archive cannot, and it is what Table for 8 will be for when it opens.
Long Angle, which runs a competing network, puts the other side plainly: reviews of Vistage "split on one variable more than any other: the Chair." [3]
A Vistage alternative without a revenue floor
- Processing it with someone who has been there: a dated, first-person account by a CEO with no stake in your answer.
- Finding the real problem: the pricing problem that turned out to be a partner problem, in nine minutes of reading.
- Not being alone with it. Recognition, not advice, and recognition is cheap to give away.
Sources
Checked 8 October 2026. Vistage and Hampton do not publish prices; every price here is a third-party figure and says so. If a number is wrong or has moved, tell us and the page changes. Prices are third-party estimates and may have changed since the check date.
- First Page Sage, "Is Vistage worth it? An honest review" (7 July 2024)
- Leaders ADAPT, "Vistage cost" (26 July 2026)
- Long Angle, "Is Vistage worth it?" (Long Angle runs a competing network) (28 September 2026)
- Long Angle, "EO vs Hampton" (8 November 2025)
- Inc., "Inside Hampton, Sam Parr's bootstrapped solution to the founder loneliness epidemic" (14 January 2026)
- Vistage, Chief Executive programme page (8 October 2026)
- Hampton, FAQ (8 October 2026)
- Vistage, Programs overview (8 October 2026)
- Hampton, home page (8 October 2026)
- Vistage, Become a member (8 October 2026)
- Chris Quinn (Vistage Chair), "How to quit Vistage" (2026)
- My Vistage app listing: networks "available exclusively to the Vistage Community" (8 October 2026)
- Vistage, Membership page: "45,000 members", "40 countries" (8 October 2026)