This paper is concerned with the vibration analysis of a simply-supported rectangular plate with a circular cutout. Even though there have been many methods developed for the free vibration of the rectangular plate with a rectangular cutout, very few research has been carried out for the rectangular plate with a circular cutout. In this paper, a new methodology called independent coordinate coupling method, which was developed to save the computational effort for the free vibration analysis of rectangular plate with a rectangular cutout, is applied to the case of circular cutout. The independent coordinate coupling method employs the global coordinate system for the plate and the local coordinate system for the cutout. In the case of the rectangular plate with a circular cutout, the global coordinate system is the Cartesian coordinate system and the local coordinate system is the polar coordinate system. By imposing the compatibility condition, the relationship between the global coordinates and the local coordinates is derived. This equation is then used for the calculation of the mass and stiffness matrices resulting in eigenvalue problem. The numerical results show the efficacy of the proposed method.