Recovery is one of the most important metallurgical parameters in designing and evaluating flotation circuits. The present study used the recovery arrangement for two and three stage circuits to evaluate the effect of stage recovery on the overall circuit recovery and flotation circuit configuration. The results showed that mainly the highest recovery value should be assigned to the rougher stage in order to achieve the maximum overall circuit recovery. Countercurrent rougher-cleaner and rougher-scavenger circuits, in which recycling streams step back one stage at a time, follow a general rule for the assignment of recovery. Finally, a flotation plant containing six flotation banks was examined as a case study. A program for calculating total circuit recovery, for all possible combinations of recovery was developed in MATLAB software. 720 recovery combinations were evaluated. The results showed that optimal recovery allocation in stages could be effective in achieving overall circuit recovery. It was shown that the use of a large number of stages in some of the flotation circuits leads to the loss of equipment and additional costs. The proposed approach can be employed as an effective tool for designing and optimizing various flotation circuits and their operational parameters.