The aim of this paper is to prove a local version of the circular law for non-Hermitian random matrices and its generalization to the product of non-Hermitian random matrices under weak moment conditions. More precisely we assume that the entries X (q) jk of non-Hermitian random matricesIt is shown that the local law holds on the optimal scale n −1+2a , 0 < a < 1/2, up to some logarithmic factor. We further develop a Stein type method to estimate the perturbation of the equations for the Stieltjes transform of the limiting distribution. We also generalize the recent results [8], [47] and [37]. and let A(·) be the Lebesgue measure on C. By w −→ we denote weak convergence of probability measures. We first assume that m = 1. Then the following result is the well-known circular law.Theorem 1.1 (Macroscopic circular law). Let X jk , 1 ≤ j, k ≤ n be i.i.d. complex r.v. with E X jk = 0, E |X jk | 2 = 1. Then µ n w −→ µ (1) a.s. as n tends to infinity, where dµ (1) (z) = p (1) (z)dA(z).