Krisp
Noise cancellation that grew into a bot-free notetaker, metered in storage
Krisp is a desktop voice layer that sits between your microphone and every meeting app, removing background noise and echo in real time, and now also transcribing and recording calls without sending a bot into the meeting, producing AI notes and action items; it is sold per user per month with unlimited transcription and a storage cap rather than a minute meter.
Overview
Krisp is the only product in this category that arrived from underneath the meeting rather than beside it. It started in 2017 as an AI noise cancellation app that inserted a virtual microphone and speaker into your operating system, so it worked with every conferencing tool without integrating with any of them. That gave it a large installed base of remote workers and call center agents long before AI notes existed, and the same architecture is now the reason its notetaker is bot-free: Krisp is already in the audio path, so it does not need a participant in your Zoom room to hear the call.
The company was founded by Davit Baghdasaryan and Artavazd Minasyan, is registered in Berkeley with a large research operation in Yerevan, Armenia, and has raised roughly $18M to $19M, which is a fraction of what Granola or Read AI have taken. Baghdasaryan has publicly described the business as profitable, which is unusual here and materially reduces the risk that the product gets repriced or shut down after a down round.
The 2026 product spans three things that rarely appear together: noise cancellation, real-time accent conversion for support and sales teams, and an AI notetaker with transcription, recording, AI chat, and an MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor. Meeting AI pricing is $8 per user per month billed annually on Core and $15 on Advanced, with unlimited transcription and recording on both. The meter is storage, not minutes: 10 GB on Core, 60 GB on Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise.
Against Granola, Krisp lands in a similar place by a different route. Both capture locally and put nothing in the participant list. Granola is a notepad that enhances what you type; Krisp is an audio utility that happens to write good notes, and it keeps the recording where Granola's desktop path deliberately does not. If you already want noise cancellation, Krisp's notes are close to free. If you only want notes, Granola's are better written.
Best for
Distributed teams, support and services organisations, and anyone working from a noisy environment who wants noise cancellation and bot-free meeting notes from one $8 per seat subscription, especially teams whose accents are a friction point with customers.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone who only wants meeting notes and does not care about audio quality; you are paying for a noise cancellation engine you will not use, and Granola or Bluedot write better notes.
- Teams that need to send a recorder to meetings they are not attending; Krisp is a local audio layer and there is no bot to dispatch in your place.
- Buyers who want a free tier for the notetaker; Meeting AI is a 7-day trial and then a paid plan, with no free plan presented on the pricing page.
- Organisations that record long video-heavy meetings on the cheapest plan; 10 GB of storage on Core will not last a heavy user a year and the meter is storage rather than minutes.
- Sales managers wanting scorecards, playbook adherence, and talk-time coaching; the manager view and deal grouping are organisational aids, not a revenue intelligence platform.
How it works
- 1
You install the desktop app for macOS or Windows and select Krisp as your microphone and speaker in whatever conferencing tool you use. From that point Krisp is in the audio path for every call, regardless of platform, with no integration to authorise.
- 2
During the call Krisp removes background noise, echo, and other voices in both directions, and optionally converts accents in real time for the speaker or the listener. This is the layer that support organisations and outsourced teams actually pay for and it has no equivalent in any other product in this category.
- 3
Because Krisp already has the audio, the notetaker records and transcribes without joining the meeting as a participant. Nobody in the room sees a vendor-named bot. Notes, action items, and a transcript are produced afterwards, and in-person meetings and outbound phone calls are captured by the same mechanism.
- 4
Recordings and transcripts land in a workspace with AI chat over them, webhooks, and an MCP connector so Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor can read meeting content directly. Advanced adds Salesforce and ConnectWise sync, a manager view, deal grouping by company, and admin controls including enforcement of note-taking mode across a team.
Feature breakdown
29 features in 5 modulesVoice quality
The original product and still the thing nothing else in this category does.- Bidirectional noise cancellation
- Removes background noise from your outgoing audio and from what you hear, running locally through a virtual microphone and speaker so it works with any conferencing app.
- Echo and voice cancellation
- Suppresses room echo and other people's voices, which is what makes a shared office or a home with children workable on a client call.
- Real-time accent conversion
- Converts speaker-side accents in real time, with Indian, Filipino, South African, and Latin American accents supported. Core allows 1 hour a day; Advanced allows 4 hours a day speaker-side and unlimited listener-side.
- Platform-agnostic by design
- Because it is an OS-level audio device rather than an integration, Krisp covers Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, dialers, and anything else that uses a microphone.
- Outbound phone call recording
- Captures calls placed through softphones and dialers, not only video conferencing, which is rare in this category.
Bot-free capture and notes
The notetaker that comes out of already owning the audio path.- No bot in the participant list
- Krisp records from the local audio device, so no vendor-named participant appears to your client. This is the same argument Granola makes, arrived at from a different direction.
- Unlimited transcription
- Every paid tier includes unlimited transcription and unlimited AI notes, with no minute meter anywhere in the product.
- Audio and video recording
- Unlimited recording on all paid tiers, subject to the storage cap. Unlike Granola, Krisp keeps the media, so you can replay a call.
- AI notes and action items
- Structured notes with commitments extracted, produced after the call from the local recording.
- In-person meeting notes
- The same capture path handles face-to-face conversations, with a mobile app for meetings away from the desk.
- Multilingual transcript
- Transcription supports multiple languages, though Krisp does not publish a headline language count the way Fireflies or Notta do, so verify your language before committing.
- Trim and comment
- Advanced adds editing and commenting on recordings so a clip can be shared without the surrounding hour.
Search, chat, and developer surface
More open than the price suggests.- AI chat over meetings
- Query recordings conversationally rather than scrubbing transcripts, included from the Core tier.
- MCP integration
- A Model Context Protocol connector for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and custom clients is included on Core, which is notable at $8 a seat given Granola gates its MCP behind the $14 tier.
- Webhooks
- Included on Core for personal automation, with team-level webhooks on Advanced.
- Company deal grouping
- Advanced groups meetings by company so an account's history reads as a thread rather than a list of calls.
- Manager view
- Advanced gives managers visibility across their team's meetings, which is organisational oversight rather than call scoring.
- Krisp SDK
- A separate developer product embeds Krisp's noise cancellation into other applications, which is how the technology reaches far more users than the app itself.
Integrations and administration
Short list, weighted towards services businesses.- Salesforce
- Advanced-tier integration pushing meeting records into the CRM.
- ConnectWise
- An MSP and IT services PSA integration, which tells you exactly who Krisp's paying teams are and is not offered by any other notetaker here.
- Note-taking mode enforcement
- Advanced administrators can enforce how the team captures meetings rather than leaving it to individual choice.
- Meeting link sharing controls
- Administrators control who can share recordings outside the workspace.
- Storage tiers
- 10 GB on Core, 60 GB on Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise. This is the real meter in the product.
- SSO and SCIM
- Enterprise-tier only, alongside a super admin role and usage analytics reports.
Security and data handling
The on-device option at the top is the differentiator.- On-device transcription and recording
- Enterprise offers private transcription and recording processed on the device rather than in the cloud, which is the strongest privacy posture available from any product in this category.
- Local noise cancellation
- The audio processing itself runs on your machine and does not send your call audio to a server to be cleaned.
- SOC 2 report access
- Available on the Enterprise tier, alongside advanced security reporting.
- Data center location choice
- Enterprise customers can choose where data is hosted, which is a real data residency answer rather than a US-only default.
- HIPAA and BAA signing
- Available on Enterprise for teams with 100 or more seats.
Use cases
4 documentedOutsourced support team with accented English
Customers ask agents to repeat themselves, handle time climbs, and satisfaction scores suffer for reasons that have nothing to do with the agent's competence.
Real-time accent conversion plus noise cancellation removes the friction on the call itself, and the same subscription produces the after-call notes, so one tool solves a problem two tools usually address badly.
Consultant working from a co-working space
Client calls happen with other people talking six feet away, and a bot in the participant list would look unprofessional on a confidential engagement.
Krisp strips the room out of the audio, records locally with nothing visible to the client, and produces notes and action items at $8 a seat billed annually.
MSP or IT services firm on ConnectWise
Technician calls need to be documented against tickets, and generic notetakers integrate with CRMs nobody in the business uses.
The Advanced tier's ConnectWise integration pushes meeting records into the PSA the firm actually runs on, with manager visibility across the team.
Privacy-sensitive firm that still wants recordings
Notes are needed and playback matters, but sending client audio to a vendor's cloud is not acceptable to the firm's own clients.
Enterprise on-device transcription and recording keeps the audio on the machine, and data center location choice covers residency requirements that most competitors cannot answer at all.
Pricing
from $8 per user per month billed annually (Core), $16 month to monthPer-user-per-month subscription with unlimited transcription and recording. The meter is cloud storage per tier rather than minutes or meetings. Accent conversion is separately rate-limited by hours per day.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | $0 for 7 days |
No credit card required, but it ends after a week. There is no free plan for Meeting AI. |
| Core | $8 per user per month billed annually ($16 monthly) |
The cheapest bot-free notetaker with recording in this category, and the MCP connector is included rather than gated. |
| Advanced | $15 per user per month billed annually ($30 monthly) |
The tier for services teams; the accent conversion allowance is the real upgrade trigger for support organisations. |
| Enterprise | Custom quoted |
|
Add-ons
- Call Center AI Core ($15 per agent per month billed annually): A separate product line with agent and customer noise cancellation, voice isolation, after-call summaries, SSO and SCIM, and usage analytics.
- Krisp SDK (Apply for access): Embeds the noise cancellation engine in third-party applications; no standard published price.
Billing notes
- Annual billing halves the price on both paid tiers: Core is $16 monthly or $8 annually, Advanced is $30 monthly or $15 annually. Month to month costs exactly double.
- There is no minute or meeting meter anywhere, which makes Krisp one of the few genuinely predictable bills in this category.
- Storage is the constraint that actually bites: 10 GB on Core and 60 GB on Advanced. Video recording consumes it far faster than audio, and the pricing page does not publish an overage rate.
- Accent conversion is rate limited by hours per day rather than per month, so a full day of customer calls will exhaust the Core allowance well before lunch.
- The Meeting AI, Call Center AI, and SDK product lines are priced and sold separately; buying one does not include the others.
- HIPAA with a signed BAA is only available to Enterprise teams of 100 or more seats, which puts it out of reach for a small clinic or practice.
Value assessment: Krisp is the cheapest way to get bot-free capture with a retained recording, and the value case is unusually easy to model because there is no minute meter. Someone in 20 meetings a week at 45 minutes generates about 65 hours a month of audio; on Core that is $8 a seat billed annually, $96 a year, and the transcription is unlimited, so the bill does not move. The thing to watch is storage, because 10 GB fills up fast if you record video rather than audio, and 65 hours a month will get you there inside a year. Against Granola at $14 a seat you get recordings and noise cancellation that Granola does not offer, and against Otter Business at $20 you get bot-free capture and an included MCP connector for less than half the price. What you do not get is Granola's writing quality, a free tier, or any coaching layer. If noise cancellation has any value to you at all, Krisp is the best price per unit of capability here.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Bot-free capture with the recording retained, which is a combination Granola deliberately does not offer and most bot-based tools cannot offer at all.
- Best-in-class noise cancellation and echo removal that works with every meeting platform because it is an OS-level audio device, not an integration.
- Real-time accent conversion is unique in this category and is a genuine business outcome for support, services, and outsourced teams.
- No minute or meeting meter on any tier, so the bill is predictable regardless of how full your calendar gets.
- An MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor plus webhooks included at the $8 Core tier, which is more open than products costing twice as much.
- Enterprise on-device transcription and recording plus data center location choice is the strongest privacy and residency answer available from any product in this category.
- Reportedly profitable on roughly $18M to $19M raised, with a large Armenian research team, so the vendor risk is low relative to venture-funded peers.
Limitations
- No free plan for Meeting AI; the evaluation window is seven days and then it is a paid product, which is stingy next to Fathom, Read AI, or MeetGeek.
- Storage is the hidden meter and there is no published overage rate, so heavy video recorders on Core will hit a wall they did not plan for.
- Note quality is good rather than exceptional; this is an audio company writing notes, and Granola, Circleback, and Bluedot all produce better prose.
- No language count is published for transcription, so multilingual buyers cannot compare it against Notta's 58 or Fireflies' 100-plus without testing.
- The integration list is very short: Salesforce and ConnectWise on Advanced, with webhooks and MCP for everything else. There is no HubSpot, Notion, or Slack connector to speak of.
- SOC 2 report access, data residency choice, and HIPAA are all Enterprise-tier, and the BAA specifically requires 100 or more seats, so a small regulated business cannot buy its way to compliance here.
- Three separate product lines (Meeting AI, Call Center AI, SDK) with separate pricing makes the vendor's positioning harder to read than a single-product competitor's.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesKrisp vs Granola
from $0 (Basic), then $14 per user per month (Business)Both capture locally with no bot in the participant list. Granola costs $14 a seat, writes noticeably better notes by enhancing what you type, and stores no desktop recording at all. Krisp costs $8, keeps the audio and video so you can replay a call, and throws in noise cancellation and accent conversion. Choose Granola if the writing is the product; choose Krisp if you want the recording, the audio quality, and the lower price.
Full Krisp vs Granola comparisonKrisp vs Bluedot
from $0 (Free, 5 meetings lifetime), then $14 per user per month billed annually (Basic)Both avoid the bot and both retain recordings. Bluedot is a Chrome-extension recorder built around Google Meet with a genuine free tier and custom templates, from $14 a seat annually. Krisp is an OS-level audio layer that covers every platform including dialers and in-person calls, from $8. Take Bluedot if you live in Google Meet and want better templates; take Krisp if you need coverage beyond the browser and value the noise cancellation.
Full Krisp vs Bluedot comparisonKrisp vs Otter.ai
from $0 (Basic), then $8.33 per user per month (Pro, billed annually)Otter is the mature bot-based archive with better English recognition, a live transcript view, and deep export, at about $20 a seat annually on Business. Krisp is bot-free, half the price, has no minute meter, and includes MCP. Pick Otter if you want the best transcript and a searchable long-term archive with CRM sync; pick Krisp if a visible bot is a problem and you want the audio layer as well.
Full Krisp vs Otter.ai comparisonKrisp vs Fireflies.ai
from $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly)Fireflies is a bot-based platform with 100-plus languages, a huge integration catalogue, and conversation intelligence, metered by storage minutes and AI credits. Krisp is a local audio utility with unlimited transcription and almost no integrations. Fireflies for a team that needs the notetaker wired into everything; Krisp for a team that needs clean audio and private capture.
Full Krisp vs Fireflies.ai comparisonKrisp vs Supernormal
from $0 (Free), then $20 per month (Team)Both are now bot-free desktop notetakers. Supernormal charges by credits with unlimited seats and turns meetings into decks and documents; Krisp charges per seat with unlimited transcription and adds noise cancellation and recordings. Supernormal is better if the post-meeting deliverable is the work; Krisp is better if the call itself needs to sound right and you want a predictable per-seat bill.
Full Krisp vs Supernormal comparisonKrisp vs Laxis
from $0 (Basic), then $15.99 per month (Premium)Both are utilities that grew into notetakers and both can capture without a bot. Laxis additionally offers an assistant bot for meetings you skip, a voice dictation keyboard, and its own earbuds, but meters minutes and charges $29.99 for unlimited. Krisp is $8 a seat with unlimited transcription, better audio processing, and an included MCP connector, but no bot option and a 10 GB storage cap. Krisp for price and call quality; Laxis for capture flexibility.
Full Krisp vs Laxis comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under ten minutes. Install the desktop app, select Krisp as your microphone and speaker in your conferencing tool, and every call from then on is covered. There is no calendar integration to authorise and no bot behaviour to configure.
- Learning curve
- Very low for noise cancellation, which is a toggle. The notetaker and accent conversion settings take a session to work through, and teams need a policy on when accent conversion is appropriate to use at all.
- Onboarding
- Fully self-serve on Core and Advanced. Enterprise adds a dedicated account manager. The main configuration decision is note-taking mode, which Advanced administrators can enforce across a team.
- Migration notes
- There is no importer for another notetaker's archive, and because Krisp is an audio device rather than a calendar integration there is nothing to disconnect from Zoom or Google when you switch. Recordings and transcripts live in the Krisp workspace subject to your storage tier; export before cancelling, because the storage cap means older media may already have been managed down.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- macOS desktop appWindows desktop appiOSAndroidWeb workspaceKrisp SDK for embedding
- API
- Webhooks on Core and team-level webhooks on Advanced, plus an MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and custom clients. A separate SDK is available to developers by application.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 (report access on Enterprise)HIPAA with BAA signing on Enterprise for teams of 100 or more seatsGDPR
- Data residency
- Data center location choice is available on the Enterprise tier; self-serve tiers do not offer a regional hosting selection.
- SSO
- SSO and SCIM are Enterprise-tier only.
- Security notes
- Noise cancellation runs locally on the device rather than in the cloud. Enterprise adds fully on-device private transcription and recording, meaning call audio need never leave the machine, which is the strongest privacy option any product in this category offers. Storage is capped per tier at 10 GB, 60 GB, and unlimited respectively.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app helpDedicated account manager on Enterprise
- Documentation
- Help centre on krisp.ai covering the desktop app, note-taking modes, accent conversion, integrations, and the MCP connector.
- Community
- Very large installed base from the noise cancellation product; no substantial official user forum.
Company
- Founded
- 2017
- Headquarters
- Berkeley, California, United States, with a large research operation in Yerevan, Armenia
- Ownership
- Venture-backed, and described by its co-founder as profitable
- Founders
- Davit Baghdasaryan, Artavazd Minasyan
- Employees
- Not disclosed; third-party trackers report figures in the low hundreds, with much of engineering and research based in Armenia
- Funding
- Roughly $18M to $19M raised in total, including a Series A expansion of $9M in February 2021. The company has publicly described itself as profitable for multiple years and has not raised a large late-stage round.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Undisclosed | 2018 | Krisp was the first Armenian company to go through Berkeley SkyDeck. |
| Series A | $5M | 2020 | Raised on the back of the remote work surge. |
| Series A extension | $9M | 2021 | Nearly tripled the total raise after a strong 2020; the last significant publicly reported round. |
Timeline
- 2017Founded in Yerevan by Davit Baghdasaryan and Artavazd Minasyan to remove background noise from calls using on-device machine learning.
- 2018Becomes the first Armenian company accepted into Berkeley SkyDeck and launches the virtual microphone approach that makes it work with every conferencing app.
- 2021Raises a $9M Series A extension after remote work drives adoption, and expands the Armenian research team.
- 2024Adds AI meeting notes and transcription on top of the existing audio path, giving it bot-free capture without building a bot.
- 2025Ships real-time accent conversion for speaker and listener sides, targeting support and outsourced services teams.
- 2026Restructures pricing around Meeting AI, Call Center AI, and the SDK, and includes an MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor on the $8 Core tier.
Integrations
- Any conferencing app via the virtual microphone and speaker (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, softphones and dialers)
- Salesforce (Advanced)
- ConnectWise (Advanced)
- MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and custom clients
- Webhooks (personal on Core, team-level on Advanced)
- Krisp SDK for embedding noise cancellation in other applications
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Krisp?
Krisp is a desktop app that installs a virtual microphone and speaker between your operating system and every meeting app. It removes background noise and echo in real time, optionally converts accents live, and because it already sits in the audio path it also records and transcribes calls without sending a bot into the meeting, producing AI notes and action items.
How much does Krisp cost?
Meeting AI Core is $8 per user per month billed annually, or $16 month to month. Advanced is $15 annually or $30 monthly. Enterprise is custom quoted and adds SSO, on-device transcription, SOC 2 report access, data residency choice, and unlimited storage. There is a 7-day free trial with no credit card required, but no free plan.
How is Krisp metered, and what would 20 meetings a week cost?
Krisp meters by user and by storage, not by minutes or meetings. Transcription, recording, and AI notes are unlimited on every paid tier. Someone in 20 meetings a week at 45 minutes generates roughly 65 hours of audio a month and pays exactly $8 per seat per month billed annually, about $96 a year, with no overage. The thing that will eventually bite is the 10 GB storage cap on Core, particularly if you record video rather than audio, and no overage rate is published.
Does Krisp put a bot in my client calls?
No. Krisp captures from the local audio device, so nothing appears in the participant list and your client sees no vendor-named recorder. That makes it suitable for confidential and client-facing calls in the same way Granola is. The tradeoff is the same one Granola has: you must be present on a machine running Krisp, and there is no way to send it to a call in your place.
Does Krisp keep audio and video recordings?
Yes, and this is the main difference from Granola's desktop path, which retains nothing. Krisp records unlimited audio and video subject to your storage tier: 10 GB on Core, 60 GB on Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise. That means you can replay a call, trim a clip, and comment on it on the Advanced tier, none of which a recording-free tool can do.
Does Krisp train its models on my recordings, and how private is it really?
Krisp's noise cancellation runs entirely on your device and does not send call audio to a server to be processed, which is a structural privacy advantage. For transcription and notes on the self-serve tiers, ask for the data processing agreement and an explicit written statement on model training before you roll it out, because the pricing page does not answer it. The strongest answer available is the Enterprise tier's on-device private transcription and recording, where the audio never leaves the machine at all.
How does Krisp handle consent in two-party recording jurisdictions?
Krisp is bot-free, which means there is no visible indicator to the other side that the call is being recorded. That makes your consent obligation greater, not smaller. In two-party consent states such as California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington, and under GDPR in the EU, you must announce that you are recording and get agreement before you start. Administrators on the Advanced tier can enforce a note-taking mode across a team, which helps make the practice consistent, but the legal duty to ask sits with you.
What is accent conversion and who is it for?
It converts a speaker's accent in real time during a live call, currently supporting Indian, Filipino, South African, and Latin American accents on the speaker side, with listener-side conversion also available. It exists for support and outsourced services teams where accent friction drives repeat requests and lower satisfaction scores. Core allows one hour a day, Advanced allows four hours a day speaker-side and unlimited listener-side. It is a genuinely differentiated feature and also one a team should agree a policy on before switching it on.
Does Krisp integrate with my CRM?
Only narrowly. Salesforce and ConnectWise are the two native integrations, both on the Advanced tier. There is no HubSpot, Pipedrive, Notion, or Slack connector. Everything else has to go through webhooks or the MCP connector, which is fine if you are comfortable wiring things up and a real limitation if you expected a catalogue like Fireflies or Otter offers.
Is Krisp worth it if I do not need noise cancellation?
Probably not as your first choice. At $8 a seat it is still the cheapest bot-free notetaker that keeps recordings, and the included MCP connector is generous, but the notes are good rather than excellent and the integration list is thin. If clean audio and accent handling are worth nothing to you, Granola writes better notes for $14 and Bluedot has a free tier and better templates. The economics only become compelling when the audio layer is doing work for you too.
Editorial verdict
Krisp is the best-value bot-free notetaker in this category, and it gets there by selling you something else first. Because it already lives in your audio path as a noise cancellation engine, it can record and transcribe without a participant in the room, keep the media so you can replay a call, and charge $8 a seat annually with no minute meter and an MCP connector thrown in. For distributed teams, consultancies working from noisy places, and support or MSP organisations, that combination is very hard to beat, and the Enterprise on-device transcription option is the strongest privacy answer anyone in this category offers. The reasons not to buy it are equally clear: there is no free plan, storage rather than minutes is the meter and no overage rate is published, the integration list is two CRMs long, and the notes themselves are competent rather than beautiful. If you want prose, buy Granola. If you want the call to sound right and the notes to be free, buy Krisp.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.