Earkeep
The Krisp alternative that keeps the whole meeting on your device
Last updated: · Reviewed quarterly
Krisp cleans your audio on your own machine and now transcribes English there too, then sends the notes to Azure and keeps the transcript, the recording and the summary in its US cloud. Earkeep keeps the whole record on your disk, in plain files, and never writes audio at all.
14-day full trial, no account required.
- Always on, no meeting to schedule
- The record is a file on your disk
- €39 once, not $96 per user per year
The short answer
If your problem is that people hear your kids, your street or your coffee shop, buy Krisp: nine years of signal processing, licensed by Discord and Twilio, and Earkeep has nothing like it. Krisp is also bot-free, runs on Windows and mobile, labels who said what, and clears an enterprise security review. The gap is what happens to the meeting afterwards. Krisp keeps your audio local and your meeting in its cloud: the notes are generated on Azure, and the transcript, the recording and the summary sit on a US server unless you buy Enterprise. Earkeep keeps all of it on your device, in a file you can grep in ten years, for €39 once.
Why people look for a Krisp alternative
Capture the whole day, not the meetings you booked
Krisp captures per meeting, and by default it wants your Google or Outlook calendar connected before it will work. That covers the calls on the agenda well, and misses the at-desk conversation and the huddle nobody scheduled.
Krisp's own in-person page is the clearest evidence of the seam: "Use your phone to record audio or video directly from the meeting room," then "Upload your recordings and let the AI Meeting Assistant transcribe them automatically." That is a deliberate act, twice, before anything is captured. Earkeep is already listening to your mic and system audio, and you mark which stretch of the day was the meeting once it is over.
Your audio stays local with Krisp, your meeting does not
Give Krisp its due: noise cancellation has always run on-device, and as of 2026 English transcription does too. That is a real privacy story and we won't pretend otherwise. What leaves the machine is everything downstream. The other fifteen supported languages are transcribed on Krisp's servers, the notes and the AI chat are generated on Microsoft Azure, and the transcript, the recording and the summary are stored in Krisp's US cloud once Meeting Notes is on. Keeping them on-device instead is an Enterprise line item behind a sales call.
Krisp users notice the seam. An r/macapps thread on the privacy policy landed on "giving up that much data? Yikes." There is a practical edge to it too: one Trustpilot reviewer reports "9 meetings using Krisp and only 3 of them kept their transcriptions." When the record lives in someone else's cloud, their bad day is your missing transcript.
Earkeep transcribes every supported language on your device, with Whisper or Parakeet, in memory. Audio is never written to disk, so there is no recording of you afterwards.
A record your own agents read, straight off your disk
Krisp's note taker is the newest and, by its own reviewers' account, the thinnest of its three product lines. A 2026 review of the app calls the AI notes "basic", with no custom templates and no meeting tagging, and its changelog through the summer is almost entirely Call Center AI rather than Meeting AI.
Krisp does ship an MCP server, so this is not a case of us having one and them not. Theirs is hosted and remote, at mcp.krisp.ai, reached over OAuth against the copy of your meetings in their cloud, and its tool surface is not published, so we cannot tell you whether it only reads. Earkeep's runs on loopback on your own machine, over your own files, and is read-only by construction: two tools, search_spans and read_span, with no way to write anything back.
Earkeep writes no summaries itself. What it gives you is the record in plain JSONL, plus ten ACP agents that run in-app as your own CLI with your own key, against the meeting you are looking at, with the transcript already attached.
Side by side
| Capability | Earkeep | Krisp |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on capture | No start/stop, all day | Per meeting, calendar-driven |
| Noise cancellation on the call | None, Earkeep only listens | Best in class, on-device, two-way |
| Speech to text on your device | Every supported language | English on-device, 15 languages server-side |
| Real-time accent conversion | Not a thing Earkeep does | Speaker and listener side |
| Retroactive spans on a timeline | Define the meeting afterward | No equivalent concept |
| Labels who said what | No diarisation | Speaker identification |
| Where the meeting record lives | Plain JSONL on your own disk | Krisp's US cloud, on-device only on Enterprise |
| Keeps a recording you can replay | Audio is never written to disk | Audio and video, with trimming |
| AI summary when it ends | No, but an agent you connect writes them from the transcript | Notes and action items, generated on Azure |
| Windows and mobile apps | macOS only | Windows, iOS and Android |
| Your own agents can read it | ACP agents plus MCP, over local files | Hosted MCP server, over Krisp's cloud copy |
| SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA | Neither, and no cloud to certify | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA on Advanced |
| Share with people who weren't there | No, but your agent files the notes where your team already reads | Workspace sharing, Slack, Notion, CRM |
| No account, no email | Nothing to sign up for | Account, plus a calendar connection by default |
| Free tier that doesn't expire | 14 days free, then €39 once | The free plan was removed, 7-day trial |
| One-time purchase | €39, one device | Per user, per month |
| Pricing | €39 one time, one device | Core $96/user/year annual, $16/user/month monthly |
| Platform | macOS 13+ | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, web dashboard; no Linux |
Built inNo, but an agent you connect canPartlyNot available
What each one costs by year five
Switching takes an afternoon
- Keep Krisp for the noise, install Earkeep for the record. The two are not mutually exclusive: Krisp is a virtual audio device that cleans your call, Earkeep listens to your mic and system audio and writes the transcript. If noise cancellation is why you pay, keep paying for that and let Earkeep take the notes.
- Let a day run, then mark it. Earkeep starts listening as soon as it is running, so a first day of real meetings is captured before you configure anything. Drag a span across the timeline where a meeting was, or connect Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook or any ICS URL and let each event title its own span. There is no import tool: your Krisp transcripts and recordings stay in Krisp, so export what you still want before you cancel.
- Stop paying per seat for the notes. Krisp Core is $8 per user per month billed annually, $96 a year forever, and $16 if you pay monthly; Advanced is $15 annual and Enterprise is a sales call. With the perpetual free plan gone, $96 a year is the cheapest way to use the note taker. Earkeep is €39 once per device, after a 14-day full trial that needs no email and no account.
Which one fits you
Choose Earkeep if
You want the whole working day kept, in a file you own, with nothing about the meeting leaving the machine.
- The conversations worth keeping are the ones that were never on your calendar
- "On-device" has to mean the transcript and the notes too, not just the audio filter
- You work in a language other than English and don't want it transcribed on someone's server
- You'd rather there be no recording of the meeting at all than a stored one you can replay
- You'd rather pay €39 once than $96 per user per year that can be repriced under you
Choose Krisp if
Krisp wins several of these outright, and on its home ground Earkeep is not a substitute at all.
- You need noise cancellation: nine years of signal processing, licensed into Discord and Twilio Video, and Earkeep does not clean audio at all
- You need real-time accent conversion for a distributed team: nobody else in this comparison offers it, Earkeep included
- You need Windows, iOS or Android: Earkeep is macOS 13+ only, and a phone is the one place it cannot follow you
- You need "who said what": Krisp identifies speakers and Earkeep has no diarisation
- You have to clear a security review or sign a BAA: Krisp carries SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS and HIPAA on Advanced, and Earkeep has no compliance programme to point at
If one of those is you, Krisp's 7-day trial is the right next click and this page has done its job. Earkeep is for the person whose week is mostly unscheduled conversation and whose notes have to survive the tool: see Earkeep for product managers.
Other tools people weigh this against
Anyone shopping for a Krisp alternative usually has a few other tabs open. Each of these gets the same treatment as this page: Granola, Otter.ai, Notta, Wispr Flow and MacWhisper, or all sixteen side by side.
Frequently asked questions
Is Earkeep a good Krisp alternative?
For the note-taking half, yes: Earkeep captures the whole day rather than the meetings on your calendar, transcribes every supported language on your device, and keeps the record as plain JSONL you own, for €39 once instead of $96 per user per year. For the half most people buy Krisp for, no: Earkeep does no noise cancellation, no accent conversion and no speaker labelling, and it runs on macOS only.
Does Krisp transcribe on device?
Partly, and this changed in 2026. Noise cancellation has always run on-device, and English transcription now does as well. The other fifteen supported languages go to Krisp's servers, and the notes, summaries and chat are generated on Microsoft Azure whatever the language. Earkeep transcribes every supported language on your machine and writes no summaries at all.
Where does Krisp store my meeting transcripts and recordings?
In Krisp's cloud, in the United States, once Meeting Notes is enabled, with no regional choice and no on-device option below the Enterprise plan. Earkeep writes one JSONL file per day into a folder you pick on your own disk, and audio is transcribed in memory and never written at all, so there is no recording to store anywhere.
Does Earkeep cancel background noise like Krisp?
No. Earkeep only listens; it does not touch your outgoing audio, and nothing on the other end of your call sounds different because it is running. Krisp's noise cancellation is genuinely excellent and has no counterpart here, so run both: Krisp cleaning the call, Earkeep keeping the record.
Is Krisp still free?
Not as a plan. The perpetual free tier that gave 60 minutes a day of noise cancellation is gone from the pricing page, and the entry point is a 7-day trial with no card, after which Core is $96 per user per year. Reviewers cite that removal, and a rise from $60 to $96 a year, as their reason for cancelling. Earkeep's trial is 14 days, needs no email or account, and the app is €39 once after it.
Try Earkeep
14-day full trial, no account required.