Earkeep
The Notta alternative that never waits to be started
Last updated: · Reviewed quarterly
Notta is a speech-to-text and translation utility that also does meetings: six ways to capture audio, every one of them something you start. Earkeep never waits to be started. It listens all day on your device, transcribes locally, and lets you mark which stretch of the day was the meeting once it is over.
14-day full trial, no account required.
- Nothing to press, nothing to upload
- On device by architecture, not by mode
- €39 once, not $97.99 a year
The short answer
If you need 58 transcription languages, translation into 42 more, live bilingual calls, existing recordings turned into text, or the same account on Windows and a phone, Notta is the better tool and Earkeep is not close. If what keeps costing you is the conversation you did not think to record, Earkeep is the other shape: capture that never stops, transcription that only happens on your own machine, and €39 once rather than $97.99 a year.
Why people look for a Notta alternative
Six ways to capture, all of them a decision
Notta's unit is a recording that already knew it was a recording. Audio gets in six ways: a bot invited to Zoom, Meet, Teams or Webex, the desktop app, the browser recorder, the phone app, an uploaded file or YouTube URL, or the $149 Notta Memo. None of them is a continuous day, and there is no timeline to carve up afterwards, so the conversation nobody expected to matter is gone.
The clearest signal in our research is a paying user leaving on price, in a thread titled "Can't afford Notta AI anymore. Any alternative...", describing their whole use of the product: "I use only the basic features of uploading audio, transcribing and exporting the transcript." That is deliberate capture, and the workflow Notta is genuinely built for.
Local by architecture, not by setting
Earkeep transcribes with Whisper or Parakeet on your own hardware, accelerated on Apple silicon. Audio is held in memory, transcribed and discarded: never written to disk, in any mode, because there is no other mode.
Notta is a hosted workspace on AWS, with one real exception. Privacy Mode, announced on 3 July 2026 for Notta Desktop 1.1.0 and later, downloads an offline model and keeps recordings and transcripts in a local folder, with CEO Ryan Zhang framing it as "not every conversation belongs in the cloud". Read that precisely: it covers auto-detection plus English, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese and Simplified Chinese, on desktop, on one of six capture paths. The bot, the phone, the browser recorder, the uploads and the Memo still go to their servers, and store replayable audio there.
A record you own, in files your agents can read
Notta's output lives in an account: transcript, summary, action items, slides, share links, export buttons. Earkeep writes one plain .jsonl file per day into a folder you pick, spans marked inline, so grep still works on your meetings in ten years whatever happens to us.
That is also what makes them readable by software you already run. Earkeep runs ten ACP agents against the meeting you are looking at (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Gemini CLI and six more) and exposes a read-only MCP server, so Claude Desktop or Cursor can search and read your spans. Notta ships no first-party MCP server and no documented public API; the "Notta MCP" in search results is Zapier's wrapper, not theirs. One Reddit thread asks for exactly what needs this: "I'd like any meeting that I ever have to be recorded and automatically add my action items to my to-do list."
Side by side
| Capability | Earkeep | Notta |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on capture | No start/stop | Every capture is an act |
| Retroactive spans on a timeline | Define the meeting afterward | No timeline; a recording is the unit |
| Transcribed on your device | The only way it works | Privacy Mode: desktop, five languages, one of six paths |
| Audio never written to disk | Transcribed in memory, discarded | Stored recordings are the product |
| Keeps a recording you can replay | No audio is ever kept | Playable audio beside the transcript |
| Transcription languages | 99+ with Whisper, 25 with Parakeet | 58 languages |
| Translation | Not a feature at all | 42 targets, 23 bilingual live pairs |
| Transcribing files you already have | Only what your device hears, live | Audio, video and YouTube URLs |
| Labels who said what | Not yet | Automatic speaker labels |
| AI summary when it ends | No, but an agent you connect writes them from the transcript | Summaries and action items, metered |
| Plain files on your own disk | One .jsonl a day, grep works | Hosted workspace with export buttons |
| Your own agents can read it | Ten ACP agents plus a read-only MCP server | No first-party MCP or documented API |
| Mobile app | Desktop only | iOS and Android |
| Windows | Designed, not released | Windows x64 desktop app |
| Free tier that doesn't expire | 14 days free, then €39 once | Free plan, 120 minutes a month |
| One-time purchase | €39, one device | Subscription, account required |
| Pricing | €39 one time, one device | Free tier, then $97.99/year Pro |
| Platform | macOS 13+ | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome, $149 recorder |
Built inNo, but an agent you connect canPartlyNot available
What each one costs by year five
Switching takes an afternoon
- Install it, then let a day run. Earkeep starts listening as soon as it is running, so a first day of real meetings, at your desk and in a huddle, is captured before you have configured anything. There is no import tool: your Notta recordings, transcripts and uploads stay in Notta.
- Mark yesterday, or connect a calendar. Drag a span across the timeline where a meeting was, or point Earkeep at Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook or any ICS URL and let every event title its own span. This step has no Notta equivalent: Notta has nothing continuous to select out of.
- Work out what you still need Notta for, and keep it if you do. If you translate meetings, run bilingual calls, or have recordings to upload, keep the subscription: Earkeep does none of that. If you were paying mainly to have meetings captured, the arithmetic is one-sided. Notta Pro is $97.99 a year, every year, and its free plan allows 120 minutes a month with a three-minute ceiling per conversation, so a 45-minute meeting cannot be recorded on it at any point in the month. Its web trial runs three days and bills the full annual price when it ends, the loudest theme in its review record; Earkeep is €39 once per device, and its 14-day trial takes no card, no email and no account, so nothing happens when it ends.
Which one fits you
Choose Earkeep if
You want the day kept without being asked to start it, and the record to be yours.
- The meetings you most wish you had are the ones you did not plan to record
- Confidential conversations mean the audio must never leave your machine, or be stored at all
- You want to decide after the fact what counted as a meeting
- A minute meter is the wrong shape for a whole working week
- Your own agents should read your meetings straight off your disk
Choose Notta if
Notta is genuinely bigger than Earkeep on the axes below, and it is worth saying so plainly.
- You need language coverage: 58 transcription languages, and Japanese quality reviewers rate as its best work
- You need translation: 42 targets after the fact, 36 source and 61 target languages in real time, 23 bilingual live pairs. Earkeep has none of this
- You have recordings that already exist: Notta transcribes uploaded audio and video, and a pasted YouTube URL; Earkeep only hears what your device hears, live
- You need Windows, iOS, Android or a browser: Notta runs on all of them with one account; Earkeep is macOS 13+ only
- You want stored audio you can replay, speaker labels, or the $149 Notta Memo for conversations nowhere near a laptop: Earkeep keeps no audio, labels no speakers, sells no hardware
If one of those is you, Notta's free plan is a fair place to test the thing you actually need; this comparison is meant to help you pick the right tool rather than ours. These are two products sharing a category label: Notta turns audio into text in many languages, with meetings one line inside that; Earkeep gives you a day already recorded. If your week is full of at-desk 1:1s and huddles nobody scheduled, see Earkeep for product managers.
Other tools people weigh this against
Anyone shopping for a Notta alternative usually has a few other tabs open. Each of these gets the same treatment as this page: MacWhisper for transcribing files locally, Otter.ai for the same breadth in English, Krisp for bot-free desktop capture, Granola for notes rather than transcripts, and Plaud if the pocket recorder was the part that appealed, or all sixteen side by side.
Frequently asked questions
Is Earkeep a good Notta alternative?
It is, if what you want is a working day already recorded rather than a transcription tool you feed. Earkeep captures mic and system audio continuously, transcribes on your device, and lets you mark meetings afterwards on a timeline. It is not a substitute for Notta's translation, file upload, speaker labels, or apps for Windows and phones.
Is Notta's Privacy Mode the same as Earkeep transcribing on my device?
Not quite, and the difference is architecture versus mode. Privacy Mode, in Notta Desktop 1.1.0 and later, does download an offline model and keep recordings and transcripts locally, but it covers auto-detection plus English, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese and Simplified Chinese, on desktop, on one of six capture paths, and you switch it on. For Earkeep, on-device is the only way it works, and audio is never written to disk.
Can Notta's free plan record a real meeting?
No. The free plan allows 120 transcription minutes a month with a ceiling of three minutes per conversation, so a 45-minute meeting cannot be recorded on it at any point in the month. Earkeep's trial is the whole product, unmetered, for 14 days, with no card and no account, and afterwards there is no meter.
Does Earkeep transcribe recordings I already have, or translate them?
Neither. Earkeep transcribes only what your device's microphone and system audio hear while it is running, and it has no translation feature. If you have a folder of existing files, or need a Japanese meeting rendered into English, Notta is the right answer and Earkeep is not.
Does Notta have an MCP server my agents can read?
Not a first-party one, and we found no documented public API either; the "Notta MCP" in search results is Zapier's wrapper. Earkeep runs ten ACP agents in the app, and its read-only MCP server has two tools, search and read, so Claude Desktop or Cursor can query your own meetings directly.
Try Earkeep
14-day full trial, no account required.