Nobody wants a robot with a stock avatar sitting in their call, announcing itself to the client, showing up in the recording. Circleback and Krisp will both capture the meeting without one.
That is where the agreement stops. Circleback says it supports over 100 languages and publishes no count. Krisp publishes a list you can count, and it comes to exactly 16. Neither number is a lie, but which one matters depends entirely on who is in the room.
That difference is worth stating plainly before the pricing, because it is the one that reverses the recommendation. On every other axis these two tools are close enough that price and platform decide it. On languages they are not close at all, and the gap is not a matter of degree — it is the difference between a tool that works for your meeting and one that does not.
Quick Verdict
Choose Krisp if audio quality is the actual problem and your meetings are in English or a major European language. Core is 8 dollars a month annual, the cheapest seat here, and noise cancellation is in every plan rather than sold as a tier.
Choose Circleback if you want a real free plan and a language list with no ceiling. It states over 100 languages, gates them nowhere, and its free tier drafts emails and includes API, MCP and CLI access.
Choose AmyNote if the meeting is in person, the languages are outside Europe, and the audio should stay on your phone. It transcribes 140+ languages, is tuned for East Asian and Arabic speech, and costs a flat 99 dollars a year for the whole account. No free plan, iPhone only.
What We Compared
Every figure below was read from the vendor’s own pricing page on 4 September 2026, with Circleback’s billing toggle clicked both ways. That last detail is not pedantry: vendors in this category ship the monthly and annual price sets into the same page, so a careless read quotes the annual rate as if it were the monthly one.
One warning about Krisp. Its pricing page now splits into three products: Meeting AI, Call Center AI, and developer SDKs. The call center product advertises speech to speech translation in 60+ languages. That figure belongs to the call center product, not the meeting assistant. Meeting transcripts stay at 16.
This matters more than a footnote suggests, because the 60+ number is the one that propagates. It is the figure that ends up in roundups and comparison tables written by people who read the pricing page quickly, and it describes a product most readers of those roundups will never buy. If you are evaluating Krisp as a note-taker, 16 is your number.
Feature and policy claims come from published help center and privacy text rather than from review sites, which in this category copy each other and go stale within a release cycle. Where a vendor states something plainly, it is quoted.
Circleback: Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths. The free plan is the most complete entry point here, and a real plan rather than a countdown: unlimited meetings online and in person, a calendar bot or the bot-free desktop app, mobile and Apple Watch apps, view and draft emails, and unqualified API, MCP and CLI access.
Language support is stated as over 100 and gated nowhere, so the free plan reads the same list as Enterprise, with Japanese among the named examples. That structure is the point: at Circleback, language coverage is a property of the product rather than a property of your plan, which means you can test the meeting you actually have before paying anything.
Its privacy answer is the shortest sentence any vendor here publishes: “No. We don’t train AI models on customer data.” No de-identification caveat, no opt-out buried in a settings pane.
Weaknesses. The free plan forgets after 30 days, and storage is the real ladder: Pro buys one year of recordings, Business two, Enterprise unlimited. Past a certain point, what you are paying Circleback for is the right to keep what you already recorded.
It has the most expensive entry seat, 15 dollars a month annual against Krisp at 8, and publishes no exact language count, so you are trusting the number. “Over 100” is a floor, not a list, and if one specific language decides your purchase, you will be testing rather than reading. HIPAA and single sign-on sit at the 35 dollar Enterprise tier.
Krisp: Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths. Krisp started as an audio product and it shows: noise cancellation is in every plan including the trial, never unbundled into a cheaper tier. Core at 8 dollars is unusually complete: unlimited transcription and recording, AI notes and action items, in-person support, video recording, custom vocabulary, and MCP integration for Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor.
Platform coverage is the widest here: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and a browser extension. It is not bot-free only either. Recording with a bot is an explicit option, and past meetings can be uploaded for retroactive transcription — which is the feature you want the week after a meeting you did not think to capture.
On privacy Krisp is stronger than its write-ups suggest. The pricing FAQ commits directly: “No model training: Your meeting data is never used to train Krisp’s AI models.” Data is AES-256 encrypted at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit, in a virtual private cloud, and the company is certified for SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA.
Weaknesses. The language list is the problem, and it is specific rather than vague. The supported-languages panel enumerates 16: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Hindi, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech, Ukrainian and Korean. Korean is there. Japanese, Chinese and Arabic are not. For a Tokyo, Taipei or Dubai meeting, the cheapest seat here is not a cheaper option, it is not an option.
Give Krisp credit for the honesty, though. A vendor that enumerates 16 has told you exactly where it stops, and a list you can check beats a number you have to trust. The cost of that honesty is that it disqualifies itself in writing for a large part of the world.
There is no perpetual free plan either, only a 7-day trial, and the annual discount is really a monthly penalty: Core doubles from 8 to 16, Advanced from 15 to 30. Storage caps at 10 GB on Core, and signup requires a Google or Outlook calendar connection by default — a procurement stop for security teams that refuse blanket calendar OAuth, and the kind that ends an evaluation before price is ever discussed.
Note too that company-level HIPAA certification is not a BAA on your plan. BAA signing is Enterprise only, and only above 100 seats. A ten-person clinic reading “HIPAA compliant” on the marketing page is reading about a certification it cannot actually contract for.
AmyNote: Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths. AmyNote needs no bot, no desktop app and no calendar connection, because the capture device is the phone already in your pocket. In-person meetings are the default case rather than a feature bullet.
It transcribes 140+ languages and translates into 100+, optimized for East Asian and Arabic speech, which is precisely the gap the other two leave. Transcription runs on OpenAI’s speech models and analysis on Anthropic’s Claude Opus, both of which contractually guarantee zero training on user data. Audio is encrypted in transit and not retained after processing, and transcripts are stored locally on device with end-to-end encryption.
Pricing is flat per account, not per seat: 12.99 dollars a week, 19.99 a month, or 99 a year, which is 8.25 a month. Against per-seat billing that gap widens with every person you add rather than narrowing — though only up to the point where you need the team features it does not have.
Weaknesses, and they are real. It is iPhone only. No Android, no desktop, no extension, which rules it out for many teams immediately. There is no free plan, only a 3-day trial, and no video recording, no CRM integration, no team management and no HIPAA. Both rivals beat it comfortably on rollout, and for a Windows or Android team it is not a candidate at all.
Side by Side
- Cheapest paid seat. Krisp Core at 8 dollars a month annual, Circleback Pro at 15. AmyNote is 8.25 but bills per account, not per seat.
- Free plan. Only Circleback has a real one. Krisp offers a 7-day trial, AmyNote a 3-day trial.
- Languages. Circleback says over 100, no caveat and no count. Krisp lists exactly 16, no Japanese, Chinese or Arabic. AmyNote says 140+, translating into 100+.
- Bot-free capture. All three do it. Circleback and Krisp also offer a bot if you want one.
- Platforms. Krisp covers Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and an extension. Circleback covers desktop, mobile and Apple Watch. AmyNote is iPhone only.
- Training on your data. All three publish an explicit no-training commitment. Not a differentiator anymore, and any comparison implying otherwise is selling something.
- HIPAA. Enterprise only at both rivals, and Krisp additionally requires 100 seats for a BAA. Not offered by AmyNote.
Which One Fits You
An English-speaking team on noisy connections. Krisp, and it is not close. Eight dollars a seat annual buys noise cancellation, video, in-person capture and MCP access, and the privacy posture is better than the reputation. Check the Google or Outlook signup requirement first, because that is the constraint most likely to end the evaluation before price matters.
A team whose meetings include Japanese, Chinese or Arabic. Circleback. This is not a preference, it is arithmetic: Krisp’s own published list does not contain those languages. Circleback’s free plan reads the same list as Enterprise, so you can test the actual meeting before paying.
A buyer who needs a signed BAA. Neither rival is easy here. Circleback puts HIPAA at the 35 dollar Enterprise tier, and Krisp requires Enterprise plus 100 seats before it will sign. Below that headcount, company certification is not a contract. AmyNote does not offer HIPAA and is not a candidate.
One or two people recording in-person conversations outside Europe. This is the case the other two handle worst and the one AmyNote was built for. A flat 99 dollars a year covers the account rather than the seat, the transcript stays on the phone, and East Asian and Arabic speech is the design target rather than the long tail. The price of that fit is iPhone only, no free tier past three days, and no team administration at all.
The Bottom Line
For an English-speaking team meeting over noisy connections, Krisp is the strongest value here and it is not close. The cheapest seat carries noise cancellation, video, in-person capture and MCP access, and the privacy posture beats its reputation.
But the language list decides it. Sixteen is honestly published and, for most of Europe and North America, enough. The moment Japanese, Chinese or Arabic enters the room, the cheapest seat becomes unusable and Circleback’s uncounted over 100 is the safer bet.
AmyNote sits third on purpose, in a narrower lane. It gives up Android, desktop, video and every team feature to do one thing properly: capture a multilingual in-person conversation on a phone, keep the transcript there, and charge once for the account instead of once per person. If that is the shape of your problem, amynote.app has a three day trial. If not, one of the other two is the better tool, and this article should have made that clear.
Originally published as an X Article by @AmyNoteApp.
