AI noise cancellation for calls and meetings — removes background sounds.
Audio & Voice
Krisp is the AI noise-cancellation and voice-clarity tool that sits between your microphone and every video-conferencing app you use — removing background noise, echo, and other people's voices in real time, so the person on the other end of your call hears only you. Founded in 2017 in Berkeley and Yerevan by a team of ex-Microsoft and ex-Cisco engineers, Krisp was one of the first companies to ship consumer-facing real-time deep-learning noise cancellation, and it earned a reputation during the 2020-2022 remote-work boom as the tool that made bad home offices sound like studios. As of 2026 the product has expanded well beyond simple noise removal to include meeting transcription, live translation, AI meeting notes, background voice cancellation ("dog next door, coworker in the same room, kids playing"), echo cancellation, and an accent conversion feature — all wrapped in a virtual microphone and speaker driver that any app can pick up.
What Krisp actually does, cleanly stated, is install a system-level virtual audio device on your Mac, Windows PC, or mobile device that intercepts your microphone input, runs it through Krisp's noise-suppression neural network in real time, and presents a clean audio stream to whatever app you point at it — Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles, Discord, WebEx, phone calls, OBS streams, anything. Same story for the speaker side (removing noise from the other participants). Latency is genuinely imperceptible in normal use. And unlike Zoom's or Teams's built-in noise suppression, Krisp is app-agnostic — one tool covers every meeting client you touch.
The one-line positioning: Krisp is the tool you install once and forget about — running silently in the background across every video call, phone call, and podcast recording you do — so that background noise, echo, and other people's voices stop being reasons your audio sounds unprofessional. It is not a replacement for a good microphone in a good room; it is what makes a mid-tier headset in a normal home office sound like broadcast audio.
Krisp's product has grown from a single noise-suppression feature to a full call-quality and productivity stack. The features that earn the subscription are voice cancellation, echo cancellation, meeting transcription, and — increasingly — the AI notes.
Voice cancellation (bidirectional). The flagship feature. Removes background noise — keyboard clacks, HVAC hum, traffic, coffee-shop chatter, dogs barking — from both your outgoing microphone stream and the incoming speaker stream. Deep-learning based, trained specifically to distinguish speech from everything else. The quality genuinely startles people the first time they hear it.
Background voice cancellation. Removes not just noise but other human voices from your microphone stream — the coworker on a call in the same room, the kids playing behind you, the coffee-shop conversation two tables away. This is the feature that solves the "shared workspace" and "working from home with family" problem in a way no built-in tool does.
Echo cancellation. Removes room echo from your microphone stream, which matters most for anyone working in a hard-surfaced room without acoustic treatment. Makes a spare-bedroom setup sound like a treated studio.
Meeting transcription. Real-time transcription of your meetings across any app. Uses Krisp's own ASR (with Whisper-family models under the hood in some deployments). Multi-language support.
AI meeting notes and summaries. Post-call summarization, action items, decisions, and topic sections generated from the meeting transcript. Positioned against Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and tl;dv — competitive on quality, differentiated by working across every app without a bot joining the call.
Live translation. Real-time translation of meeting audio between languages. Newer feature, quality varies by language pair, but the direction of travel is clear — Krisp wants to be the "any app, any language" real-time translation layer for global teams.
Accent conversion (limited availability). Krisp acquired accent-conversion technology in 2022 and rolled out a feature that softens strong non-native accents in real time. Controversial in principle, effective in demos, primarily deployed in enterprise call-center contexts.
Virtual microphone and speaker device. The mechanism. Krisp installs as a virtual audio device that any app can pick up. No integration required — Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack, Discord, WebEx, OBS, phone dialer apps all see the Krisp device in their audio menu.
Call analytics and insights (Business). Talk time, sentiment, question frequency, filler-word counts, action-item generation. Useful for sales teams, coaches, and anyone who runs many customer calls a week.
Desktop and mobile apps. macOS, Windows, iOS, Android. Enterprise deployments include admin console, SSO, and centralized policy management.
Krisp is freemium, priced per user per month with a genuinely usable free tier.
| Plan | Monthly (annual per month) | Voice cancellation | Meeting transcription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited noise cancellation, 60 min/day voice cancellation | 3 meetings/day, 60 min max |
| Pro | $12 ($8 annual) | Unlimited | Unlimited transcription + notes |
| Business | $30/user ($16/user annual) | Unlimited | Unlimited + admin, SSO, analytics |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Custom + SLA + integrations |
Free is a real tier — noise cancellation is unlimited, background voice cancellation is limited to 60 minutes per day, and meeting transcription is capped at 3 meetings per day and 60 minutes per meeting. For an occasional home-office user with a modest daily call load, Free covers the core use case indefinitely.
Pro at $12/month ($8 annual) unlocks unlimited background voice cancellation, unlimited meeting transcription, and unlimited AI notes. This is the tier working professionals — sales reps, consultants, remote workers with several hours of daily calls, podcasters, coaches — sit on. $8/month annual for what amounts to studio-quality audio on every call is a strong deal.
Business at $30/user/month ($16/user annual) adds team admin, SSO, call analytics, and centralized policy. This is Krisp's enterprise story — deployed across a sales team, a customer-success team, or a distributed engineering org.
Enterprise pricing includes SLA, dedicated support, and often integration with specific telephony or CRM systems.
The honest read: Krisp Pro at $8/month annual is one of the highest-leverage productivity subscriptions available in 2026 for anyone who spends 10+ hours a week on video calls. The difference in perceived professionalism between "raw microphone in a normal room" and "Krisp-processed microphone in the same room" is large enough that clients and colleagues notice.
Pros
Cons
Remote workers with imperfect home-office acoustics. The single most common use case. Turn Krisp on, sound professional on every call, forget it exists.
Sales reps, customer-success managers, and account executives doing high-volume calls. Studio-quality audio on every call, meeting notes automatically generated, action items captured. Combined effect is real — reps get their time back and clients hear a more professional call.
Coaches, therapists, and consultants doing back-to-back client sessions. Consistent audio quality across every session regardless of client environment (Krisp cleans the incoming speaker stream too), notes for follow-up, no bot required to join the call.
Podcasters recording remote interviews. Combined with Riverside, SquadCast, or Zencastr, Krisp cleans up guest audio at the source, meaningfully reducing post-production time.
Streamers and content creators. OBS, Streamlabs, Twitch Studio all pick up the Krisp virtual device — clean broadcast audio without an XLR mic and interface setup.
Distributed engineering and product teams doing multi-hour meetings. Consistent audio quality across every participant's environment, meeting notes and action items generated automatically.
Anyone working in a shared or noisy space. Coffee shops, coworking spaces, shared home offices, hotel rooms during travel — the background voice cancellation feature solves the problem cleanly.
Krisp's competition splits into three lanes: built-in noise suppression in meeting apps, dedicated call-quality tools, and meeting-transcription products.
Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet built-in noise suppression — free, integrated, workmanlike. Improved significantly in 2023-2024, closing the gap to Krisp. Fine for casual users; noticeably weaker on background voice cancellation and echo. The main reason to still pay for Krisp: it works across every app with one tool, and its suppression quality remains ahead.
NVIDIA RTX Voice / Broadcast — the free NVIDIA alternative. Very strong noise suppression using RTX GPU compute. Free if you have an RTX card. Windows only, GPU-locked, no transcription or notes.
Discord Krisp integration — Discord licensed Krisp technology for its Krisp Voice feature. Free for Discord users, limited to Discord. If Discord is your only voice app, this covers you.
Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, tl;dv — dedicated meeting-transcription and notes products. Deeper feature sets on transcription workflows, CRM integrations, and searchable archives. Krisp's advantage: no bot joining the meeting; the transcription happens at the audio-driver level.
Nvidia Maxine — enterprise-grade noise suppression, translation, and audio enhancement. GPU-heavy, developer-focused, not a consumer product.
Descript Studio Sound — offline noise removal for recorded audio. Different use case (post-production), sometimes compared to Krisp because it does similar work in a different context.
Adobe Podcast Enhance — post-recording audio enhancement. Excellent for recorded content, does not compete on real-time calls.
Download the free tier at krisp.ai. Install on your primary computer — macOS or Windows. Installation adds the Krisp virtual microphone and speaker devices.
Set Krisp as the microphone and speaker in your primary meeting app. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack Huddles — go to audio settings, select the Krisp device for both mic and speaker. Krisp handles the rest.
Test on a real call. Turn on background noise on purpose — type on your keyboard, put on background music, have someone else in the room talking — and check with the person on the other end whether they hear any of it. The answer is usually no.
Turn on echo cancellation if you work in a hard-surfaced room. This is the setting that turns a spare bedroom into a treated studio.
Upgrade to Pro if the tool sticks ($8/month annual). The upgrade unlocks unlimited background voice cancellation and unlimited meeting transcription and notes — worth it for anyone with more than a couple of hours of daily calls.
If you also use a transcription tool like Otter or Fireflies, evaluate whether Krisp's built-in notes replace it. For many users, Krisp Pro at $8 replaces a separate Otter or Fireflies subscription at $10-20/month.
Does Krisp work with Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet? Yes. Krisp installs as a virtual audio device that every meeting app can pick up. Set the Krisp device as your mic and speaker in each app's audio settings.
Is Krisp better than Zoom's built-in noise suppression? For extreme noise, background voices, and echo cancellation, yes — Krisp remains ahead. For basic noise suppression, Zoom's built-in tool is competitive and free. The reason to still pay for Krisp: it works across every app, and its quality on hard cases (background voices, echo) is meaningfully better.
Does Krisp use a lot of CPU? Real-time deep-learning noise cancellation uses noticeable CPU — usually 5-15% on modern laptops during a call. Battery impact is measurable on long calls. Most users find the tradeoff acceptable; some users on older hardware do not.
Can Krisp remove other people's voices from my microphone? Yes — that is the background voice cancellation feature. It removes human speech from your mic stream that is not coming from you, which solves the "someone else on a call in the same room" and "kids in the background" problems.
Does Krisp transcribe my meetings? Yes, on all tiers with limits. Free tier caps at 3 meetings per day and 60 minutes per meeting. Pro and above have unlimited transcription plus AI meeting notes.
Is Krisp secure? Krisp processes audio on-device — the audio does not leave your computer for noise cancellation. Transcription and AI notes involve cloud processing under Krisp's privacy policy. Enterprise deployments include SOC 2 certification and admin controls.
Does Krisp work on mobile? Yes, on iOS and Android. Mobile support is more limited than desktop — some features work only in specific apps due to OS-level audio-routing restrictions.
What is accent conversion and should I use it? Krisp's accent conversion feature softens strong non-native accents in real time. Deployed primarily in enterprise call-center contexts. Ethically controversial — most consumer users should skip it and leave accented speech as it is.
Krisp Pro at $8/month annual is the highest-leverage productivity subscription for anyone who spends 10+ hours a week on video calls, and the free tier is more than enough for occasional users. The core value — real-time noise cancellation, background voice cancellation, and echo removal across every meeting app — is a genuine upgrade to how professional you sound on every call, without any per-app configuration or hardware purchase. Add meeting transcription and AI notes at the Pro tier and Krisp becomes a bundle that replaces several other subscriptions.
Where Krisp stops being the right answer: users who only use one meeting app and are happy with its built-in noise suppression (Zoom, Teams, and Meet have all improved substantially), users on very old hardware where Krisp's CPU overhead is a problem, users whose primary need is post-production audio enhancement rather than real-time (Adobe Podcast Enhance and Descript Studio Sound are stronger for recorded content), and users who need best-in-class meeting transcription workflows integrated deeply with CRMs (Fireflies, Fathom, and Gong's dedicated products still win on some enterprise workflows).
The honest recommendation: install the free tier at krisp.ai today, set it as your mic in every meeting app, and take one call. If the person on the other end reacts differently — cleaner audio, no background distraction, a call that sounds like you are in a studio — subscribe to Pro at $8/month annual and forget it exists. If you also produce content that involves TTS or narration, pair Krisp for calls with ElevenLabs for voice generation and Whisper for post-recording transcription. Together they cover the entire "audio in, audio out" stack at prices that would have looked absurd three years ago.