Krisp for Students: No Discount, Lecture Capture, Real Costs

Krisp publishes no student discount, so students use the same 7-day trial and paid plans as everyone else. The cheapest paid route is Core, at $8 per user per month billed annually or $16 per user per month billed monthly ^[1]. Core covers bot-free capture of online lectures on a Mac or Windows laptop, in-person recording with the iPhone or Android app, uploads of recorded lectures, transcripts and summaries in 16 languages, and AI Chat for review. Krisp's 2020 offer for students during COVID-19 ended in October 2020. It is history, not a coupon. Our verdict: Krisp earns its fee for a student who wants audio kept, lecture files transcribed and quiet group calls. Text notes of online classes alone can start on a free rival.

Paying for a semester, not a calendar year

Krisp's lecture page points students to the same trial everyone gets: seven days, no credit card ^[2]. Seven days goes fast. Start it in a week with a full timetable, not during orientation, so you judge real lectures and summaries before paying. Under Krisp's Terms, access ends when the trial expires unless you subscribe, and you keep 90 days to export your content (what Krisp gives away). Every new account is a team account, and one person can be its only admin and user, so a solo student pays for one seat.

Billing term matters more than plan. Core costs $96 per user a year billed annually and $192 per user a year billed monthly, by our arithmetic. Paying monthly is cheaper only if you stop within five months: five months billed monthly come to $80 per user, against $96 per user for a year billed annually, by our arithmetic. At six months both cost the same. For one short term, pay monthly; once the need runs past six months, annual billing is never the costlier choice.

Two rules decide how easily you can stop. A yearly plan cannot be switched to monthly from the account, and fees are non-refundable except as Krisp's Terms state (billing details). Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled before the renewal date; canceling keeps paid features to the end of the cycle. Advanced, at $15 per user per month billed annually or $30 billed monthly, mostly adds sales and admin tools. Its student-relevant extras are 60 GB of storage per user and longer accent conversion.

Capturing an online lecture without a bot

Krisp's note taker records an online class at the audio level on your own computer. You select Krisp Microphone and Krisp Speaker in Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, then switch the Note Taker on in the Krisp app. No bot joins. A guest needs no host permission for this route, so the lecturer simply sees another student. Krisp works with almost any calling app that lets you choose a microphone and speaker, and its Chrome extension captures Google Meet without a bot. One recording runs up to 4 hours; a session under 30 seconds produces nothing.

The Note Taker has four modes: Transcribe only, Audio Recording, Screen Recording and Off. Transcribe only keeps the transcript and notes without storing sound, which spares your 10 GB per user on Core. Audio Recording suits a class taught in another language. Screen Recording keeps the slides with the voice, after macOS grants screen-recording permission. Storage is per user, and above 100% new recordings are not saved until more is bought; deleted meetings sit in Trash for 30 days and still count.

The optional Krisp Bot joins Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams only when you send or invite it, the host must admit it, and everyone sees it as a participant. Adding assistant@krisp.ai to a calendar invite makes it join even when you are absent, which can cover a clashing class if the lecturer agrees. Inviting it mid-session discards whatever was captured before it arrived.

Asking before you hit record

Krisp's Terms make you responsible for consent from the people in a meeting and for local recording laws, and say a user who cannot get consent should not record or transcribe ^[3]. Krisp can notify participants, but some platforms block those chat messages or audio prompts. Tell the lecturer yourself. In a seminar or study group your classmates' voices land in the file too. Ask them as well, and check whether your course sets its own recording rules.

Lecture halls and recorded files

For a lecture hall, the phone app records the room and transcribes it; the iPhone app needs iOS 16.2 or later. Krisp's noise cancellation for your calls and meetings runs in the desktop app for Mac and Windows, while the mobile apps are for recording, notes and transcription. The phone apps cannot record Google Meet either. Online classes belong on the laptop, and a phone in the back row hears the room before the speaker.

Recorded lectures from Zoom, a course platform or a voice memo go in through the upload tool, one file at a time ^[4]. Each file can reach 1 GB and 4 hours, in AAC, MP3, M4A, WAV, WMA, MP4, MOV, MPEG or WMV, and the pricing matrix lists uploads as unlimited on Core. Uploads transcribe in English by default; 15 other languages can be picked. A long high-resolution video can hit 1 GB before 4 hours. Upload the audio track instead.

From a week of classes to exam notes

After each session Krisp writes key points, capped at the top 10, plus action items. The Outline, a detailed summary, is available from Core but is not generated by default, so request it for dense lectures. Starter templates include Outline, Meeting Minutes and Training. Transcripts and summaries come in 16 languages (Krisp's pricing page says 16+), among them Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Korean, and a transcript can be regenerated in another language only when audio exists. Krisp says transcription accuracy can reach around 96% (November 2026). Muffled rooms will do worse.

AI Chat answers questions across your meetings, so a term of lectures becomes something you can query before an exam. Folders and up to seven tags per meeting keep courses apart, and custom vocabulary holds 750 words for future meetings. Transcripts export as .txt files with timestamps and speakers, recordings download as MP3, and Notion is among the integrations on every paid plan. Krisp's Terms advise checking AI output independently, so compare a summary with its transcript before revising from it.

A meeting shared with anyone who has the link opens for people signed in to Krisp or not, with view access by default. The share-with-your-work-domain option does not count educational domains, so a university address will not unlock it.

Every classmate added to your Krisp team counts as a paid seat.

Group calls, roommates and accents

Noise cancellation is unlimited on Core in Krisp's pricing matrix and runs on your device in both directions, cleaning what classmates hear from you and what you hear from them. Voice isolation also removes nearby voices, such as a roommate on the phone, with a compatible headset; a USB headset with a boom mic works best, Bluetooth less well. It runs only in the Mac and Windows app. Chromebooks are out. For a study group on Discord, Krisp inside Discord is free, but it is Discord's built-in noise suppression for your own microphone only, separate from the Krisp app.

Listener-side accent conversion adapts other people's speech only for you and outputs US English. Core allows 1 hour per day, which Krisp's help says is shared between the listener and speaker sides. A 90-minute lecture outlasts it. Advanced allows 4 hours per day on the speaker side and unlimited time on the listener side. Krisp does not publish what happens when the daily allowance runs out, and the feature does not work offline. For recorded lectures on YouTube, Krisp says listener-side accent conversion on YouTube videos is free (November 2026), and its Chrome Web Store listing says it needs no subscription or credit card.

When a free note taker suits a student better

Granola Basic is free with no card and no time limit, captures online classes bot-free on Mac and Windows, and writes AI notes for unlimited meetings, but the app shows only the last 30 days of history. It stores no audio and takes no uploads, though its phone apps capture in-person sessions. Accepted students at accredited universities in the US, UK and Canada get 12 months of Granola Business free with a student ID (Granola for students). For a qualifying student who wants text notes, that offer is hard to beat.

Otter Basic gives 300 transcription minutes per user a month and allows 3 imports in total, but only the first 30 minutes of each conversation are viewable until you upgrade, so a 50-minute lecture shows just its first 30 minutes. Students and teachers with a .edu email get 20% off Otter Pro: $6.67 per user per month billed annually ($79.99 per user a year) or $13.59 per user per month billed monthly.

Fathom Free offers unlimited recordings, transcription and storage, with advanced summaries on the first 5 calls a month, but captures through a bot (bot-free capture is a Mac beta) and takes no uploads. Read AI Free allows 5 meeting reports a month, reports classmates share with you included, and meetings up to 1 hour. A class meeting twice a week exhausts it in three weeks. For .edu users, Read AI sells EDU at $60 per license per year and EDU + Video at $100 per license per year, billed annually only.

The bottom line

Krisp gives students no discount and no free plan: a 7-day trial, then Core at $8 per user per month billed annually or $16 billed monthly. That buys bot-free capture on a Mac or Windows laptop, a phone app for lecture halls, uploads of recorded classes, summaries and AI Chat for revision, and noise cancellation for group calls. Pay monthly for one short term and annually once the need passes six months. Ask everyone before recording. If text notes of online classes are all you need, a rival's free plan covers it.