The best app to record and transcribe interviews

The short answer

Best overall: [Noter AI](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noter-ai-meeting-note-taker/id6747296459). It records face to face on iPhone, iPad and Android, joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Webex with a bot, and imports audio from any other recorder. You get a transcript with speaker labels and timestamps, a summary, and an AI chat that searches across every interview. It costs $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year.

All 7 interview apps compared

Prices are from each company's pricing page on 23 September 2026.

#1: Noter AI

Noter AI is the app this site is about. It is built for conversations with more than one voice, which is what an interview is.

• Every quote has a timestamp. Tap a line and the audio plays from that second, so you can check the exact words and the tone before you print or cite them.
• Speakers are labelled, then named. The transcript separates interviewer and interviewee, and you can rename Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 to real names.
• Record it wherever it happens. Face to face with the phone on the table, on a Zoom, Teams, Meet or Webex call through the bot, or from a file recorded on another device and shared in from Files, iCloud Drive or the share sheet. M4A, MP3, WAV and AAC all work.
• Long interviews are fine. Each recording can run up to three hours, and an hour of audio comes back as a finished note in about two minutes.
• Interviews in other languages. Transcription covers 60+ languages with automatic detection, and an interview that switches between two languages comes back with both written correctly. Translate the transcript into 46 languages when you need to quote in another.
• Find a theme across twenty interviews. The AI chat answers questions across all your notes, so you can ask what every participant said about pricing, onboarding or a named person.
• Export to Word, PDF or plain text for the story draft, the research readout or the hiring file.

The other six

• Otter.ai records in person from its iOS and Android apps and identifies speakers. It transcribes 6 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. The free Basic plan stops each conversation at 30 minutes and allows 3 file imports in total. See Noter AI vs Otter.ai.
• Rev offers a free Voice Recorder app for iPhone with a live transcript. AI transcription covers English on the free plan, English and Spanish on Essentials, and 37+ languages on Pro, which is $59.99 a month or $47.99 billed yearly. Human transcripts cost $1.99 a minute.
• Trint is aimed at newsrooms. Its iPhone app records and transcribes live in 40+ languages, and Pro includes one hour of live transcription a month. Pro is $100 a month, or $79 billed yearly.
• Descript is an audio and video editor that transcribes 25 languages. It runs on Mac, Windows and the web, and has no iPhone app for recording.
• Notta records on iOS and Android, joins Zoom, Teams, Meet and Webex, and transcribes 58 languages. The free plan stops each conversation at 3 minutes. See Noter AI vs Notta.
• Voice Memos is already on your iPhone and writes a plain transcript in 10 languages on iPhone 12 or later. Share the recording into Noter AI to get speaker labels, a summary and a Word file. The steps are in how to transcribe a voice memo.

Which setup fits your kind of interview

• Journalists need quotes that survive a challenge. Record on two devices, get consent on the tape, and check every quote against its timestamp. See how journalists use an AI note taker.
• User researchers need verbatim quotes and patterns across a study. See how user researchers use an AI note taker and the user interview notes template.
• Recruiters need the same questions scored the same way for every candidate. See how recruiters use an AI note taker.
• Anyone recording for the first time should start with how to record and transcribe an interview, which covers consent, microphone placement and a backup device.

How we picked

Each app was judged on what an interview needs, from the first question to the published quote.

• It records the interview wherever it happens, face to face, on a video call, or from another recorder's file.
• It tells the speakers apart, so the interviewer's questions never get quoted as answers.
• Every line links back to the audio, so a quote can be checked in seconds.
• It handles the interview's language, including people who switch between two.
• What one person pays, taken from each company's pricing page on 23 September 2026.

Bottom line

For recording and transcribing interviews, Noter AI covers every setting with one app: in person on your phone, on a video call through the bot, or from a file. Speaker labels and tap-to-play timestamps let you check every quote. The AI chat lets you search a whole study or a month of reporting at once. At $69.99 a year it is about $5.83 a month, with a free plan to try the app and a free trial on every subscription.