What is Krisp?
Krisp is an AI-powered software layer that processes audio streams in real time to deliver superior clarity in online communications. Functioning as a virtual microphone and speaker on your device, its core purpose is to isolate human speech by filtering out ambient noise, acoustic echoes, and other participants’ voices. From a technical standpoint, Krisp acts as a sophisticated audio middleware, intercepting the input from your physical microphone and the output to your speakers. It applies a series of deep learning models to clean the audio signal before passing it to your communication application of choice, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. This approach standardizes audio quality across disparate user environments—a significant technical challenge for any distributed team or service.
Key Features and How It Works
Krisp’s functionality is built upon a foundation of advanced AI and signal processing. Its architecture is designed for performance and privacy, with most processing occurring locally on the user’s device.
- AI Noise Cancellation: At its core is a highly optimized deep neural network trained to differentiate human speech from over 20,000 types of background noise. This model processes audio packets locally, which minimizes latency and ensures the raw audio stream never leaves the user’s machine for this core feature.
- Voice Clarity: This feature extends beyond simple noise removal to tackle acoustic and room echo. It actively cancels reverberations, which is critical in environments with poor acoustics, resulting in a signal that sounds as if it were recorded in a treated space.
- AI Meeting Assistant: An application layer built on the core audio processing, this feature provides automated transcription and meeting notes. It leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to convert speech to text, identify action items, and create concise summaries, offloading a significant administrative burden from users.
- Accent Localization: A powerful real-time voice modulation feature, Accent Localization modifies the phonetic characteristics of a speaker’s voice to more closely match a listener’s native accent. This is not a translation service but an advanced AI model designed to improve comprehension and reduce cognitive load in global teams.
- Developer SDK: Krisp offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows developers to embed its noise cancellation technology directly into their own applications, be it for VoIP, telehealth, or streaming platforms. This demonstrates its scalability beyond a simple end-user utility into a foundational audio technology.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- High Compatibility: By operating as a system-level virtual device, Krisp integrates with virtually any communication application without requiring specific plugins or APIs, ensuring low integration friction.
- On-Device Processing: The core noise cancellation runs entirely locally, which is a major advantage for data privacy and security while also minimizing audio latency.
- Developer SDK: The availability of an SDK provides a clear path for businesses to build Krisp’s proven technology directly into their products, offering significant value and scalability.
- Cross-Platform Support: With native clients for Windows (Intel/ARM) and macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon), Krisp demonstrates a strong commitment to supporting a wide range of hardware architectures.
Cons
- System Resource Consumption: Real-time AI processing is computationally intensive. Krisp can introduce notable CPU overhead, which may impact performance on lower-specification machines or during other resource-heavy tasks.
- Network Dependency for Advanced Features: While core functions are local, features like the AI Meeting Assistant require a stable internet connection for transcription and cloud synchronization.
- Added Abstraction Layer: As an additional component in the audio stack, Krisp can occasionally complicate troubleshooting when audio issues arise, requiring users to isolate the problem between the OS, Krisp, and the communication app.
Who Should Consider Krisp?
Krisp offers substantial value to a range of professional users and organizations where audio clarity is non-negotiable.
- Distributed Development Teams: For standardizing audio quality during daily stand-ups, code reviews, and sprint planning, eliminating distractions from varied home office environments.
- SaaS Companies: Any organization developing communication-heavy platforms—such as telehealth, online learning, or virtual event software—should evaluate the Krisp SDK to natively integrate elite noise cancellation.
- Enterprise Contact Centers: To drastically improve the quality of agent-to-customer interactions, reduce call times, and enhance customer satisfaction. The Accent Localization feature is particularly impactful here.
- DevOps and IT Support Teams: For ensuring clarity during critical incident response calls where every word matters and background noise from a data center or home office is unacceptable.
Pricing and Plans
Krisp operates on a freemium model, providing accessible entry points for individuals and scalable solutions for teams.
- Free Plan: This tier offers a limited amount of free daily noise cancellation, making it ideal for individual users to evaluate the core technology or for infrequent use.
- Pro Plan: Priced at $8 per month when billed annually or $12 month-to-month, this plan unlocks unlimited noise cancellation, the AI Meeting Assistant, and other premium features for individual professionals.
- Business/Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing is available for teams and organizations requiring centralized billing, user management, and advanced security features. The SDK is also licensed under custom enterprise agreements.
What makes Krisp great?
How do you ensure consistent, professional audio quality when your application’s users are in unpredictable environments? Krisp answers this question with its robust, on-device AI model that effectively decouples audio quality from the user’s physical surroundings. Its technical excellence lies in its efficiency and privacy-centric design. However, what truly elevates Krisp is its evolution from a single-function utility into a comprehensive communication platform. The availability of an SDK transforms it from a useful app into a foundational audio technology component that can be integrated at a deep level, allowing businesses to build upon a proven, best-in-class solution for audio clarity.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does Krisp process my audio in the cloud?
- No. All core audio processing, including noise, echo, and voice cancellation, happens exclusively on your local device. This design ensures maximum privacy and minimal latency. Only features that inherently require connectivity, like cloud-based transcription, send data externally.
- Will Krisp impact my system’s performance?
- Krisp utilizes CPU resources to run its real-time AI models. While it is highly optimized, users on older hardware or those running other CPU-intensive applications (like compiling code or rendering video) may notice a performance impact. The software includes options to manage resource usage.
- How does Krisp integrate with conferencing apps like Zoom or Teams?
- It installs itself as a virtual audio device on your operating system. In your communication app’s settings, you simply select “Krisp Microphone” as your input and “Krisp Speaker” as your output. This routes all audio through Krisp’s processing engine without requiring any specific plugins.
- Is the Krisp SDK available for mobile platforms?
- Yes, Krisp provides a comprehensive SDK for a wide range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. This enables developers to integrate its audio enhancement technology directly into both mobile and desktop applications.