Alternatives / Krisp
Krisp cleans audio and writes a recap after the call. Whisply does something else: a real-time AI overlay that helps you mid-sentence, with no bot in the room.
Krisp is a noise-cancellation and post-call notes tool. Whisply is the original real-time Mac overlay, a different category, with no bot joining your meeting and no recording shipped to the cloud.
Whisply lives in the macOS menu bar and opens with Cmd+Return in under 200 milliseconds. The overlay is excluded from screen sharing and screen recording at the OS level, so a colleague on Zoom sees your wallpaper where the assistant sits.
Krisp earned its reputation for one reason: the noise suppression works. Drop it between your microphone and any meeting app, and the leaf blower outside, the espresso machine in the kitchen, and the toddler in the next room mostly disappear. For remote workers in noisy houses, that alone justified the subscription for years.
The frustration tends to start when people want more than a clean mic. Krisp added a meeting assistant, transcription, and AI summaries, and the product expanded into recap territory. The summaries arrive after the call. The transcripts are stored in Krisp's cloud. And on a Mac, the always-on audio routing can occasionally fight with system updates, headsets, or virtual cameras in ways that send people looking for something simpler.
The other reason people search is price-to-value. Krisp's free tier limits minutes per day. The paid plans climb quickly once you add the AI features, and for a Mac user who already has Apple's built-in voice isolation in FaceTime and a half-decent headset, the math gets harder to defend.
Whisply is a Mac-only AI overlay that lives in the menu bar. You press Cmd+Return and a small window appears, anchored to whatever you are doing. It can see your screen if you give it Screen Recording permission. It can hear your meeting if you give it Microphone permission. It answers in real time, in writing, visible only to you.
That is a different job from what Krisp does. Krisp processes your microphone input so the other side hears you clearly, then writes a recap later. Whisply does not touch your outbound audio. It does not join your call as a bot. It does not produce a polished summary email three minutes after the meeting ends. It helps you while the conversation is still happening, and then it stops.
The overlay is excluded from screen capture at the macOS level. When you share your screen on Zoom, Meet, Teams, or Webex, the Whisply window is not in the recording and not in the share. The person on the other side sees your slides, your code, your Figma file. They do not see the assistant. That is the whole design.
Noise cancellation: Krisp wins outright. Whisply does not clean your mic and does not pretend to. If you work from a coffee shop and need the other side to hear you, Krisp or Apple's Voice Isolation in macOS Sequoia is the right tool. You can run Whisply alongside either.
Post-call summaries: Krisp produces a written recap after the meeting. Whisply does not. Whisply has a notes feature, but its job is the live moment, not the archive. If your workflow depends on a clean summary landing in your inbox at 4:03 PM, Krisp or a tool like Granola or Fathom is closer to what you want.
Real-time assist: This is the part Krisp does not really do. Whisply will recognize the question you were just asked, pull the relevant fact from your screen or from its model, and show it on the overlay before you finish saying um. That is the category Whisply created and the one most people are searching for when they realize Krisp's recap arrives too late to help.
Privacy posture: Krisp processes audio in its app and sends transcripts to its cloud for the AI features. Whisply keeps the overlay invisible to the room, does not put a bot in the call, and runs locally for the parts that have to be local. Both companies publish their stance. Read both before you pick.
Stay on Krisp if your number one problem is your microphone. If your team complains they cannot hear you over the dog, the construction next door, or the open-plan office, Krisp solves that problem better than anything else on the Mac right now, and the AI notes are a fine bonus.
Switch to Whisply if your number one problem is the conversation itself. The job interview where you blank on the framework name. The customer call where the prospect asks a pricing question you half-remember. The technical screen where the interviewer wants the time complexity and you need it in the next four seconds. Those are not problems a recap can fix.
Run both if you have the budget and the use cases. Krisp on the microphone, Whisply on the overlay. They do not fight each other. Krisp routes audio in and out. Whisply listens to system audio and helps you on screen. Different layers of the stack.
The first thing most people notice is that the help arrives earlier. With a recap tool, you find out what you should have said after the call is over. With a live overlay, the answer sits on screen while the question is still in the air. The meetings get shorter, because you stop saying let me get back to you on that.
The second thing is the quiet. There is no bot in the participant list. No one on the call gets a Krisp Notetaker or an Otter joining notification. Your colleague does not have to wonder whether they consented to being recorded. The conversation stays a conversation.
The third thing is that you stop curating a transcript archive you never re-read. The honest truth about post-call summaries is that most of them get skimmed once and forgotten. Whisply's bet is that the help in the moment is worth more than the artifact afterwards. For people whose work is decided in real time, that bet pays off fast.
If you mostly use Krisp for noise cancellation, keep it. Whisply does not clean your microphone. If you mostly use it for AI notes and meeting summaries, that is the part Whisply replaces with something different. Be honest about which feature you open Krisp for.
Get the app from the /download page. On first launch, macOS will ask for Screen Recording, Microphone, and (on Pro Undetected) Accessibility. Grant them in System Settings under Privacy and Security. Whisply needs them to see your screen, hear your meeting, and act on your Mac. Without them, the overlay opens but cannot do its job.
Whisply lives in the menu bar. Press Cmd+Return from anywhere on your Mac to open the overlay. Press it again to dismiss. The window is anchored to your screen but excluded from screen sharing and screen recording at the macOS level. Test that by starting a Zoom screen share with yourself, the overlay will not appear in the preview.
For your next meeting, leave Krisp doing noise suppression on the mic and have Whisply open in the corner. See where each one earns its keep. Most people find within a week that Krisp keeps its job on audio and Whisply quietly takes over the assist role they were trying to get from Krisp's AI tier.
Different tool, different category. Krisp is a noise-cancellation app with an AI notetaker bolted on. Whisply is a real-time AI overlay that lives in your menu bar and helps you while you are talking. The reason people end up comparing them is that both market themselves as AI meeting tools on Mac, but the moment of help is different. Krisp helps after the call ends. Whisply helps while the call is still happening. Many users keep Krisp on the microphone and add Whisply for the live assist.
No. Whisply does not process your outbound microphone audio at all. If background noise is your main problem, stay on Krisp or use Apple's built-in Voice Isolation in macOS Sequoia and later, which is free and surprisingly competent for FaceTime, Zoom, and Google Meet. Whisply is solving the conversation, not the audio signal.
No. The Whisply overlay is excluded from screen sharing and screen recording at the macOS system level. When you share your screen on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Webex, the Whisply window is not in the captured frame. Your colleague sees your slides or your code where the assistant sits. This is built in, not a setting you have to remember to turn on.
Whisply has a Free tier with limited daily messages, a Pro tier at $19.99 per month or $11.99 per month billed annually, and a Pro Undetected tier at $149.99 per month or $44.99 per month billed annually. Krisp is $16 per month Pro and $30 per month Business. Whisply Pro and Krisp Pro are in the same range, but you are paying for different products. Krisp gives you noise suppression and post-call notes. Whisply gives you a live overlay and Computer Use on the higher tier.
No. Whisply is Mac only and requires macOS 13 Ventura or later on Apple Silicon or Intel. The reason is that the content-protection trick that keeps the overlay out of screen shares is macOS-specific, and we would rather do one thing well than ship a watered-down cross-platform version. If your team is on Windows, Krisp and Otter are better fits for them.
Yes, and many users do. Krisp sits between your microphone and your meeting app to clean audio. Whisply listens to system audio and helps you on screen. They do not fight for the same resource. The only thing to check is that both apps have the permissions they need in System Settings under Privacy and Security, since macOS will prompt you separately for each one.
Whisply has a notes feature you can use during the call, and you can share notes with a link. It does not automatically email you a polished summary three minutes after the meeting ends the way Krisp, Granola, or Fathom do. That is a deliberate choice. The product is built for the moment, not the archive. If post-call recaps are core to your workflow, pair Whisply with a dedicated notes tool or stay on Krisp for that piece.
Mac only. macOS 13 or later. No bot in your calls.
