Canto

What Canto is

Canto is an audio recording and conversation workspace for individuals and teams. It creates transcripts, summaries, searchable recordings, and shared notes, with automatic speaker separation and transcription across 99 languages, including conversations that switch languages mid-sentence. Users can ask questions about an individual recording or their full library, and answers link to the relevant place in the conversation. Custom templates can turn recordings into meeting minutes, briefs, or follow-up emails and extract action items. Canto’s notetaker can join Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom; Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 connections can schedule those joins. On Android and iOS, people can record from Apple Watch, use home-screen widgets and lock-screen controls, and import audio shared from WhatsApp, Viber, or Files. Teams can share recordings, notes, and AI chat through shared folders and organization spaces with team permissions. Canto also supports Markdown and PDF exports, plus connecting its knowledge base to Claude or ChatGPT through an MCP server. The company says recordings and transcripts are not used to train AI models or sold or licensed. It lists TLS encryption in transit and cloud-provider encryption at rest. Recordings, transcripts, and database records are stored in the EU, while some processing uses Google’s global infrastructure or the non-region-pinned Gemini API.

Who it suits

Canto suits individuals such as journalists, students, founders, and therapists who need to record, search, and summarize conversations. Teams can use shared folders and organization spaces to work with recordings, notes, and AI chat together.

Limits

The free plan includes 100 transcription minutes, 500 AI chat messages, 1,000 semantic searches, and 100 template runs per month. Pro costs $14.99 a month billed annually and has unlimited transcription, AI chat, semantic search, and template runs within fair personal use. Teams costs $11.99 per seat per month billed annually, requires at least five seats, and has the same listed functions within fair team use.

Getting started

1. Open the Canto website or use its Android or iOS app.
2. Choose the Free, Pro, or Teams plan; Enterprise uses custom terms.
3. Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 to schedule meeting joins, if needed.
4. Use Canto’s notetaker with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom, or record audio on mobile.
5. Create recordings, then search, chat, use templates, or share through team spaces.

Verdict

Pick Canto if you want recordings, transcripts, summaries, search, and AI chat in one workspace, with individual and team options. Its free plan has monthly usage caps, while teams need at least five seats; the Enterprise plan uses custom terms and has no listed price.