Live Transcribe vs Hearing Buddy
Comparing Hearing Buddy with the Live Transcribe iPhone app by Mighty Fine Apps LLC — not Google's Android app of the same name — honestly, so you can pick what fits your life and your budget.
By Lilly Seay · Updated July 6, 2026
First, a name check: this page compares Hearing Buddy with the iPhone app "Live Transcribe" by Mighty Fine Apps LLC — not Google's free Android app of the same name, which has never come to iPhone. Mighty Fine's app earns real praise for cloud caption accuracy in loud rooms and covers 145+ languages, but there's no ongoing free tier: after a 1-hour trial spread over 3 days, plans run from $80 to $1,600 a year, with the most accurate captions metered by the hour. Hearing Buddy's captions are unlimited and free, processed entirely on your iPhone. Pick by your budget — and by the rooms you actually sit in.
Choose Hearing Buddy if…
- You want unlimited captions with no trial clock, no hour meters, and no top-ups
- Privacy matters — captions are processed entirely on your iPhone, so your audio is never uploaded
- You want speaker colors without a cloud meter — Speaker Labels run on-device with Buddy+
- Your group is in the room with you, on iPhones — Buddy Mode captions everyone together, free, no internet needed
- You want a wrist tap on Apple Watch when someone says your name or asks you a question
- You have an iPhone on iOS 26 or later
Choose Live Transcribe if…
- Your hardest moments are loud restaurants and far ends of tables — Live Transcribe's Pro and Ultra cloud modes are genuinely excellent at distance and in noise (metered by the hour)
- You caption in a language Hearing Buddy doesn't support yet — Live Transcribe covers 145+ languages
- Your iPhone can't run iOS 26 — Live Transcribe supports iOS 15 and later
- You want deep caption display controls, including a dedicated low-vision mode
- You were actually looking for Google's Live Transcribe — that one is Android-only, and on Android it's free and excellent
Side by side
| Feature |  Hearing Buddy | Live Transcribe |
|---|---|---|
| Free live captions | Unlimited, full quality No session limits — caption all day, every day | 1-hour trial, spread over 3 days After the trial, every mode — including Basic — requires a subscription |
| What you pay after the trial | $0 — captions stay free Buddy+ ($59.99/yr) only adds extras; it never unlocks the captions | $80/yr to $1,600/yr Starter through Unlimited, per Mighty Fine's own plan table (July 2026) |
| Metered premium hours | Never metered There is no hour count anywhere in the app | 10–50 Pro hours/month by tier Starter 10, Plus 20, Premium 50; extra hours $1.49 each; the meter only disappears at $1,600/yr |
| Where your audio is processed | 100% on your iPhone Audio never leaves your device — captions work offline in basements, flights, dead zones | Basic on-device; Pro & Ultra in the cloud Basic is their close-range mode (within about 3 feet); the accurate modes need internet |
| Captions at a distance or in noise | Built for face-to-face conversations On-device captioning works best within a natural conversation range | Pro & Ultra shine here Genuinely excellent in restaurants, groups, and at a distance — it's what the metered hours buy |
| Tells voices apart on one phone | Speaker Labels, with Buddy+ Colors tell up to four voices apart, on-device — no voice training, nothing stored, resets every session | Ultra tier only Color-coded speaker separation runs on the cloud engine and uses your metered Pro time |
| Group conversations on multiple phones | Buddy Mode — free iPhones in the same room connect directly; everyone's words appear by name in their color, no internet required | Not offered |
| Apple Watch name & question alerts | Yes, with Buddy+ A tap on your wrist when someone says your name or asks you something | Not offered |
| Transcript history | Saved on your phone, free Copy and share any conversation | "Save chats" Saving transcripts for later is included with a subscription |
| Languages | 8 caption languages Plus live translation into 10 reading languages, all on-device | 145+ languages Among the broadest language coverage in the category |
| Minimum iOS version | iOS 26 or later iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro — no Android | iOS 15 or later Runs on much older iPhones |
| Built for the deaf & HOH community | Yes It's the entire mission | Yes Their listing leads with the deaf community, and the caption-quality work shows |
Live Transcribe (iOS, Mighty Fine Apps LLC) details verified on July 6, 2026 from Mighty Fine Apps' help center (help.livetranscribe.app) and the App Store listing. Plans and quotas change — always confirm current details with Mighty Fine Apps.
What Actually Separates Them
The free tier is a one-hour trial
Live Transcribe's trial is exactly one hour of use, spread across three days. After that there's no free mode to fall back to — even Basic, the on-device close-range mode, requires a subscription. Plans start at $9.99/month or $80/year (Starter, with 10 hours of the accurate "Pro" captioning per month) and climb through Plus (~$325/yr) and Premium ($810/yr) to Unlimited at $149.99/month or $1,600/year. Run out mid-month and extra Pro hours cost $1.49 apiece.
Their own users say it plainly. A three-star US App Store review titled "Affordable?", dated June 11, 2026, asks: "How can deaf people afford this? Many can't afford subscription??" Another, from June 17, 2026: "It's becoming too expensive for me to keep adding more hours." In fairness, the app holds a 4.6-star average across roughly 7,300 US ratings — plenty of people find the accuracy worth paying for. But affordability is a recurring theme in its recent reviews, and for a tool someone needs all day, the meter math gets heavy fast.
Hearing Buddy takes the opposite view: captions are the whole point, so they're unlimited and free. No trial window, no hour packs, no meter. The optional Buddy+ tier ($59.99/year — less than their cheapest annual plan) adds extras like Apple Watch alerts and summaries; it never unlocks the captions themselves.
Where your conversations go
Credit where due: Live Transcribe's Basic mode runs on your device. But Basic is the close-range mode — Mighty Fine's own guide positions it for conversations within about three feet — and the accuracy the app is known for comes from its Pro and Ultra modes, which process your audio in the cloud and require an internet connection.
Hearing Buddy processes everything on your iPhone, always — the doctor's appointment, the therapy session, the family argument. No audio leaves your phone at any tier, and captions keep working with no signal at all: basements, flights, dead zones.
Even translation stays on the phone: captions can be translated live into any of 10 reading languages using language packs that run entirely on your iPhone — so a bilingual dinner doesn't need a signal either.
Speaker colors, without a cloud meter
On Live Transcribe, telling voices apart is the top-shelf feature: color-coded speaker separation belongs to the Ultra tier, which runs on the metered cloud engine — so the minutes you spend seeing who said what come out of your monthly Pro-hour allowance.
Hearing Buddy's Speaker Labels (part of Buddy+) do this on-device: colors tell up to four voices apart in a solo session, with no voice training, nothing stored, and labels that reset when the session ends. No meter runs while it works.
And when your group has iPhones, Buddy Mode goes further — free: everyone opens Hearing Buddy, joins the people nearby, and each person's words appear by name in their own buddy color. The phones connect directly to each other, so there's no internet, no server, and no subscription involved.
A tap on the wrist
This one is simply unique: with Buddy+, your Apple Watch taps you when someone says your name or asks you a question — so you can stay present in the room instead of staring at a screen waiting not to miss something. No other captioning app offers it.
Buddy+ also adds conversation summaries (your Buddy catches you up on what a conversation is about and its mood), Speaker Labels, and translation for solo sessions — all for $59.99 a year, with nothing metered.
When Live Transcribe Is the Better Choice
We'd rather you end up with the right tool than with our app. Mighty Fine's app earns its 4.6 stars on caption quality, and there are real situations where it's the better pick:
The far end of the table, the loud restaurant
Live Transcribe's Pro and Ultra cloud modes are genuinely excellent with background noise and at a distance — their users praise the accuracy, and we won't pretend otherwise. If your hardest moments are big tables and noisy rooms, and the subscription fits your budget, it's the strongest cloud engine in this comparison.
Your language isn't on our list yet
Live Transcribe captions in 145+ languages; Hearing Buddy currently captions 8 (with live translation into 10). If your language isn't covered here, theirs very likely is.
Your iPhone can't run iOS 26
Live Transcribe supports iOS 15 and later — many iPhone generations back. Hearing Buddy requires iOS 26 or later, so on an older iPhone, theirs installs and ours doesn't.
You want to fine-tune how captions look
Their display settings go deep: font size and weight, typeface choices, and background themes including a dedicated low-vision mode. If precise caption styling matters to your eyes, that's a real strength.
What You'll Actually Pay
- Unlimited real-time captions — free
- Buddy Mode group captions — free
- Background listening & transcript history — free
- Buddy+: $59.99/year
- Buddy+ adds Watch alerts, summaries, Speaker Labels, solo translation, and Buddy personalities
- Trial: 1 hour of captioning, across 3 days
- Starter: $9.99/mo or $80/yr — 10 Pro hours/month
- Plus: $29.99/mo or ~$325/yr — 20 Pro hours/month
- Premium: $74.99/mo or $810/yr — 50 Pro hours/month
- Unlimited: $149.99/mo or $1,600/yr
- Extra Pro hours $1.49 each; unlimited Basic (close-range) captions on every paid plan
Prices checked July 6, 2026 against Mighty Fine Apps' own plan table (help.livetranscribe.app, "Subscription plan options," updated June 29, 2026) and the App Store listing's in-app purchases. If anything here has changed, let us know and we'll fix it.
Trying Hearing Buddy takes about a minute
There's no trial clock to race and no account to create. Most people simply try it alongside whatever they use today.
Download free
No account, no email, no credit card — the App Store is the only signup there is.
Tap the mic
Captions start instantly, unlimited from the first minute. No onboarding maze, no calibration.
Keep what works
Some people keep Live Transcribe's Pro mode for their loudest rooms and use Hearing Buddy for everything else. That's a fine answer too.
Questions & answers
No — and the shared name confuses a lot of people. Google's Live Transcribe is a free Android app that has never been released for iPhone. The Live Transcribe on the iOS App Store is a separate app from Mighty Fine Apps LLC, a San Francisco company with no Google connection — their own App Store description states they are not affiliated with Google. This page compares Hearing Buddy with Mighty Fine's iOS app.
It's listed as "Free" on the App Store, but there's no ongoing free tier. The trial gives you 1 hour of captioning spread across 3 days (as of July 2026); after that, using the app — including its on-device Basic mode — requires a subscription starting at $9.99/month or $80/year. Hearing Buddy's captions are unlimited and free, with no trial period to run out.
As of July 6, 2026, Mighty Fine Apps' own plan table lists four tiers: Starter at $9.99/month or $80/year (10 Pro hours/month), Plus at $29.99/month or about $325/year (20 hours), Premium at $74.99/month or $810/year (50 hours), and Unlimited at $149.99/month or $1,600/year. Extra Pro hours cost $1.49 each, and every paid plan includes unlimited Basic close-range captions. Hearing Buddy's captions are always free; the optional Buddy+ tier costs $59.99/year.
Yes. Real-time captions, Buddy Mode group captions, background listening, transcript history, and copy/share are free with no minute meters, hour quotas, or session limits. The optional Buddy+ upgrade ($59.99/year) adds Apple Watch name and question alerts, conversation summaries, Speaker Labels, translation for solo sessions, and Buddy personality choices — but the captions themselves are never paywalled.
Hearing Buddy processes all audio on your iPhone — no audio ever leaves your device, at any tier, and captions work fully offline. Live Transcribe's Basic mode is also on-device, but its higher-accuracy Pro and Ultra modes process your audio in the cloud and require an internet connection. So if you're using the most accurate captions each app offers, Hearing Buddy's stay on your phone while Live Transcribe's travel to a server.
Yes, on its Ultra tier: speakers are separated with color-coded voices. Ultra runs on the app's metered cloud engine, so using it draws from your monthly Pro-hour allowance. Hearing Buddy's Speaker Labels (part of Buddy+) color-code up to four voices entirely on-device — no voice training, nothing stored, labels reset each session — with no meter running. And in free Buddy Mode group sessions, attribution is even simpler: each person's words appear under their own name and color.
In some situations, honestly, yes. Live Transcribe's Pro and Ultra modes are cloud-powered and genuinely excellent with background noise and at a distance — it's the main thing the subscription buys, and their users praise it. Hearing Buddy's on-device captioning is built for the conversations in front of you, and it never needs a connection or a meter. The practical answer: try both in the rooms you actually sit in — Hearing Buddy is free, and Live Transcribe's trial gives you an hour to test its Pro mode.
No. If Live Transcribe's Pro accuracy earns its subscription for your hardest listening situations — big tables, loud restaurants — keep it for those. Use Hearing Buddy for the rest of your day, where unlimited free captions, offline support, Buddy Mode, and Watch alerts matter most. Since Hearing Buddy is free, adding it alongside costs nothing.
Captions shouldn't come with a meter.
Unlimited captions, no trial clock, no hour packs, no account. See what it feels like when captions are just… there.
Available on iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro
This page compares Hearing Buddy with Live Transcribe, the iOS app published by Mighty Fine Apps LLC — not Google LLC's separate Android app of the same name (Mighty Fine's own listing notes it is not affiliated with Google). All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Hearing Buddy is independently made and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Mighty Fine Apps LLC or Google LLC. All Live Transcribe pricing, plan, and feature details on this page were verified on July 6, 2026 from Mighty Fine Apps' help center (help.livetranscribe.app) and the Live Transcribe App Store listing; review quotes are verbatim from the US App Store with their original dates. Plans change, so please confirm current details with Mighty Fine Apps. This page reflects our honest assessment — and yes, we tell you when Live Transcribe is the better choice.