Rylo vs Hearing Buddy
Rylo — formerly Nagish — captions your phone calls, something Hearing Buddy physically can't do. Hearing Buddy captions everything outside the call. An honest comparison of two apps most people shouldn't have to choose between.
By Lilly Seay · Updated July 6, 2026
These two apps barely compete. Rylo (formerly Nagish) captions phone calls — something microphone apps like Hearing Buddy cannot do — and it's free for US users who complete the federally required FCC registration, including a hearing-loss self-certification. Hearing Buddy captions everything outside the call: in-person conversations, unlimited and free, with no signup, in any country, processed entirely on your iPhone. If phone calls are your struggle, get Rylo. If the room is, get Hearing Buddy. Plenty of people in the community carry both.
Choose Hearing Buddy if…
- In-person conversations are where you struggle most — captioning the room is Hearing Buddy's entire job, not a side feature
- You don't want to register anywhere — no account, no address, no date of birth, no SSN digits, no attestation; captions start right after download
- You're outside the United States — Rylo's free captioned calls are for eligible US users, while Hearing Buddy works in any country
- Privacy matters — captions are processed 100% on your iPhone, no audio ever leaves your phone, and everything works offline
- Your group is in the room — Buddy Mode captions everyone together on their own iPhones, free, with each person's words attributed by name
- You want a tap on your Apple Watch when someone says your name or asks you a question
Choose Rylo if…
- Phone calls are the problem — Rylo captions them live, and microphone apps like Hearing Buddy can't access call audio at all
- You'd rather type your side of a call and have it spoken aloud in a voice you choose
- You want call tools built around the captions: visual voicemail, a spam filter, call blocking, and post-call transcripts
- You qualify for the FCC-funded service and don't mind a one-time federal registration
- You're on Android, or your iPhone can't run iOS 26 — Rylo supports both
Side by side
| Feature |  Hearing Buddy | Rylo |
|---|---|---|
| Phone-call captioning | Not possible Microphone apps can't access call audio — this is Rylo's home turf, and we're glad it exists | Their entire purpose FCC-certified live captions on incoming and outgoing calls |
| In-person conversation captions | The entire app Unlimited and free — no session caps, no meters, transcripts saved on your phone | Rylo Live Transcribe A built-in feature alongside calls, per Rylo's own App Store description |
| Start captioning without registering | No signup at all No account, no email — the App Store download is the only step | FCC registration required Name, home address (for 911), date of birth, last 4 SSN digits, and an electronic hearing-loss self-certification — required by federal rules, not Rylo's choice |
| Who can use it free | Everyone, anywhere No eligibility requirements or country restrictions | Eligible US users Free for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability in the US; a federal fund pays Rylo per caption minute |
| Where your audio is processed | 100% on your iPhone Audio never leaves your device | Internet call service Calls route through Rylo's service; Rylo says captions are generated with end-to-end encryption and no human involvement |
| Works offline | Yes Basements, flights, dead zones — captions keep working | Calls need a connection Captioned calling is an internet (IP) service by definition |
| Group conversations on multiple phones | Buddy Mode — free iPhones in the same room connect directly; everyone's words merge into one timeline, 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 |
| Type replies that are spoken aloud | Not offered Hearing Buddy captions the room — it doesn't speak for you | Yes, on calls Choose a voice and type — Rylo speaks your words to the other caller |
| Live translation | 10 languages, on-device Free inside Buddy Mode; part of Buddy+ for solo captions — works offline | Multilingual captions; translation isn't listed Rylo captions in English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Hebrew, and Italian |
| Platforms & requirements | iPhone, Watch, Mac & Vision Pro All-Apple; iPhone requires iOS 26 or later | iPhone and Android Also available for Android as "Rylo: Live Call Captions" |
| Built for the deaf & HOH community | Yes It's the entire mission | Yes "Built for the Deaf community, by the Deaf community" — real respect for that |
Rylo details verified from rylo.com, help.rylo.com, and the Rylo App Store listing on July 6, 2026. Rylo rebranded from Nagish in June 2026 — details change, so always confirm current information with Rylo directly.
What Actually Separates Them
Calls are their job; the room is ours
Rylo — the app formerly known as Nagish — is built to caption phone calls. It works like your regular phone app, shows live captions of everything the other person says, and lets you type replies that are spoken aloud in a voice you choose. It's FCC-certified, and its users love it: "It is consolidating phone calls captioning and live transcribe for in person conversations into a single solution and all of it for free, it is huge!" reads a five-star review from June 13, 2026.
Here's the honest part: Hearing Buddy cannot do any of that. Microphone apps have no access to call audio on iPhone — no captioning app that listens through the mic can caption your calls. If phone calls are where you struggle, Rylo is the right tool, and this page won't pretend otherwise.
Hearing Buddy owns the other side of the day: every conversation that isn't a phone call. In-person captioning is Rylo's built-in extra — its own listing presents Rylo Live Transcribe as one feature among many. For Hearing Buddy, the room is the whole product: unlimited free captions with no session caps, background listening, transcript history, group captioning, and a Buddy that taps your wrist when someone says your name.
What "free" asks of you first
Rylo is genuinely free — no subscription, no paid tier, nothing to unlock. That's possible because captioned telephone service in the US is paid for by a federally administered fund, which reimburses Rylo for every minute of captions it generates. The same federal rules bring strings: before you can caption calls, you register with your name, home address (kept current so 911 can locate you), date of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security number — then electronically certify that you have hearing loss. Rylo's App Store listing carries the required all-caps notice that federal law prohibits anyone but registered users with hearing loss from using IP captioned telephones with the captions turned on.
None of that is Rylo being nosy — its help center explains each requirement, and every FCC-funded captioned-call service works this way. But the friction shows up in recent reviews of an otherwise well-loved app: "they make u electronically sign that u have hearing problems," warns a three-star review from June 27, 2026, and a one-star review from June 10, 2026 couldn't get through signup at all — "not able to enter return after providing text number to register for service, rendering the app useless."
Hearing Buddy asks for none of it, because it never touches the phone network. No account, no address, no eligibility test, no country limits — anyone, anywhere in the world, can download it and start captioning the room in seconds.
Where your conversations go
Rylo's captioned calls run over the internet — that's what the "IP" in IP captioned telephone service means — and captions are generated by Rylo's service rather than on your phone. To Rylo's credit, it makes strong promises about that pipeline: captions generated with end-to-end encryption, no human involvement, and, in its words, "no strangers listening in."
Hearing Buddy doesn't have a pipeline to make promises about. Captions are generated 100% on your iPhone, so no audio ever leaves your phone — and everything keeps working with no signal at all: basements, airplanes, hospital dead zones, rural drives.
Translation stays local too: 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. (One honest footnote: Cantonese captions are the exception — they can't be translated yet.)
The in-person job, built out completely
Because in-person captioning is the whole job, Hearing Buddy builds it out further than a call app's companion mode. Buddy Mode captions a whole group, free: iPhones in the same room connect directly to each other — no internet, no server, no account — and each buddy's words appear by name in their own color, with every person able to read the room in their own language.
Buddy+ ($59.99/year) adds the extras: Apple Watch taps when someone says your name or asks you a question — nothing else in the category does this — conversation summaries that catch you up when you join late, Speaker Labels that use colors to tell up to four voices apart in solo sessions (no voice training, nothing stored, labels reset every session), and live translation for solo captions.
When Rylo Is the Better Choice
We mean it when we call this comparison complementary. Rylo does the one thing microphone apps can't, and it does it well — 4.7 stars across roughly 2,960 US App Store ratings as of July 6, 2026. Choose Rylo when:
A phone call is the problem
Doctor's offices, insurance lines, your grandkids — Rylo captions the actual call, live, and no mic-based app can. "This is freedom, plain and simple," reads a five-star review from June 2, 2026. If calls are your daily struggle, download Rylo before you download us.
You'd rather type than speak
On Rylo calls you can type your side and have it spoken aloud in a voice you choose, with quick keyboard responses and a personal dictionary for names and phrases. Hearing Buddy captions what others say — it doesn't speak for you.
You want the full call toolkit
Visual voicemail, a built-in spam filter and call blocking, post-call transcripts saved privately on your device, and captions in six languages (English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Hebrew, and Italian). Rylo rebuilt the whole phone experience around captions.
You're on Android or an older iPhone
Rylo ships for Android too ("Rylo: Live Call Captions"), while Hearing Buddy requires an iPhone on iOS 26 or later. If your phone can't run that, Rylo's Live Transcribe mode may be your best fallback for in-person moments as well.
What You'll Actually Pay
- Unlimited real-time captions — free
- Buddy Mode group captions — free
- Background listening & transcript history — free
- No registration, no eligibility rules, any country
- Buddy+: $59.99/year — adds Watch alerts, summaries, Speaker Labels, and solo translation
- App download: $0, no subscriptions or in-app purchases
- Captioned calls: free for eligible users who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability in the US
- Rylo is reimbursed per minute of captions from a federally administered fund (FCC)
- Requires FCC registration: name, address, date of birth, last 4 SSN digits, and a hearing-loss self-certification
- The free service is US-focused — check with Rylo about availability outside the US
Details checked July 6, 2026 on rylo.com, help.rylo.com, and both apps' App Store listings. Rylo never bills its users — federal funding covers eligible US use. If anything here has changed, let us know and we'll fix it.
Trying Hearing Buddy takes about a minute
There's nothing to migrate and nothing to cancel — and if you use Rylo, you don't have to stop. Most people simply add Hearing Buddy alongside it.
Download free
No account, no forms, no attestation — the App Store is the only signup there is.
Tap the mic
Captions start instantly, in any country, with or without internet.
Keep Rylo for calls
Seriously. If captioned calls help you, keep them — Hearing Buddy covers everything in between.
Questions & answers
Yes. Nagish rebranded to Rylo on June 9, 2026, alongside an $85 million funding round — same app, same App Store listing, same company (Nagish Inc.). The iOS app is now called "Rylo: Live Call Captioning," and the old Nagish help site redirects to help.rylo.com. The rebrand shipped with a version 2.0 redesign, and a few reviewers hit bugs in the transition — a June 19, 2026 two-star review reported "Then came the name change and now it no longer works for incoming calls…" — but sentiment stayed strongly positive, Rylo shipped fixes in v2.0.4 on June 24, and the app holds a 4.7-star US rating as of July 6, 2026.
Yes — there's no paid tier at all. Captioned telephone service in the US is funded by a federally administered fund that pays Rylo for each minute of captions it generates, so eligible users who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability never pay. The trade-off is federal registration: name, home address, date of birth, the last four digits of your SSN, and an electronic self-certification of hearing loss, as required by FCC rules. Hearing Buddy is also free — unlimited captions with no registration of any kind — but it captions the room, not phone calls.
Because federal rules for captioned telephone service require it — not because Rylo wants to know. Per Rylo's help center, the last four SSN digits and date of birth verify your identity and prevent fraud in the federally funded program, and your registered address is used to locate you if you call 911. FCC-funded captioned-call services work under these same rules. Hearing Buddy never asks for any of this because it doesn't touch the phone network — there's no account at all.
No. iPhone apps that listen through the microphone have no access to call audio, so Hearing Buddy can't caption calls — that's a platform limit, not a missing feature. If captioned phone calls are what you need, Rylo is built exactly for that, FCC-certified and free for eligible US users. Hearing Buddy covers everything outside the call: in-person conversations, unlimited and free, processed entirely on your iPhone. (Putting a call on speakerphone next to a mic app sort of works, but it's unreliable — a purpose-built call app is the honest recommendation.)
Yes — Rylo Live Transcribe is a built-in feature that captions in-person conversations, and Rylo pitches it for family dinners, appointments, and airports. It's presented as a companion to the main call-captioning experience. Hearing Buddy is built entirely around the in-person job: unlimited free captions with no registration, 100% on-device processing that works offline, free Buddy Mode group captions across iPhones in the same room, live translation, and Apple Watch name and question alerts with Buddy+. If most of your hard moments happen face to face, that depth is the difference.
They protect different things, differently. Rylo's captioned calls travel through its internet-based service, and Rylo says captions are generated with end-to-end encryption and no human involvement — a genuinely strong stance for a call service — though federal registration means it holds personal details like your address, date of birth, and partial SSN. Hearing Buddy processes all audio on your iPhone: no audio ever leaves your phone, captions work fully offline, and there's no account, so there's no registration data to hold anywhere.
Rylo's free captioned calling is a US program — the FCC fund covers eligible users in the United States (the app has also been offered free in Israel). If you live elsewhere, Rylo's core service generally isn't available to you. Hearing Buddy has no eligibility rules or country restrictions: captions run on your iPhone itself, so it works the same in any country, with captions in 8 languages and live translation into 10 (Cantonese captions can't be translated yet).
A lot of people honestly should have both — they barely overlap. Rylo captions your phone calls, which Hearing Buddy can't do. Hearing Buddy captions your life between the calls — unlimited, offline, no registration — and adds things like Buddy Mode group captions and Apple Watch alerts. Both are free to download and try.
Rylo has the calls. Your Buddy has the rest.
Unlimited in-person captions with no registration, no eligibility forms, and no audio ever leaving your phone. See what it feels like when captions are just… there.
Available on iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro
Rylo and Nagish are trademarks of Nagish Inc. Hearing Buddy is independently made and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Nagish Inc. All Rylo pricing, registration, and feature details on this page were verified on July 6, 2026 from rylo.com, help.rylo.com, and the Rylo App Store listing; details change, so please confirm current information with Rylo directly. Review excerpts are quoted verbatim from the US App Store and dated. This page reflects our honest assessment — including the part where Rylo does something we can't.