Rylo vs Hearing Buddy

What is the Rylo app?

Rylo is a free phone call captioning app for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability. Until June 9, 2026 it was called Nagish. On that date the company announced the new name, an $85 million funding round, and a rebuilt app it calls Rylo Phone. The App Store listing is now "Rylo: Live Call Captioning," still sold by Nagish Inc. Existing Nagish accounts, phone numbers, and call history carried over. If you are searching for "Rylo phone," "Rylo calling app," or "Rylo vs Nagish," they are all the same app.

What it does: Rylo works like your regular phone app, using your own phone number. When someone talks on a call, the words appear on screen live. You can type your replies and have them spoken aloud, and you get visual voicemail, spam filtering and call blocking, a personal dictionary, and saved call transcripts. A built-in feature called Rylo Live Transcribe also captions in-person conversations. It is available for iPhone (iOS 16.6 or later) and Android.

What it doesn't do: Rylo's free calling service covers the United States and its territories only, per its help center. Call captions are offered in six languages. It doesn't caption group conversations across several phones, boost voices through your headphones, or tap your wrist when someone says your name.

Is Rylo free? Yes, with no paid tier. Rylo is an FCC-certified provider of IP captioned telephone service (IP CTS) and IP Relay. The FCC's Telecommunications Relay Service Fund pays providers for each minute of captions, so eligible users never pay. That is also why federal law prohibits anyone but registered users with hearing loss from using captioned calls with captions turned on.

Is Rylo safe and legit? Yes, it is a real, regulated service. The FCC granted Nagish, Inc. full five-year certification for IP CTS and IP Relay on June 9, 2026 (expires June 9, 2031). Registration asks for your name, home address (used for 911), date of birth, the last four digits of your SSN, and a hearing-loss self-certification. Those are FCC rules every captioned-call provider follows, and the FCC says its user database discards the SSN details after verification. Rylo's privacy policy (rylo.com/legal/privacy, updated May 29, 2026) says it does not retain the audio or transcripts of connected calls in the ordinary course, and that captions are deleted from its servers once delivered to your device. It also shares call records with the FCC and the fund administrator, as the program requires. Its App Store privacy label lists contact info, coarse location, and a user ID as linked to you, with email and phone number used for its own marketing. Verified October 6, 2026.

What Rylo reviewers love, and what they complain about

Rylo is well loved: 4.6 stars from about 3,900 US App Store ratings as of October 6, 2026. The praise is mostly about calls finally being possible again. "This app has made a huge difference in my ability to understand a conversation and I've only used it briefly," wrote a five-star reviewer on September 30, 2026. Another liked that there is no second number to manage: "This one uses your phone number" (five stars, October 3, 2026).

The complaints in recent reviews cluster around a few themes. Accuracy: "The captioning is often inaccurate so it is difficult to understand and respond to what is really being said" (three stars, September 1, 2026). Spam calls getting through. The registration itself: "Must Social Security Number?" (one star, September 27, 2026). And leaving the app: "I did delete it, but I am now unable to receive calls" (one star, September 9, 2026). If you try Rylo and decide it isn't for you, contact Rylo support before deleting the app so your calls route normally again.

None of that changes the big picture. If phone calls are where you struggle, Rylo is a strong, free option, and Hearing Buddy cannot do that job at all.

What "free" asks of you first

Both apps are free, so the difference is what each one asks before it starts. Rylo's calls are paid for by a federal fund, and the federal rules that come with the money mean registration: name, home address kept current for 911, date of birth, the last four digits of your SSN, and an electronic self-certification of hearing loss. Rylo's help center explains each requirement, and every FCC-funded captioned-call service works the same way.

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, can download it and start captioning the room in seconds.