Krisp: What It Actually Does, What's Free, and What It Costs

By the FreeHush crew · Facts checked July 28, 2026 — prices and limits re-verified before every update

We run a site about free audio tools, so you can guess why Krisp lives rent-free in our heads: it's one of the few "freemium" tools where the free tier is an actual product, not a demo with a countdown timer.

Here's the whole picture — what it is, what the free plan really includes (and where the meter is), what paid costs, and how to install it without wandering into a sketchy mirror site.

What is Krisp?

Krisp (yes, the company behind krisp.ai — you'll also see it written Krisp AI; it's the same thing) is desktop software for Windows and Mac that does one job extremely well: AI noise suppression on live calls. It installs as a virtual microphone and speaker. You pick "Krisp Microphone" inside your calling app, and from that moment the barking dog, the keyboard, the street below — the other side doesn't hear any of it. It works the other way too: it can mute the noise coming from other people's messy rooms into your ears.

Because it sits at the system level, it works with effectively any app that uses a mic — Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, Discord, Slack huddles, softphones, recording apps, all of it. No per-app setup, no plugins.

The company (Krisp Technologies — the noise-cancellation models are their own, and if you've used Discord's built-in noise suppression, you've already heard Krisp: that toggle is powered by their tech) has drifted upmarket over the years into an "AI meeting assistant" — the paid app now also does transcription, meeting notes, and summaries. That's nice if you want it. But the reason regular people install Krisp is still the original one: your calls stop sounding like your life.

What Krisp is not: it's not a microphone. If you searched "krisp microphone" hoping for hardware — there isn't any. It's software that makes the mic you already own sound like it lives in a quieter home.

Is Krisp free?

Yes — with a meter, and we're going to tell you exactly where the meter is, because that's the whole point of this site.

Krisp Free gives you 60 minutes of noise cancellation per day. The counter resets every day at midnight GMT. Add it up and you're holding roughly 30 free hours a month — a fresh hour every single day. Not a trial. It doesn't expire. No card required.

The fine print, itemized the way we always do it:

• You pay: $0.00
• You give: an email address
• The cap: 60 minutes/day of active noise cancellation
• Reset: daily, at midnight GMT
• Devices: one, desktop only (Windows/Mac)
• Runs out mid-call? Krisp stops cancelling; your call continues with your regular mic audio

Who fits inside 60 minutes a day? Someone with one or two meetings, a daily standup plus a catch-up, a weekly interview to record. Who doesn't: anyone on back-to-back calls all day — the meter is real and you'll hit it by lunch.

One honest nudge: don't confuse the free plan with the 7-day trial of the paid tier. The trial (no card needed, to Krisp's credit) unlocks unlimited minutes for a week, then drops you back. The free plan is the thing that quietly keeps working forever.

What Krisp costs if you outgrow free

If 60 minutes a day stops being enough, the paid tier — Krisp Core — runs $8/month billed annually, or $16 month-to-month (checked July 28, 2026 — Krisp shuffles plans more than most; treat the pricing page as the referee). Core removes the daily meter and unlocks the meeting-assistant extras (transcription, notes, summaries).

Our thrifty-house math: $8/month is fair if you're actually hitting the cap most days. If you hit it twice a month, you don't have a Krisp problem, you have a scheduling problem — stay free.

How to download Krisp (do it the boring way)

Search "krisp download" and you'll find a swamp of mirror sites, "cracked" builds, and installers that are definitely not from Krisp. Skip all of it. The only sane route:

1. Go to krisp.ai directly (that's the entire company website — .ai is the domain, not a product tier).
2. Create the free account (email only) and download the installer for Windows or Mac from your account — signing in happens on the official site; anywhere else asking for your Krisp login is a red flag.
3. Install, then in your calling app's audio settings, switch the microphone to Krisp Microphone.
4. Talk. The first time someone says "wow, it's quiet at your place" — it isn't. That's the software.

A modified installer for a tool whose whole job is listening to your microphone is about the worst place on the internet to get adventurous. The free plan is already free; there's nothing to pirate your way into.

Setting it up in your apps (two minutes, once)

The setup is the same trick everywhere, because Krisp doesn't integrate with apps — it impersonates a microphone, and apps just believe it.

Open your calling app's audio or voice settings. Where it asks which microphone to use, pick Krisp Microphone. If you also want incoming noise cleaned (other people's chaos, not just yours), set the speaker to Krisp Speaker too. That's the entire integration. Do it once per app and it sticks.

Three habits that save you grief:

• Do a ten-second test call before the one that matters. Most apps have a mic test or echo test built in; use it the first time so you're not debugging audio in front of a client.
• Watch for apps stealing the setting back. Some apps "helpfully" reset to the system default microphone after an update or when a new headset connects. If people suddenly hear your keyboard again, check the mic dropdown first — nine times out of ten, the app quietly switched off Krisp Microphone.
• Don't double-stack suppression by accident. If Krisp is on, turn the app's own built-in noise suppression down or off. Two AI filters fighting over the same voice can make you sound underwater. One filter, chosen on purpose, sounds better than two by accident.

How to stretch the free hour (thrifty mode)

Sixty minutes a day is a budget, and budgets are our love language. How to spend it like you mean it:

Toggle it per call, not per day. Krisp only burns minutes while noise cancellation is actively on. Quiet home, nobody around? Take that call raw and bank the minutes. Save the hour for the calls where the café espresso machine is auditioning.

Let Discord be Krisp for Discord. Since Discord's built-in suppression is Krisp-powered anyway, flipping the toggle inside Discord costs you zero minutes from your meter. Spend your actual Krisp hour on Zoom and Meet, where the built-ins are weaker against voices and clatter.

Point it in one direction. Inbound and outbound cleaning both draw from the same meter. If your room is quiet but your caller's isn't, run speaker-side only. If it's your side that's loud, mic-side only. Half the filtering, same length of meter.

Remember the reset is midnight GMT, not your midnight. Depending on your timezone, your "new hour" may land in the middle of your workday — occasionally useful when a long call straddles the reset and the meter refills mid-afternoon. Free-tier arbitrage at its most harmless.

Where Krisp shines (and where you don't need it)

On Discord: here's a fun money-saving fact — Discord's built-in noise suppression is Krisp, licensed and baked in. For casual Discord voice, just flip the toggle in Discord's voice settings and spend nothing, not even your 60 minutes. Install the actual Krisp app when you want the same cleanup everywhere else too.

On meetings (Zoom/Meet/Teams/Webex): the built-in suppression in these apps has gotten decent for hums and fans. Krisp still earns its slot when the noise is hard — voices in the background, clattering dishes, a genuinely loud room — and when you want one setting that covers every app instead of four different menus. It also cleans inbound noise from other people, which none of the built-ins really solve for you.

For recording: Krisp cancels noise live, at capture time. If the noisy audio is already recorded, that's a different aisle of the store — our free online noise removal tools guide covers that for $0.

We don't publish fake benchmark percentages ("removes 99.7% of noise!") because nobody measuring at home can verify them and neither can you. What we'll say plainly: it's the tool this whole category gets measured against, and the free hour a day is the cheapest way to find out if your particular noise is inside its skill set. Verify it in your own trial — that's the only benchmark that matters.

Krisp on your phone: read this before installing

The mobile apps (iOS and Android) are not the noise-cancelling Krisp. As of our last check, Krisp's live noise cancellation is desktop-only; the mobile apps do transcription and meeting notes. If you grabbed "Krisp for Android" expecting silent calls, that's why nothing got quieter. For actual call-noise fixes on a phone, your OS settings do more — different guide, different day.

When it misbehaves: the three usual suspects

Krisp is low-drama software, but when something goes sideways it's almost always one of these:

"Krisp Microphone" doesn't appear in my app's list. The Krisp app isn't running, or the app you're calling from launched before Krisp did. Start Krisp first, restart the calling app, and check the dropdown again. On a Mac, also make sure Krisp has microphone permission in system privacy settings — no permission, no virtual mic.

People say I sound robotic or clipped. That's usually the double-filter problem from the setup section: Krisp plus the app's own suppression plus maybe a headset's onboard processing, all chewing the same signal. Strip it back to one layer. If it persists on a weak laptop during screen-share-heavy calls, that's processing load — close what you can, or let the app's lighter built-in handle the easy calls.

The meter ran out mid-call. Nothing breaks — Krisp just steps aside and your raw mic carries the rest of the call. If that moment keeps arriving at the worst time, either budget the hour more deliberately (previous section) or accept that you're the paid-tier customer Krisp built the meter for. No shame; the math section is right there.

If Krisp isn't your tool: the $0 bench

Part of the FreeHush job description is telling you when not to install something. Krisp isn't the answer to everything:

• NVIDIA RTX graphics card in your PC? NVIDIA Broadcast does live noise removal free with no meter at all — the catch is the hardware requirement, which you either already own or you don't.
• Only ever on Discord? The built-in toggle (which, again, is Krisp under the hood) is all you need. Zero installs, zero minutes.
• Cleaning up recordings, not live calls? Wrong aisle entirely — noise cancellation works on live audio. For files that already exist, the free web tools do the job; our free online noise removal roundup walks the whole shelf.
• Just need your own voice louder and cleaner, not the room quieter? Check your app's mic sensitivity and auto-gain settings first. It's a surprising amount of "noise" that's actually just bad gain, and fixing it costs nothing.

Krisp's lane is: live calls, any app, no special hardware, hard noise. If that sentence describes your problem, the free hour is the cheapest experiment on this site.

Quick answers

What is noise suppression, in one line? Software that separates "voice" from "everything else" in your mic signal and deletes the everything else, live.

Is it Krisp, Crisp, or Krispr? Krisp, with a K, one word. Search engines forgive the typos; sketchy lookalike sites are counting on them.

Does the free plan expire? No. It's a plan, not a trial. The 7-day trial of paid is a separate, optional thing.

Does Krisp work with my app? If the app can select a microphone, yes — that's the virtual-mic trick.

Where do I sign in? krisp.ai, nowhere else. There's no reason to type your Krisp password on any other domain.

Every price and limit on this page was verified against krisp.ai and help.krisp.ai on July 28, 2026, and gets re-checked when this page updates. Spot something stale? Tell us — crew@freehush.com. We fix fast and note the correction.

FreeHush is reader-supported: some links on this page are affiliate links, marked and routed through our own redirects. We only cover tools with a real free tier — that's the whole site.