Wave
Wave is an AI note taker that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings, phone calls and lectures across iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, the web, Apple Watch and Wear OS. Free tier available, no card required.
What is Wave?
Wave is an AI note taker published by Mohrer Associates LLC, a New York company founded in 2024 by Josh Mohrer. The premise is deliberately simple: press one button, and Wave records the conversation, transcribes it and summarizes it, so you can stay in the room instead of writing. What sets it apart from most competitors is the breadth of capture. Wave runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, any browser at app.wave.co, a desktop app for Mac and Windows, a Chrome extension, and — unusually — on Apple Watch and Wear OS smartwatches, with a single session syncing across all of them. It handles four capture situations rather than one: in-person conversations on a phone or a watch; real phone calls through a Phone Bridge on iPhone and Android; scheduled Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings through a calendar bot; and microphone plus system audio on Wave Desktop, which records a video call without joining it as a visible participant. The output is a speaker-labelled transcript in one of 76 supported languages, with translation available after the fact, plus a structured summary. Voice ID learns a speaker once and labels them automatically in later recordings. Summaries follow built-in templates — meeting notes, action items, executive summary, sales call, lecture notes, interview — or one you save yourself. Wave Assistant then searches and chats across the whole library, and you can import audio files, YouTube videos and PDFs into it. A second product line targets automation. Wave for Agents publishes an MCP server listed in the Claude connector directory and the ChatGPT app directory under the name Wave AI Note Taker, an npm CLI, and a REST API documented by an OpenAPI 3.1 specification, with scoped tokens and signed webhooks. Wave Phone, in early access for the United States and Canada, adds a dedicated inbound and outbound number whose calls land in the same library. On data, Wave is SOC 2 Type 1, encrypts in transit and at rest, hosts on Google Cloud, and states it never trains AI on customer content.
What it does
- Record meetings, phone calls, lectures and in-person conversations from a phone, a smartwatch, a computer or a browser
- Transcribe audio in 76 languages with automatic speaker labels, and translate between them afterwards
- Summarize a session into key takeaways, decisions and action items, using a built-in or custom template
- Capture Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls through a calendar bot, or record them on desktop without any visible bot
- Search and chat across an entire recording history with Wave Assistant
- Share summaries and transcripts by public link or email, or export them to Notion, Google Docs, OneNote, Evernote, PDF and DOCX
- Feed recordings to Claude, ChatGPT or your own code through the MCP server, the REST API, webhooks and the CLI
When to use Wave / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Wave is the right fit.
When to use Wave
- Salespeople, consultants and account managers who live on calls and need every quote, objection and commitment on record
- Lawyers, recruiters and real estate agents running back-to-back client conversations, all three addressed by dedicated pages on the site
- Students and lecturers recording classes, seminars and revision sessions, then searching them afterwards
- Founders and operators who move between in-person meetings, video calls and phone calls on several devices in the same day
- Developers and AI power users who want their meeting history available to Claude, ChatGPT or their own code through MCP, the REST API and the CLI
When not to use Wave
- Healthcare providers and any HIPAA-regulated workflow: Wave states plainly that it is not HIPAA compliant and signs no Business Associate Agreement
- Organisations that require European data residency, since all customer content is processed in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses
- Anyone under 18, the minimum age set by the Terms of Service
- Teams that need a fully offline tool, as recording works offline but transcription and summarisation wait for connectivity
- People outside the United States and Canada who are specifically after the Wave Phone dedicated number, which is limited to those two countries and still in early access
How to use Wave
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account with Google, Apple or Facebook, or start straight from the browser at app.wave.co without a credit card
- Install the app from the App Store or Google Play, and add Wave Desktop for Mac or Windows and the Chrome extension if you work on a computer
- For an in-person conversation, press record on the phone or the watch; recording continues with the screen locked and while you use other apps
- For a video call, connect your Google or Outlook calendar and let Wave send a bot to Zoom, Meet or Teams, or open Wave Desktop to capture microphone and system audio without a bot
- For a phone conversation, use the Phone Bridge on iPhone, or claim a Wave Phone number if you are in the United States or Canada early access
- Let the transcript, the summary, the key takeaways and the action items generate automatically once you stop recording
- Name a speaker once so Voice ID labels them in every future recording, and pick or save a summary template that fits how you work
- Find anything later through Wave Assistant, which runs semantic search and chat across your whole recording history
- Share the result with a public link readable without a Wave account, or export it to Notion, Google Docs, OneNote, Evernote, PDF, DOCX or email
- For automation, add Wave from the Claude or ChatGPT directory, install the CLI with npm, or mint a scoped wave_api_ token in the settings and call the REST API with it
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Unusually wide device coverage, from a smartwatch to a desktop, with one session synced everywhere
- Wave Desktop captures video calls without putting a visible bot in the room, which makes it usable in one-to-ones and client meetings
- A clear no-training commitment that applies on every plan including the free tier, and is contractually extended to subprocessors
- Exceptional transparency for a tool of this size: the SOC 2 Type 1 report is downloadable without an NDA, the Vanta Trust Center is open, and the DPA names all nine customer content subprocessors
- Deletion is real: content is removed at the moment you delete it, with no retention in backup archives
- A developer surface far more complete than the category norm, with OpenAPI 3.1, an MCP server listed in the Claude and ChatGPT directories, a CLI and signed webhooks
- A permanent free plan with no credit card, and high, high-volume user ratings: 4.9 from more than 12,000 App Store reviews and 4.7 from more than 2,000 Play Store reviews
Cons
- SOC 2 Type 1 only: the report covers the design of controls as of 1 March 2025 and did not test operating effectiveness over time, as Wave itself states each time it mentions the audit
- No HIPAA compliance and no Business Associate Agreement, which rules out clinical use
- All processing and hosting happens in the United States, with no EU data residency option and no Article 27 EU representative named
- Three different Pro prices appear across the site, and Wave warns that prices vary by platform and region, so the real amount is hard to establish before checkout
- The free plan is tight at 30 minutes per month, and Teams imposes a five-seat minimum
- The 76 supported languages are claimed but never listed anywhere on the site, and Wave Phone remains limited to the United States and Canada in early access
- No complete postal address is published, only the city, and the audience figures quoted across pages do not agree with each other
Pricing & Plans
Wave offers a permanent free plan limited to 30 minutes of recording per month, including AI transcription and summaries, available without a credit card. The cheapest paid tier is Pro, advertised at USD 11.67 per month when billed annually, and a free trial is offered. Wave for Teams is listed at USD 7.50 per user per month with a five-seat minimum, which places its entry ticket above Pro. Wave states that prices may vary by platform and region, and that monthly and weekly billing are also available. Two further Pro figures appear on the site, USD 14.99 in the homepage structured data and USD 25 per month in a partner programme example, so the amount actually charged should be confirmed in the store where the subscription is purchased.
- Free — USD 0
- permanent
- 30 minutes of recording per month
- AI transcription and summaries
- iOS
- Android and web
- no credit card required
- Pro — USD 11.67 per month billed annually
- unlimited recording and transcription
- AI summaries and action items
- export to PDF
- OneNote and email
- available on iOS
- Android
- Mac
- Teams — USD 7.50 per user per month with a five-seat minimum
- everything in Pro plus centralised billing and an admin dashboard
- purchased on teams.wave.co
- Enterprise requirements such as SSO
- custom retention or a custom DPA — no public price
- handled through support@wave.co
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Wave handles your data.
GDPR overview
Wave states on its contact page that it is GDPR compliant, and backs the claim with a published Data Processing Addendum that applies automatically, without signature, to any professional use. The DPA covers the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the Swiss FADP and the CCPA. Transfers rely on the European Commission Standard Contractual Clauses (Decision (EU) 2021/914), Module Two or Module Three, governed by Irish law, supplemented by the ICO UK International Data Transfer Addendum version B1.0 and by FADP-specific terms for Switzerland. Wave commits to notifying a personal data breach within 72 hours, to assisting with Articles 32 to 36, and to 30 days notice before adding or replacing a subprocessor. Data subject requests go to privacy@wave.co. Two gaps are worth naming: all customer content is processed in the United States, with no EU residency option, and no Article 27 EU representative is designated.
Who owns the data?
Under the Terms of Service, you keep ownership of every recording, transcript, message and note you create with Wave. Mohrer Associates LLC takes only the limited licence it needs to operate the service: storing your audio, transcribing it, generating summaries and syncing content across your devices. The security page states that data ownership is entirely yours. In the Data Processing Addendum you are the controller of that customer content and Wave acts as processor; Wave is an independent controller only for account data such as registration, billing and support. Recordings are visible to you and to anyone you explicitly share them with. Wave personnel access them only in narrow, audit-logged cases: support with your consent, abuse or security investigations, or where the law requires it.
Reuse rights
You can reuse everything Wave produces without asking permission. Transcripts, speaker-labelled segments, summaries, action items and the raw audio are yours to export, query and automate: PDF, DOCX, Notion, Google Docs, OneNote, Evernote, email, or a public share link that anyone can open without a Wave account. The REST API, the MCP server and the command-line client expose the same material as structured data, including signed URLs for session audio and video, so a script or an agent can pipe it anywhere. What Wave itself does with the data is deliberately narrower: storage, transcription, summarisation, synchronisation, anonymised meta-analysis of summaries to understand common use cases, and, only if you authorise it, transmission to a third-party AI client over MCP. Wave does not use customer content to train AI models on any plan, including the free tier, and does not authorise its subprocessors to do so.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Wave hosts customer content on Google Cloud, in Firestore, inside Google data centres and under Google physical, network and operational controls. The Data Processing Addendum states plainly that Wave processes customer content in the United States, and every one of the nine customer content subprocessors is located there: Google LLC, AssemblyAI, OpenAI, Turbopuffer, Recall.ai, Trigger.dev, Vercel, Twilio and Telnyx. The seven vendors handling account data — Stripe, PostHog, Sentry, Intercom, Customer.io, Resend and Adapty — are US-based as well. The website itself runs on Vercel, and the Turbopuffer search index sits on Google Cloud in the United States. Content is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or above and at rest with AES-256, using key management supplied by the cloud provider. There is no European data residency option: transfers out of the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are covered instead by Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK IDTA and FADP-specific terms.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Wave.
- Recording law is on you, not on Wave: several jurisdictions require the consent of every participant, and the Terms of Service place that responsibility entirely on the user
- The bot-free desktop capture records participants without the video platform notifying them, so consent has to be obtained some other way — convenience here can quietly become a legal and ethical problem
- Deletion is irreversible by design: Wave keeps nothing in backup archives, so a recording deleted by mistake is gone for good
- Connecting Wave to a third-party AI client over MCP hands transcripts, summaries, speaker names and phone numbers to that provider, which then governs them under its own policy
- Outsourcing memory has a cost: relying on automatic summaries can erode the habit of listening actively and of forming your own judgement about what mattered in a conversation
- AI transcripts and summaries are supplied without warranty and can contain errors, so anything consequential should be checked against the audio before being acted on
- All customer content is processed in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses, with no EU residency option and no Article 27 representative, which matters for European organisations
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low for ordinary use. You sign in with Google, Apple or Facebook, or try it in the browser with no install and no card, then press one button to record. The meeting bot needs a calendar connection, and Wave Desktop needs an install plus system audio permission. Connecting Claude or ChatGPT is a single click from their directories. Only the developer paths ask for skills: minting a scoped API token, installing the CLI through npm, or running an OAuth flow with PKCE for MCP clients outside the directories.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Wave
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Wave.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly does Wave do?
Can Wave record Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams?
How many languages does Wave support?
Does Wave train AI models on my recordings?
Where is my data stored, and how long is it kept?
Is Wave suitable for healthcare or other regulated work?
What does Wave cost?
Can I connect Wave to Claude, ChatGPT or my own code?
Should you pick Wave?
Wave is one of the more complete AI note takers on the market, and its strength is coverage rather than any single feature. Few competitors follow a conversation from an Apple Watch to a desktop app to a browser, and fewer still handle in-person talks, real phone calls and video meetings with equal seriousness. The bot-free capture on Wave Desktop is the genuinely differentiating idea: it records a video call without announcing itself to the other participants, which is exactly what makes it usable in a client meeting or a one-to-one — and exactly why the consent question deserves attention. On trust, the record is unusually good for a company this young. Wave publishes its SOC 2 Type 1 report without an NDA, keeps an open Trust Center, names all nine customer content subprocessors in a DPA that applies automatically, and commits to never training AI on customer content on any plan, free tier included. Deletion is immediate and irreversible, with no backup archive. The reservations are real but mostly about maturity and jurisdiction rather than intent. The audit is Type 1, not Type 2, so the design of controls was examined but not their operation over time. Everything is processed in the United States, there is no EU data residency option and no Article 27 representative. HIPAA workflows are explicitly excluded. Pricing is the weakest point of the public site: three different Pro figures appear across the pages, and Wave itself warns that prices vary by platform and region. For professionals who spend their days in conversation — sales, consulting, law, recruiting, research, teaching — and for anyone who wants their meeting history queryable by Claude, ChatGPT or their own scripts, Wave is a serious candidate. Regulated industries and organisations bound to European data residency should look elsewhere.
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