One free recorder that runs in your browser, and honest reviews of the software worth installing when the browser is not enough.
This site exists because the question "how do I record audio?" gets answered badly almost everywhere. Search for it and you find pages that want your email address before they will let you press record, tools that cap you at five minutes then ask for a card, and review articles that recommend whatever pays the best commission.
So we built two things. A recorder that works immediately, with no account and no upload. And a set of reviews written by people who have actually installed the software and used it for real work.
When you press the record button, your browser, not this website, asks whether you want to grant microphone access. We cannot bypass that prompt and we cannot see the microphone until you accept it. Once you do, audio is captured with the MediaRecorder API, a web standard that every current browser implements.
The moving waveform comes from the Web Audio API, which analyses frequency data in the page as sound arrives. Trimming and silence removal work on the decoded audio buffer, still inside the tab. MP3 export uses lamejs, a JavaScript port of the LAME encoder, which means the encoding also happens on your machine.
At no point does your audio travel across the network. There is no upload step in the code, because there is no server-side component to upload it to. When you press Download, the browser writes the file to your disk directly.
Every program in our software guide gets the same treatment: install it, record something real with it, try to clean up a genuinely bad recording, and note where it fights you. We write the drawbacks section first, because that is the part readers actually need.
We do not accept payment for a placement or a score. Prices and feature lists change constantly, so we describe pricing in general terms and tell you to check with the vendor. A number frozen in an article is a number that will be wrong within a year. Where a program's licensing has conditions attached, we say so plainly, because that is exactly the detail people discover too late.
Scores are editorial opinion. If you think one is wrong, tell us why on the contact page. We have changed our minds before.
We are direct about this because pretending otherwise would waste your time. A browser recorder cannot capture the sound your computer is playing, cannot record several microphones onto separate tracks, and holds everything in memory until you export it. For a voice note those limits do not matter. For a podcast, a call recording or a band rehearsal they matter enormously, which is what the reviews are for.
Nothing, with no premium tier planned. Running the site costs very little because there is no audio processing on our side to pay for. If it becomes useful to you, the most helpful thing you can do is mention it to someone who is currently trying to record a lecture with an app that wants their credit card.
Corrections, bug reports, requests for a program to review are all welcome through the contact page. Messages are read by a person.