Free forever: how Hark's pricing works, and why

Pricing for software is often confusing on purpose: free plans that stop working after a few meetings, tiers that hide the one feature you need, and trials that ask for a card up front. We wanted Hark’s pricing to be simple enough to explain in one sentence:

Everything that runs on your computer is free forever. Things that cost us money every time you use them, AI and cloud sync, are $12 a month.

The rest of this post explains what falls on each side of that line, and why we drew it there.

What’s free, with no limits

Hark’s free version is the full app, not a cut-down demo. It includes:

• Unlimited recording of your microphone and computer audio, in any meeting app, with no bot.
• Unlimited transcription on your computer, live during meetings and in full afterwards.
• Speaker recognition: Hark works out who spoke, you name each voice once, and Hark recognises them in future meetings.
• The People page, with photos, colors, contact details and notes.
• The meeting player, with faster playback that keeps voices natural, silence skipping and voice enhancement.
• Your own notes in a formatted editor, during and after meetings.
• Editing, export and import: fix any transcript line, export transcripts and notes, and import recordings from your phone or other apps.
• Screenshots during meetings (on Windows, with keyboard shortcuts from any app).
• The Claude Desktop and Claude Code connection (MCP), so the Claude subscription you may already have can read and work with your meetings.

There are no minute caps, no meeting limits and no time limit. The only requirement is a free account: you sign in with a code sent to your email address. We don’t ask for a card.

Why the local features can be free

When Hark transcribes a meeting, the work happens on your computer’s processor. When it recognises a voice, the voiceprint is compared on your computer. Your recordings are stored on your disk. None of that costs us anything per meeting.

Most meeting note takers transcribe in the cloud, which means every minute of audio has a real cost for them: servers, processing and storage. That cost is why free plans elsewhere tend to come with monthly limits. It isn’t a trick; it’s just how the economics work when the computing happens in a data centre.

Because Hark does that work locally, we don’t have a cost to pass on. Charging for it anyway, or capping it to push people towards a paid plan, would feel like charging rent on your own computer. So we don’t.

(There is more on the local approach, and its trade-offs, in why Hark transcribes on your computer.)

What the subscription adds

The subscription is $12 a month and you can cancel any time. It adds two things.

AI features, powered by Claude

• AI meeting notes written by Claude (made by Anthropic) in a choice of styles, plus any style files of your own.
• Automatic meeting titles, so your meetings list isn’t a column of dates.
• Live notes and questions during a meeting (live notes are off by default and run only while the panel is visible).
• Transcript proofreading against your “Names & terms” list, which fixes misheard names and jargon. Every change can be undone, and your own edits are never touched.
• Screenshot names and descriptions, so screenshots are labelled by what they show.

These features send your transcript text, not your audio, to Claude through our service. Every request costs us money, charged by the AI provider for the text it reads and writes. That is the main reason the subscription exists.

Sync across your computers

Optional sync keeps your meetings, people, preferences and note styles in step across up to three computers. Your data is encrypted on your computer before it is uploaded. Recordings are kept in the cloud for 90 days, compressed. Email you’ve downloaded into Hark is never synced.

Storage and bandwidth cost us money every month for every user who turns sync on, so it belongs with the AI features.

The 2-day preview

New accounts get a 2-day preview of everything, including AI notes and sync. We call it a preview rather than a trial on purpose: a trial usually means the product stops working when it ends. Hark doesn’t.

When the preview ends:

• Everything local keeps working, with no limits, forever.
• Your meetings, transcripts, people and notes stay exactly where they are.
• AI features and sync pause until you subscribe.

The preview exists so you can see what Claude’s notes look like on your own meetings before you decide whether they’re worth $12 a month to you. For many people, the free version will be all they need, and that’s fine with us.

Using your own Claude subscription instead

If you already pay for Claude, you may not need our subscription at all. Hark’s local MCP server lets Claude Desktop or Claude Code read your meetings, transcripts and people, so you can ask your own Claude to write notes or answer questions about a meeting. That connection is part of the free version. It runs under your Claude plan, not ours. We explain how in using Claude with your meeting transcripts, and the Claude meeting notes page has more detail.

Summary

	Free	Subscription
Price	$0, forever	$12/month, cancel any time
Recording, transcription, speaker recognition	Unlimited	Unlimited
Editing, notes, export, import	Yes	Yes
Claude Desktop / Claude Code connection	Yes	Yes
AI meeting notes, titles, proofreading, live notes	No	Yes
Sync across up to 3 computers	No	Yes
Account	Free, email code, no card	Same account

We don’t offer annual plans, team plans or discounts today. If that changes, we’ll say so on the store page.

Questions we expect

Will the free version get worse later? Our rule is that anything running on your computer is free. We don’t plan to move local features behind the subscription.

Do I need an account for the free version? Yes, a free one, created with a code sent to your email. No card.

What happens to my data if I cancel? Everything on your computer stays. AI features and sync stop.

Is any of my data used to train AI? No. Hark doesn’t train AI on your meetings.

Get Hark

Hark runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Download it from the store, or read more on the Hark page. If you’re comparing options, our list of the best free AI note takers covers others too.