Finnish live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Finnish everyday conversations
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Finnish speakers.
Captions any conversation in real time
- Word by word, as the person speaks
- Works in noisy places — counters, streets, busy rooms
- Any accent, any pace
- No lip reading needed
Everyday conversations in any language
- Translates as they speak, not after
- Each person speaks their own language
- Handles mid-sentence switches
- 60+ languages, no setup
Save any conversation for later
- Record and get the full transcript
- Organized by speaker
- Read, copy, search, share
- Any language, any audio
Key points from any exchange
- Important points extracted automatically
- Works on any saved transcript
- Organized into clear sections
- Nothing gets missed
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Apteekki counter, posti window, supermarket checkout, kuntapalvelu desk. Staff speak fast in Finnish and move on. Captio AI shows what they said before the moment passes.
Sunday family ruoka, birthday celebration, mökki gathering with neighbours. Multiple generations, fast Finnish, regional accents varying by maakunta. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking.
Asking for directions in the city, chatting with a neighbour in the porraskäytävässä, meeting someone at the tori. People who speak at full pace. Captio AI captions anyone near you.
Kahvitauko conversation, a quick question in the käytävällä, catch-up before a meeting. The moments Finnish workplaces run on. Captio AI keeps you in those conversations.
Terveyskeskus reception, kuntapalvelu counter, bank branch, Kela office. Formal vocabulary, fast delivery, no repeat expected. Captio AI transcribes everything said.
Tram and bus announcements, asking at a rautatieasema, taxi conversation. Situations where you need to understand the first time. Captio AI covers you anywhere.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Download on theApp Store
Built for conversations that don't wait
Captions as they speak, not after
Captio AI shows each word as it is spoken. You read what the person is saying while they are still saying it — not after they have finished and moved on.
No lip reading needed
You do not need to face the speaker or position yourself to see their mouth. Captio AI picks up speech from any direction — across a counter, at a table, in a busy street.
Works through background noise
Restaurants, pharmacies, busy streets, crowded waiting rooms. Captio AI separates speech from background noise so captions stay accurate where everyday conversations actually happen.
Follows any conversation
One person or six. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking at any moment — so you follow the thread at a dinner table or keep up with a counter exchange without losing track.
Any accent, any pace
People do not slow down or enunciate for you. Captio AI handles fast talkers, regional accents, and casual speech — the way people actually talk in real life.
Any language, no setup
When someone speaks a language you do not know, switch to Live Translator. They speak their language — you read in yours. No configuration needed. Works in 60+ languages.
Why Finnish is hard to understand
Vowel length distinctions
- Finnish uses vowel length to distinguish meaning — and short versus long sounds look identical on the lips
- Finnish makes critical meaning distinctions based entirely on vowel length. 'Tuli' (fire), 'tuuli' (wind), and 'tulli' (customs) differ only in vowel length and the presence of a consonant. 'Tapan' (I kill) versus 'tapaan' (I meet) are distinguished only by vowel length. These distinctions are purely acoustic — no visible difference on the lips. A lip-reader misses them systematically, producing near-constant misunderstanding of common Finnish vocabulary.
Fifteen grammatical cases
- Finnish uses 15 grammatical cases expressed as suffixes — all visually identical on the lips
- Finnish expresses location, direction, possession, purpose, and relationship through 15 case suffixes attached to word stems. These suffixes carry critical meaning: where you are, where you are going, what belongs to whom. On the lips, suffix chains are near-identical — the visual difference between 'talossa' (in the house) and 'talolta' (from the house direction) is essentially zero. A lip-reader in Finnish is missing the structural skeleton of every sentence.
Sauna social culture
- Finnish sauna is a social institution — and it is the hardest possible acoustic environment for hearing loss
- The Finnish sauna is not merely a hygiene ritual; it is the most important social institution in Finnish life — where important conversations happen, relationships are built, business is discussed. Steam, ambient heat noise, people sitting with closed eyes, and the cultural expectation of minimal social formality make the sauna one of the most difficult acoustic environments imaginable for a deaf or hard of hearing Finnish person.
Finnish directness
- Finnish conversational norms allow long silences and short exchanges — leaving little room to ask for repetition
- Finnish conversational culture is comfortable with long silences. Short, direct exchanges are the norm. The cultural tolerance for asking someone to repeat themselves is lower than in more talkative cultures — and Finnish communication style often treats a request for repetition as a social imposition. For a deaf or hard of hearing Finn, asking to repeat is both linguistically and culturally difficult.
Dialect variation
- Helsinki Finnish, Tampere Finnish, and Savonian Finnish each present different lip-reading challenges
- Finnish has strong regional dialects. Helsinki colloquial Finnish, Tampere Finnish, Savonian Finnish (eastern Finland), and Turku Swedish-influenced Finnish all have distinct pronunciation patterns. A deaf person who has calibrated lip-reading to Helsinki standard speech will encounter a different phonological target when visiting Tampere, Joensuu, or Turku.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store750,000 Finns with hearing difficulties. Finnish vowel length creates unavoidable lip-reading failure. No captions at the sauna, the tori, or the family table.
Approximately 750,000 people in Finland — over 13% of the population — experience some degree of hearing difficulty, according to the Finnish Federation of the Hard of Hearing (Kuuloliitto). Of these, around 14,000 use Finnish Sign Language (viittomakieli) as their primary language. For deaf and hard of hearing Finns, daily life involves the kahvila, the tori, the metro, the sauna, and the family dinner — settings that carry no captioning and no sign language infrastructure in everyday informal contexts. A PMC study of Finnish older adults with hearing loss found significantly higher use of health services and greater social isolation compared to hearing peers.
Finnish Sign Language has constitutional recognition in Finland, and the Finnish Association of the Deaf provides support services. But like all Nordic systems, formal interpretation provision is structured around medical and legal settings. The sauna — Finland's most culturally significant social institution — is entirely outside any formal accessibility provision. The tori, the café, and the family dinner are similarly uncovered. A deaf Finn attending a sauna evening with colleagues or friends has no formal right to any communication support and no practical tool for following the conversation.
Finnish presents a specific structural challenge for deaf people that goes beyond typical European language complexity: the vowel length system means that one of the most common sources of word meaning — the distinction between short and long vowels — is entirely acoustic and leaves no visual trace on the lips. A hearing Finn listening casually distinguishes 'tuli' from 'tuuli' effortlessly; a deaf Finn lip-reading loses this distinction in every sentence it appears. Captio AI captions Finnish speech in real time — including vowel length distinctions and the full Finnish case system — so the sauna conversation, the market errand, and the family dinner are no longer settings you experience from the outside.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"The sauna with friends is where everything important gets said. Captio AI captions it. I follow the conversation instead of sitting in the steam wondering what was said."
"Tampere Finnish sounds different from Helsinki. Captio AI handles both. The tori and the ruokakauppa are places I navigate completely alone."
"Finnish vowel length was a wall I couldn't get past in lip-reading. Captio AI captures the acoustic difference. Misunderstandings I had for years are gone now."
"Oulu Finnish is its own variety. Captio AI handles it. Family dinners are conversations I actually follow now."
"The sauna with friends is where everything important gets said. Captio AI captions it. I follow the conversation instead of sitting in the steam wondering what was said."
"Tampere Finnish sounds different from Helsinki. Captio AI handles both. The tori and the ruokakauppa are places I navigate completely alone."
"Finnish vowel length was a wall I couldn't get past in lip-reading. Captio AI captures the acoustic difference. Misunderstandings I had for years are gone now."
"Oulu Finnish is its own variety. Captio AI handles it. Family dinners are conversations I actually follow now."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow any conversation in Finnish.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store