German live captions and productivity tool for phone & video calls
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow German phone & video calls
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing German speakers.
Follow the call in real time
- Captions appear word by word as the other person speaks
- Works on any call — no app integration required
- Put the call on speaker and point the microphone toward it
- Handles compressed call audio accurately
International and foreign-language calls
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- Translates in real time as they speak
- 60+ languages, no setup
- For family abroad, international business, or travel
Transcribe any call recording
- Record the call and upload for a complete written transcript
- Review instructions, information, and decisions after
- Organised by speaker
- Works on any call recording
Key information extracted from any call
- Important points pulled from any call transcript
- Useful for medical calls, customer service, and work calls
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
A catch-up with a parent, a friend who doesn't slow down, a sibling calling from a noisy street. German family calls happen at full speed in any dialect, with half-finished sentences and no warning.
A one-on-one with a manager, a team stand-up, a client update. German work culture runs heavily on calls — a quick request to 'kurz telefonieren' is the default for anything faster than email.
An Arztpraxis callback, a lab result, a Rezept query, an appointment confirmation. German healthcare relies on the phone for results and prescriptions — high-stakes calls where missing one word about a dosage has real consequences.
Sparkasse security verification, a Stadtwerke billing dispute, an insurance claim, an automated Bandansage menu. German customer service is phone-first, with fast agents and systems that wait only seconds for input.
A call with an Austrian or Swiss contact, a supplier abroad, a colleague speaking German as a second language. Accent variation stacks on top of phone compression.
FaceTime with family, WhatsApp calls with friends, Zoom with colleagues. Even with video, lip-reading at pace on a compressed stream is exhausting — captions let you watch the person, not decode their mouth.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for the calls you have been avoiding
Captions as they speak
Words appear on screen word by word while the other person is still talking. You read what they say at the same pace everyone else hears it — no delay, no reconstruction.
Works on any call app
Captio AI does not need to integrate with any platform. Put the call on speaker, point the microphone toward the audio, and read the captions. It works the same way for any app on any device.
No more asking for repeats
Every word is on screen as it is said. If you missed something, glance at the caption rather than interrupting the call — the full sentence is there.
Handles call audio accurately
Compressed phone audio is less clean than in-person speech. Captio AI is built for real-world audio conditions, including the reduced quality of standard phone and VoIP calls.
Any language
For calls with family abroad, international colleagues, or foreign-language customer service. Live Translator captions and translates in real time with no manual setup.
Record and review after
Record any call and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — useful for medical instructions, work decisions, and anything worth having in writing.
Why German is hard to understand
No visual channel
- On a call there are no lips to read at all
- German already hides many sounds — velar and uvular consonants made deep in the throat give little on the mouth. On a phone call the visual channel disappears entirely, so a deaf caller who normally leans on lip-reading is left with compressed audio and nothing to fall back on.
Fricatives stripped
- Phone compression removes German's throat and hiss sounds first
- German relies on high-frequency sounds — the /x/ in 'Bach', the /ç/ in 'ich', the affricates /pf/ and /ts/, and f/v/s. Narrowband phone audio, roughly 300–3400 Hz, strips exactly this range, so on a compressed line these sounds smear together and words that depend on them become hard to separate.
Fortis–lenis collapse
- p/b, t/d, and k/g blur on a compressed line
- German distinguishes fortis and lenis consonant pairs — p/b, t/d, k/g — that are already near-identical on the lips and get further degraded by phone compression. On a call about an appointment time, a house number, or a medication, a single blurred pair changes the word with no visual cue to correct it.
Dialect with no anchor
- A Bavarian or Saxon caller shifts the whole sound system
- German regional varieties move vowels, consonants, and rhythm dramatically. On a phone call a deaf caller calibrated to one dialect meets a shifted phonological system with no face to read — a Bavarian supplier or a Saxon call-centre agent can be far harder to follow than the same words in standard German.
Compounds at speed
- Long German words run together in fast connected speech
- German builds long compound words and, at natural call pace, drops unstressed syllables and assimilates clusters so the words run into one another. Without the visual segmentation the lips provide, a deaf caller faces a dense acoustic stream with no way to mark where one word ends and the next begins.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store11 million people. A relay service most of them cannot use.
An estimated 11.1 million people in Germany — around 16.2% of the adult population — live with hearing impairment, and roughly 235,000 are deaf or severely hard of hearing. Of the 9.24 million who self-report hearing loss, fewer than half wear hearing aids. For all of them, the phone call that books an appointment, verifies a bank account, or clarifies a prescription is not optional.
Germany does provide a national relay service, Tess Relay-Dienste, which connects deaf callers to a sign-language interpreter over video. But it works only for people fluent in German Sign Language — a minority of those with hearing loss, since most acquire it later in life and never sign — and it routes every call through a third party who must be available. The German Accessibility Act (BFSG), which took effect on 28 June 2025, now requires telecom services to offer real-time text alongside voice, but the obligation is new and coverage is still uneven.
The result is a large population for whom independent, private phone calls remain out of reach — dependent on a relay they may not qualify for, or on asking a hearing relative to call on their behalf. Captio AI closes that gap: put any German call on speaker — an Arztpraxis callback, a Sparkasse security check, a catch-up with family across a dialect divide — and read the captions in real time, with no relay operator and no third party.
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
"Arztpraxis callbacks were my dread — I'd miss the doctor's name, the medication, the follow-up time. Now I put the call on speaker and read every word. I haven't had to ring back to check once."
"The Tess relay only works if you sign, and I lost my hearing as an adult. A Saxon call-centre agent on a compressed line was impossible. Captio AI captions the call in real time and I answer for myself."
"Eight people on a German conference call in different regional accents — I used to catch maybe half. On speaker with Captio AI I follow everyone and I actually contribute now."
"My Sparkasse locked my account and told me to phone them. A year ago I'd have asked someone else to make that call. I put it on speaker, answered every security question myself, and sorted it. That felt significant."
"Arztpraxis callbacks were my dread — I'd miss the doctor's name, the medication, the follow-up time. Now I put the call on speaker and read every word. I haven't had to ring back to check once."
"The Tess relay only works if you sign, and I lost my hearing as an adult. A Saxon call-centre agent on a compressed line was impossible. Captio AI captions the call in real time and I answer for myself."
"Eight people on a German conference call in different regional accents — I used to catch maybe half. On speaker with Captio AI I follow everyone and I actually contribute now."
"My Sparkasse locked my account and told me to phone them. A year ago I'd have asked someone else to make that call. I put it on speaker, answered every security question myself, and sorted it. That felt significant."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every call in German.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store