---
title: "Wave vs Murlivo (2026): cloud note taker or offline recorder - Murlivo"
url: "https://murlivo.com/wave-vs-murlivo/"
language: "en"
description: "Wave or Murlivo? Wave transcribes in the cloud, Murlivo offline on your Android phone. Compared: price, free minutes, account, watch apps, languages, notes."
---

# Wave vs Murlivo: cloud note taker or offline voice recorder

Checked 1 November 2026 by the Murlivo team.

Quick answer

Pick Wave if you want AI summaries, meeting bots and one library on your phone, computer and browser, and you are fine with uploading your audio and paying once you pass 30 free minutes a month. Pick Murlivo if you want each recording transcribed offline on your Android phone, with no account and no subscription, and saved as a Markdown note in your own folder.

**Murlivo for Android** Records and transcribes offline on your phone. Free, no account. A Wear OS watch is optional.

[Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odezio.murlivo)

Wave and Murlivo both record speech and give it back to you as text, and both have an app for Wear OS watches. The big difference is where the work happens. Wave uploads your audio to its servers, which write the transcript and a summary. Murlivo writes the transcript on your phone, without internet, and saves it as a plain text file in a folder you choose.

## Wave and Murlivo side by side

Wave and Murlivo side by side, checked 22 October 2026.

| What | Wave | Murlivo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Where transcription runs | In the cloud. Recordings are uploaded to Wave's server and transcribed by an outside speech service. You can record offline; the text comes when you are back online.[1, 2] | On your phone, offline, after a one-time speech model download. Nothing is uploaded to be transcribed.[9, 11] |
| Price and free limit | Free: 30 minutes of audio a month. Pro: from $80 a year, or $15 a month, on wave.co; prices vary by country and by where you buy. Teams: from $7.50 per user a month, at least 5 users.[3, 4] | Free, with no ads, no subscription and no in-app purchase.[9, 12] |
| Account | Needed. You sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft.[5] | None. No sign-up, email or password.[9] |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android, any browser, Mac and Windows.[2] | Android phones with Android 11 or newer.[9] |
| Watch apps | Apple Watch, and Wear OS 3 or newer since July 2026. The watch records and hands the audio to your phone, which uploads it.[2, 6, 7] | Wear OS 3 or newer. The watch records, keeps the audio until the phone is in range, and the phone transcribes it offline.[9, 10] |
| Languages | 76 languages, with speaker labels and translation after recording.[2] | Detects the spoken language, or you choose one of 20.[9] |
| Where your notes go | Your Wave library, synced across devices. Export to Notion, Google Docs, OneNote, Evernote, PDF, Word, email or a public link. Markdown files only from the desktop app; no .txt or SRT export.[2, 8] | One plain Markdown file per day, in an Inbox folder inside a folder you choose, such as an Obsidian vault. The audio is kept in a subfolder.[9] |

## What Wave does better

- **Summaries and chat.** Wave writes a summary with the key points and action items, has templates such as meeting notes and lecture notes, and lets you ask questions across all your recordings.[2]
- **More devices.** The same library on iPhone, iPad, Android, the web, Mac, Windows, Apple Watch and Wear OS. Murlivo is for Android only.[2]
- **Online meetings.** Connect your calendar and Wave sends a meeting bot to Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls.[2]
- **More languages.** 76 languages, translation after recording, and Voice ID, which learns the voices of the people you talk to and labels them.[2]
- **Exports to work tools.** Notion, Google Docs, OneNote and Evernote, plus PDF, Word and share links.[8]

## What Murlivo does better

- **Offline and private.** Murlivo records and transcribes with no internet connection, even in airplane mode, once the speech model has downloaded, and it never uploads your audio to be transcribed. Wave records offline but uploads the audio to get text.[1, 2, 9, 11]
- **Free, with no account.** Murlivo has no subscription, no in-app purchase and no sign-up. Wave's free plan stops at 30 minutes a month, counted as one pool for all your recordings.[4, 9, 12]
- **Notes in your own files.** Each transcript lands in a plain Markdown file in your folder, so Obsidian or any text editor can open it. Wave keeps sessions in its own library, and you export each one to another app or file.[8, 9]
- **Long recordings.** A recording can run for hours: Murlivo stops at 2 hours by default, and you can change that limit or turn it off.[9]
- **A Wear OS watch that works without a signal.** Both apps record on the watch. With Murlivo, once the speech model has downloaded, the text appears even when neither the watch nor the phone has internet.[6, 9, 10]

## Who should pick which

**Pick Wave** if you use an iPhone, a computer or an Apple Watch too, if you want summaries and action items more than a full transcript, if you record online meetings, or if you speak a language outside Murlivo's 20.

**Pick Murlivo** if your recordings should not go to a server, for example private journals or interviews you promised to keep confidential; if you record often or for a long time and do not want a monthly plan; if you keep notes in Obsidian or plain files; or if you often have no signal.

Know Murlivo's limits before you choose: it makes no summaries, has no meeting bot and no cloud copy of your notes, and how fast it transcribes depends on your phone, because the phone does the work.[9]

## How we compared

We make Murlivo and wrote this page, so read it knowing that. We compared the two apps from Wave's own website, help pages and privacy policy, and from Murlivo's product facts, all checked on 22 October 2026. Every claim about Wave links to its source in the References. We did not test Wave's paid plans. Wave changes often: if anything here is wrong or out of date, write to [support@murlivo.com](mailto:support@murlivo.com) and we will fix it.

Wave is a trademark of its owner. Murlivo is not linked to, sponsored by or endorsed by Wave or its maker. We name Wave only to compare the two apps.

## References

1. [Wave privacy policy (Audio Recordings, AssemblyAI)](https://wave.co/privacy), checked 22 October 2026.
2. [Wave home page and its questions](https://wave.co/), checked 22 October 2026.
3. [Wave pricing](https://wave.co/pricing), checked 22 October 2026.
4. [Wave Help: plans and pricing](https://help.wave.co/account-billing/wave-plans-and-pricing), checked 22 October 2026.
5. [Wave Help: using Wave on multiple devices](https://help.wave.co/getting-started/using-wave-on-multiple-devices), checked 22 October 2026.
6. [Wave Help: recording on an Android watch (Wear OS)](https://help.wave.co/recording/recording-on-android-watch-wear-os), checked 22 October 2026.
7. [Wave Comes to Wear OS (Wave update, 21 July 2026)](https://wave.co/updates/wave-wear-os), checked 22 October 2026.
8. [Wave Help: sharing and exporting your Wave sessions](https://help.wave.co/managing-sharing/sharing-and-exporting-your-wave-sessions), checked 22 October 2026.
9. [Murlivo product facts](https://murlivo.com/product-facts/), checked 22 October 2026.
10. [Murlivo on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odezio.murlivo), checked 22 October 2026.
11. [Murlivo privacy policy](https://murlivo.com/privacy/), checked 22 October 2026.
12. [Murlivo pricing](https://murlivo.com/pricing.md), checked 22 October 2026.