Top 10 Call Recording Apps: What Still Works in 2026

Most call recording listicles are recommending apps that stopped working years ago. Before picking one, three things changed underneath this whole category.

Google’s Play policy update of 6 April 2022 said the Accessibility API “is not designed for and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording” (Google Play policy announcement), which closed the workaround most Android recorders relied on. Apple went the other way and built recording into the phone itself in iOS 18.1 (Apple Newsroom). And two apps that show up in nearly every roundup, Rev Call Recorder and Truecaller’s iPhone recording, have since been switched off.

So the honest first step is not choosing an app. It is checking whether your phone already does this.

Vendor information last verified: 18 September 2026.

What Actually Changed

Three separate events gutted this category between 2022 and 2025, and most roundups have not caught up.

Android lost the workaround. Developers had used the Accessibility API to capture call audio, and Google’s policy announcement of 6 April 2022 stated that the API “is not designed for and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording” (Google Play policy announcement). Dialer apps are a separate case. Google’s own Phone app has a record option on Pixel 6 and later with Android 14, and on other phones with Android 9 and later, in countries where Google supports it, and it notifies both parties when recording starts and stops (Google Phone app help). Other manufacturers’ dialers vary by model and country.

Apple built it in. iOS 18.1 arrived in October 2024 with call recording in the Phone app, and Apple says participants are automatically notified when a recording starts (Apple Newsroom). Recordings save to a Call Recordings folder in Notes, with a transcript in supported regions and languages and, on Apple Intelligence devices, a summary. It works when you are talking to one other person, and it is not currently available in the European Union and several other countries (Apple iPhone User Guide). There is a catch worth knowing: both people hear an audio notice, so this is not a discreet option, by design. FaceTime audio calls can be recorded too (Apple Support), and we walk through the steps in our guide to recording FaceTime calls with audio on iPhone and Mac.

The apps started shutting down. Rev ended support for its Call Recorder app on 31 October 2025 and told users to download recordings before the cutoff (Rev support). Truecaller stopped iPhone call recording from 30 September 2025, according to TechCrunch’s report of the company’s announcement (TechCrunch). Both still appear in listicles today.

Before You Record Anything

This part matters more than which app you pick, and it is the part most articles reduce to one line.

Consent law splits roughly two ways. Some jurisdictions need only one party to agree (you count), others need everyone on the call to agree. In the US, federal law requires the consent of at least one party (18 U.S.C. 2511), and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press counts about 11 states that primarily require all-party consent: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington (RCFP Reporters Recording Guide). The RCFP also notes that many of these laws carry criminal penalties and some allow civil lawsuits. Outside the US the rules differ again. In Victoria, Australia, for example, it is legal to record a private conversation you are a party to (Victoria Legal Aid).

Two practical rules that keep you clear. Say it out loud at the start, every time, even where the law does not require it, because it costs three seconds and removes most of the problem. And if the call crosses a state or national border, assume the stricter rule applies, which is the same advice the RCFP gives for calls between US states.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the law where each person on the call is, or ask a lawyer. We went through the wider question of when recording is fair as well as legal in our guide to ethical meeting recording.

Worth adding: the iOS audio notice is Apple making that decision for you. Some people find it annoying. It also means the other person always knows.

The Apps At A Glance

Status is the column to read first. “Device dependent” means the app itself is fine but Android will only let it record if your manufacturer’s dialer allows it.

Sources, checked 2026-09-17: ScreenApp pricing

The Apps, Ranked

Ordered by whether they solve the problem you actually have. Two of the ten are here as warnings rather than recommendations.

The order is editorial judgement, not a test score: tools that still record both sides of a call according to their vendor’s own documentation come first, then platform reach, then price. ScreenApp is listed first because it is our product and it fits calls that happen on a computer.

Status was checked against each vendor's own pages and app store listings on 18 September 2026. Android behaviour varies by manufacturer, so test before relying on any of these.

Record The App, Not The Line

Here is the shift worth making if most of your calls are for work.

The reason mobile call recording is such a mess is that it fights the phone network, and on both iPhone and Android the dependable option is now the recorder built into the phone. Meanwhile, many business calls stopped being phone calls. They run through Zoom, Meet, Teams or a softphone connected to VoIP services, all of which are just audio on a computer.

Audio on a computer is a much easier problem. The mobile call-recording policies above do not apply, and you capture the call audio as your computer plays it instead of whatever the handset allows.

So if you are trying to record client calls, sales calls or interviews, moving them onto a platform you can record is a far better use of an afternoon than testing six Android apps to find which one your phone tolerates. A browser-based call recorder or a dedicated meeting recorder covers it, and neither cares what phone you own.

One thing to check before you pick: some tools join the call as a visible bot participant, which changes the room. We rounded up the meeting recorders that work without a bot if that matters to your clients.

Mobile-only calls are the genuine exception. For those, use whatever your handset provides natively and accept the announcement.

From Recording To Notes

A recording you never listen to again is just storage costs.

That is the part the app list above mostly ignores. Several of the phone apps capture audio and stop there, which means the work of finding the one thing you needed still falls to you, scrubbing a timeline weeks later.

Transcription changes the economics. Once a call is text, you can search it, quote it and paste the relevant part into a CRM note in seconds. A meeting summarizer cuts a 40-minute call down to the decisions and the follow-ups, which is the version anyone will actually read.

The pattern that actually sticks, from watching people do this badly: record everything, transcribe everything, keep almost nothing. Skim the summary the same day, save the two lines that matter into wherever the work lives, and let the audio expire.

If your calls are mostly team meetings rather than one-to-one, our roundup of AI meeting assistants for Teams covers the tools built for that.