# Hearing Buddy - Speech To Text — user reviews > 17 indexed App Store user reviews of Hearing Buddy by Krager Labs LLC, rated 4.10/5 from 126 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hearing-buddy-speech-to-text/id6747363502/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hearing-buddy-speech-to-text/id6747363502.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 80 · 4★ 13 · 3★ 14 · 2★ 9 · 1★ 10 ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Too complicated *2026-09-01* Way to complicated ### 1/5 — Does not work *2026-07-27* Can’t get past rating requirement ### 2/5 — Poor word understanding *2026-09-06* Tried this in a quiet home environment with just my husband and myself. It barely recognized the words either of us were speaking. I had to be 2 feet from him in order for it to pick up his words. Not a good tool for those trying to use it to help them understand conversation in an already complex world of deciphering what others are saying. My recommendation is increase your AI tools conversational speed and distance before you put on market. ### 2/5 — Flawed captioning *2026-08-31* Poor captioning, other platforms I have tried are much better. App interferes with my hearing aid volume, not cool. ### 3/5 — Not bad *2026-09-08* The captioning isn’t perfect. There are some errors, and some words are being skipped. ### 3/5 — Not free as advertised *2026-09-08* Started out with ad on instagram and picked. Free buddy only to find it is needing a credit card and costs $59 a year. (Disabled for 45 years so I can’t afford it.) It did not pick up the cat screeching which was great but heard heaven instead of have been on my small test. Biggest downside is that it does not pair with my Rexton Bicore hearing aids ### 3/5 — Liar review Revise *2026-08-30* Ok. He app is free but if you want any of the benefits suggested, you have to pay. I have a 70% bilateral hearing loss. **Developer response:** Thanks for checking out Hearing Buddy - we do not charge for captions, no hour tracking, it is truly free and unlimited. Name alerts, premium buddies and other features are in our Buddy+ plan but the core live transcription is always private, on-device, and free. ### 3/5 — Good, not great (yet) *2026-06-08* Two things that I’d like to see are different font types and improved language transcription speed when parsing words. This is a very good starting app that could eventually be a viable replacement app for people looking to move off of Android. I am not a huge fan of the threat of subscription models taking over virtually everything as well, so I hope this app and its features stay free within reasonable limits. I understand you need to make money to cover development costs. Consider applying for grants from governments and/or institutions to help fund this. This is the closest thing to getting folks with hearing complications to switch to iOS in my opinion as a Deaf person who relies on Google’s Live Transcribe. I’d consider this to be 3.5/5 right now with room for improvements. ### 3/5 — I wanna love it *2026-05-21* But there are some issues that need to be ironed out, I can excuse the imperfect captions but the Mac app just doesn’t connect to my iPhone very well. **Developer response:** Hi Jackienova! Thank you for the patience and honest feedback. You're right, the Mac to iPhone connection needs work, and making it solid over local connections is an area we've been looking to improve. We want you to love it too. Would you be able to email us (support@hearingbuddyapp.com) more specifics so we can diagnose? Thanks a ton for your support! ~ Lilly & Scott ### 3/5 — Not accurate *2026-05-14* I find the conversations are not accurate when it listens in. A lot of mistakes. I also can not cancel my subscription anywhere, so be aware of that. **Developer response:** Hey, thanks so much for the honest feedback. You're right that accuracy has room to grow. We use 100% on-device transcription to keep your conversations private, which can be less accurate than cloud models, but we just pushed more improvements this week and more are on the way. We want to balance accuracy, privacy, and accessibility, and we still have work to do. Also good news on canceling: we just added a Manage Subscription section in Settings to make it simple. Really appreciate you giving us a try! Please reach out anytime at support (support@hearingbuddyapp.com) if there's anything else we can help with. ## Most praised reviews (7 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Excellent! *2026-08-11* Downloaded App on iPad mini for my elderly father. He is unable to hear any of the conversations at the dinner table especially when we go out to dinner. Works in offline mode so he doesn’t need cellular service at a restaurant. This app will be life altering for him. Thank you! ### 5/5 — Impressive accuracy *2026-07-21* Great for table conversation in noisy congregate dining room in senior living. ### 5/5 — Trial *2026-06-16* I’m trying this app to see if it helps with conversations ### 5/5 — 好 *2026-05-08* good！好 ### 5/5 — Best live captions app *2026-02-16* I’m hard of hearing and finally found an app that helps during work!! I love the summaries and when my hearing buddy taps me for a name or question alert. Was getting a coffee this morning and it tapped me when they called my name. ### 4/5 — A new world for my 93 year old Dad *2026-06-26* I tested this app in both French and English before we purchased a subscription for my Dad. I am amazed by how this changed things for him overnight. He went from not knowing what was being discussed at the noisy dinner table in his senior residence to becoming part of the conversation (or at minimum following it!). We also tested it at a very loud Happy Hour event with live music and many speakers and it did very well, with not many errors. The interface is pretty friendly with need for some small tweaks (big or shaky hands may have some difficulty with small tabs to switch between live captions and other options) but the developer is super responsive, answering my questions via email almost immediately after sending them. Bravo! **Developer response:** Thank you! We are glad the app is helping your Dad. More improvements to the app coming soon! 🎉 ### 4/5 — Great step forward for hearing impaired *2025-10-05* Great app! Very nice to label speakers and it tries to learn to distinguish among the different people speaking. I don’t think the underlying transcription models are good enough yet, they make tons of mistakes especially in noisy environments or with different accents. Good accuracy for 1-on-1s or very controlled environments, but in like a bar or restaurant with multiple speakers the models just don’t cut it. None of this is the app’s fault though. Wish Apple improved the models more. **Developer response:** Thanks for much for the review! The models are better but still not there yet, we will keep trying hard to make improvements 🙌 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-13.*