Kolva
Browser-based meeting recorder with AI transcripts, tasks and document search — pay per hour or £14/mo unlimited.
If you meet 5–10 hours a month, the arithmetic is hard to argue with: 10 hours of transcription runs about $2.50 on Kolva versus roughly $21.25/month on Otter Pro, $23.75 on Fireflies, or $23.75 on Fathom — all flat fees you pay whether or not you use them. Kolva's own calculator puts 4 hrs of meetings plus light docs and chat at $2.58/month. The £14 Unlimited tier is a sensible ceiling once meetings become a habit, and the £28 Pro adds premium AI models and sentiment analysis for heavy users. Go in knowing it's a beta Chrome product with 100+ users — no native apps, no SSO, and integrations limited to email and Claude MCP — so this is a solo or small-team tool, not an enterprise rollout.
Verified 16d ago · liveness 76/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/kolva
- Freelancers and consultants meeting 5–10 hours a month who want to skip flat subscription fees
- Small teams with unpredictable meeting volume
- Chrome-first professionals who want meetings, tasks and docs in one workspace
- Buyers who want itemized per-use pricing instead of a monthly plan
- Large organizations needing SSO, role-based access or compliance certifications
- Users who need native mobile or desktop apps rather than a Chrome workspace
- Teams requiring real-time collaborative document editing
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Skip Kolva if you need SSO, role-based access and compliance certifications, native desktop or mobile apps, or Slack/Notion/Drive integrations out of the box — it's a beta Chrome workspace built for solo users and small teams.
Going past the included 100MB of document storage costs $0.63 per GB per month, so a library of scanned PDFs or high-res images adds up quietly.
Pay-as-you-go suits freelancers and light users meeting a few hours a month — 10 hours runs about $2.50 versus $21.25 on Otter Pro. Unlimited at £14/mo fits anyone in meetings most days, and Unlimited Pro at £28/mo fits heavy users who want premium AI models and sentiment. Cheaper than stacking Otter ($21.25) + Notion Plus ($10) + Todoist ($6.25) + ChatGPT Plus ($20) = $57.50/mo; pricier than a single-purpose free tier.
In short
Kolva — Browser-based meeting recorder with AI transcripts, tasks and document search — pay per hour or £14/mo unlimited. Best for Freelancers and consultants meeting 5–10 hours a month who want to skip flat subscription fees, Small teams with unpredictable meeting volume, Chrome-first professionals who want meetings, tasks and docs in one workspace. Free to start; paid plans from £14/mo.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Kolva? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Record meetings directly in a Chrome tab — no bot joins, no extension
- AI meeting transcription with speaker identification and speaker naming that learns who's who
- AI meeting summary and action item extraction
- Meeting deep search across all past recordings
- Meeting series intelligence to spot recurring meeting patterns
- Pay-as-you-go metered pricing from $0.25/hour with per-action cost shown in usage history
- Smart Documents: upload, search, and organize PDFs with AI
- Natural-language RAG AI Search across your workspace
- AI-powered task breakdown with time estimates
- Email integration that parses messages into actionable tasks
- Secure Vault with PIN-protected document storage
- Claude Code MCP integration
- Focus Mode daily planning canvas
- AI chat on standard models (Unlimited) or premium AI models (Unlimited Pro)
- Entity detection and sentiment analysis (Unlimited Pro)
About Kolva
Kolva is a Chrome-based workspace that records your meetings straight from a browser tab — no bot joins the call and there's no extension to install. You open a tab, start recording, share the tab audio, and Kolva returns a transcript with speaker identification, an AI summary, and an extracted action list. Zoom, Teams and Meet calls all land in the same searchable history, so you can ask later questions like 'what did Sarah say about the deadline?' and get an answer. Around the recording core, Kolva bundles the everyday work tools most people end up paying for separately: Smart Documents for uploading and semantic-searching PDFs, natural-language AI Search across your workspace, Task Intelligence that breaks a goal into subtasks with time estimates, email-to-task extraction, a PIN-protected Secure Vault, and a Focus Mode canvas for planning the day. A Claude MCP integration connects Kolva to Claude Code. Pricing is the differentiator. Every AI action is metered and shown individually: meeting transcription with speaker ID and summary around $0.25/hour (or 20p/hr on the published pricing page), task breakdown ~$0.01/task, document indexing ~$0.01 per 1K tokens, AI Search ~$0.02/query, auto-organizing docs ~$0.05 per 10 docs. If you'd rather not track usage, Unlimited is £14/month (fair use 40 hours, then recording continues on the standard model) and Unlimited Pro is £28/month with premium AI chat models, entity detection and sentiment, and 100 hours of unlimited transcription. Every account gets $2 of free credit each month for the first two months, no card required, plus 100MB of free document storage ($0.63/GB/month beyond that). Data stays in the EU and Kolva states it never trains on your content.
Behind the Verdict
Kolva's core insight is that most people aren't in meetings 20+ hours a month, so a flat subscription is a tax on idle months. The pay-as-you-go model makes that visible: transcription is roughly $0.25/hour with speaker ID, summary and action items bundled in, and the pricing page itemizes every other AI action from $0.01 to $0.05. There's a calculator on the pricing page that estimates your monthly cost from meeting hours, documents, chat messages and task breakdowns — a level of pricing transparency most transcription tools don't offer. The recording mechanic is the other differentiator. Because Kolva captures tab audio in Chrome, no bot appears in the participant list and no extension is installed. That matters for client calls where a 'Fireflies bot has joined' notification changes the room. The trade-off is that you record from a desktop Chrome tab, and any meeting you don't take in the browser isn't captured. The bundle is broader than most meeting AI tools. Smart Documents gives you semantic search over uploaded PDFs; Task Intelligence turns a stated goal into subtasks with time estimates; email integration converts messages into tasks; AI Search is a RAG layer over your workspace; Secure Vault adds a PIN-protected store for sensitive documents; Focus Mode is a daily planning canvas. A Claude MCP integration lets Claude Code read from your Kolva workspace. That said, integrations are genuinely thin — email and Claude MCP, per the site's own navigation — so if your stack runs on Slack, Notion and Google Drive APIs, verify fit before committing. Weaknesses are real and mostly structural. It's beta, Chrome-only, and the pricing page is the only public page that renders a full tier list — /changelog and /release-notes currently redirect to sign-in, so there's no public release cadence to inspect. The Unlimited tiers are fair-use capped at 40 hours (100 on Pro); past that, recordings drop to the standard model rather than stopping, which is a reasonable design but worth knowing. Storage beyond 100MB is $0.63/GB/month. And there are no enterprise controls — no SSO, RBAC or compliance certifications surfaced — so procurement teams will bounce. Where it fits: freelancers, consultants and small teams who meet a handful of hours a month and want transcripts, tasks and a searchable document layer without stacking Otter + Notion + Todoist + ChatGPT subscriptions. Where it doesn't: large orgs, teams needing native desktop or mobile apps, or anyone who'd rather not track metered usage.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Kolva actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You're on a client discovery call in Zoom. You open kolva.io in Chrome, click record, and share the tab audio. No bot joins the room, so the client sees nothing unusual. You end the meeting and Kolva returns a transcript with speaker names, a summary and an action list.
Outcome: About $0.25 for the hour, and a searchable record you can query weeks later with 'what did the client say about scope?'
You forward a client email to Kolva, which parses it into a task with the details attached. Then you ask AI Task Intelligence to break the Q3 goal into weekly subtasks with time estimates, and plan the day on the Focus Mode canvas.
Outcome: Roughly a cent per task breakdown and a cent per email, instead of a $6.25/mo Todoist subscription and a $20/mo AI assistant.
You upload a vendor agreement as a Smart Document, let Kolva index it, then ask a plain-language question about the renewal clause. Sensitive documents go into the PIN-protected Secure Vault while staying searchable.
Outcome: Indexing costs about a penny per 1K tokens and each RAG query about $0.02 — with the first 100MB of storage free.
Use Cases
- Record a Zoom, Teams or Meet call from a Chrome tab and get a transcript with speaker ID, summary and action items for about $0.25 per hour.
- Upload a PDF contract and ask Kolva to summarize key clauses using semantic search at roughly $0.01 per 1K tokens.
- Say 'break down Q3 goals into weekly tasks' and receive subtasks with time estimates for about $0.01 per task.
- Email a client request to Kolva and have it automatically create a task with the details extracted.
- Search across all past meetings in plain language — 'what did Sarah say about the deadline?' — for about $0.02 per query.
- Store sensitive documents in a PIN-protected vault while keeping them searchable by AI.
- Connect Kolva to Claude Code via MCP so an agent can pull your meetings, tasks and docs into a coding workflow.
- Plan the day on the Focus Mode canvas and let AI Task Intelligence sequence your work.
Limitations
- Kolva is browser-based and requires Chrome for meeting recording — no extension and no bot, and the pricing page describes unlimited transcription as fair-use capped at 40 h/mo (100 h/mo on Unlimited Pro), with recordings continuing on the standard model after the cap rather than being cut off.
- Premium AI chat models, entity detection and sentiment are limited to the £28/mo Unlimited Pro tier, while base tiers use standard models.
- Public /changelog and /whats-new pages redirect to sign-in, so no release cadence is visible, and the product is described in beta with 100+ users.
as of 2026-09-22
Verification history
We have re-verified Kolva 8 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 8 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Kolva tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Solo user or freelancer testing Kolva on a handful of calls a month — you get $2 of free credit every month for the first two months with no card required.
What this tier adds
Free entry point: pay-as-you-go metered access to every AI feature from $0.25/hour, plus 100MB of free document storage.
Unlimited
£14/mo
Ideal for
Anyone in meetings most days who wants a predictable bill — consultants, PMs and small team leads meeting 10–40 hours a month.
What this tier adds
Adds unlimited transcription at the best transcription model with fair use of 40 h/mo, plus AI chat on standard models and meeting series intelligence.
Unlimited Pro
£28/mo
Ideal for
Heavy meeting loads and analysts who need premium AI — 40–100 hours a month of calls plus sentiment and entity extraction.
What this tier adds
Raises the fair-use cap to 100 h/mo and adds premium AI chat models, entity detection and sentiment analysis on top of Unlimited.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Kolva's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Pay-as-you-go suits freelancers and light users meeting a few hours a month — 10 hours runs about $2.50 versus $21.25 on Otter Pro. Unlimited at £14/mo fits anyone in meetings most days, and Unlimited Pro at £28/mo fits heavy users who want premium AI models and sentiment. Cheaper than stacking Otter ($21.25) + Notion Plus ($10) + Todoist ($6.25) + ChatGPT Plus ($20) = $57.50/mo; pricier than a single-purpose free tier.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Kolva — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Freelancer: under 5 minutes — sign in with Google, click record in a Chrome tab, share tab audio, and you have your first transcript inside the call's length. Small team: about 10 minutes to connect email and run a first task breakdown. Ops user with a document library: 15–20 minutes, mostly spent uploading and indexing PDFs at ~$0.01 per 1K tokens.
Switching to or from Kolva
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Otter.ai: export your transcripts, then re-record new calls in Kolva; there's no native import of Otter's transcript history surfaced on the site.
- →From Fireflies.ai: stop the bot from joining meetings and start recording from the Chrome tab instead — new calls land in Kolva's searchable history.
- →From Fathom: switch to browser tab capture so no bot appears in the participant list, and keep new meeting notes inside Kolva.
- →From a Notion + Todoist stack: use Smart Documents for the notes layer and Task Intelligence for the task layer so both feed the same AI Search index.
- ↗To Otter.ai: if you need a native mobile app and enterprise controls, export your Kolva transcripts and recordings before cancelling.
- ↗To Fireflies.ai: if you want a broader integration marketplace (Slack, CRM, Drive), plan to re-record rather than bulk-import.
- ↗To Notion: if you need real-time collaborative document editing, move Smart Documents content over manually — Kolva is single-workspace, not collaborative.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Kolva”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Kolva” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Kolva.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Kolva
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Kolva, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Read.ai
Read.ai records your meetings across Zoom, Meet, and Teams, then lets you search everything it captured.
Jamie
Jamie is a bot-free AI meeting note taker that records from your own device and turns any call or in-person meeting into transcripts, summaries, and action
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai is an AI meeting notetaker that transcribes, summarizes, and searches your calls across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Kolva vs Gem
Choose Gem if you lead recruiting for a growing or large team and need AI agents to source, screen, and detect fraud—it's a true all-in-one ATS/CRM with proven enterprise integrations. Choose Kolva if you're a freelancer or small team that wants affordable, pay-as-you-go transcription, task, and document AI without monthly commitments. They serve entirely different jobs—recruiting operations vs. personal productivity.
Kolva vs Poke Interaction Co
Choose Poke if you want a proactive AI assistant that lives inside your messaging apps to manage email, calendar, and tasks with automations—especially via Apple Messages or WhatsApp. Choose Kolva if you need pay-as-you-go meeting transcription and task/document AI without monthly fees, ideal for freelancers with variable usage. The winner depends on your primary workflow: messaging-centric vs meeting-centric.
Kolva vs Guesty
Which tool fits you depends entirely on your domain. Guesty is a powerful AI-driven vacation rental platform for property managers with 4+ listings, featuring AI bank reconciliation and automated messaging — but it’s expensive with add-ons. Kolva is a pay-as-you-go workspace for freelancers and small teams who need meeting transcription, task breakdown, and document AI without subscription lock-in. There is no overlap: choose Guesty if you manage rentals; choose Kolva for meetings and productivity.
Alternatives to Kolva
View all
Read.ai
Read.ai records your meetings across Zoom, Meet, and Teams, then lets you search everything it captured.
Jamie
Jamie is a bot-free AI meeting note taker that records from your own device and turns any call or in-person meeting into transcripts, summaries, and action
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai is an AI meeting notetaker that transcribes, summarizes, and searches your calls across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
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