Credits & privacy

What's free vs meteredCopy Anchor Link

Foxl Notes is built so the door is always open:

• Free, no account needed - opening the app, reading notes, editing, formatting, renaming, exporting, searching, and recording on the default engine.
• Billed by whoever runs the engine - transcription. Amazon bills your own AWS account on the default engine; Deepgram, AssemblyAI, OpenAI, ElevenLabs or Gemini bill the key you use (Gemini's free tier costs nothing), and OpenRouter bills your OpenRouter account's credits; the on-device engine costs nothing. The one exception is transcription on your Foxl credits: the Foxl Relay engine, and what Automatic uses where nothing else can transcribe, for any account signed in to Foxl.
• AI follows your model provider - summaries, titles, coaching reports, live translation, Live Q&A and the assistant. On your computer, that can be your own provider or Google's open Gemma 4 on a Mac with Apple Silicon, a Windows PC or a Linux x64 computer (see Your first note). Selecting Foxl on an account enabled for hosted models spends Foxl credits. Separately, accounts enabled for cloud Notes in the remote-chat pilot can have summaries, titles, coaching reports and speaker names written in the cloud on credits while the computer is offline. Haiku-only cloud chat does not enable these Notes jobs (how).

Basic Notes use does not require signing in to Foxl. A Foxl account is needed for the things that go through Foxl's servers: syncing notes between your computer and your phone, iPad or app.foxl.ai, push notifications when a transcript or summary finishes, transcription on your Foxl credits, and the hosted model and cloud summary services on accounts enabled for them.

What each half costsCopy Anchor Link

• Transcription costs whatever your engine charges by the minute of audio - Amazon Transcribe streaming rates on your AWS bill by default, your provider's rates on a pasted key, nothing on device. Only transcription on your Foxl credits is metered against them, by the second and with no minimum: Foxl's own Amazon Transcribe at Amazon's rate plus the cloud computer that carries the audio, about 0.4 credits a minute of audio. A meeting that also records your computer's sound runs two streams, so it uses about twice that. Each session holds about 2.3 credits while it runs, the most its five minutes can cost, and is charged only for what it used, so starting one needs that much available. The Usage Breakdown on your Account page lists it as Transcription. Voice input in a message box is transcribed the same way (how).
• AI summaries, titles, coaching reports, live translation, Live Q&A and the assistant cost whatever the provider you set for Foxl Agent charges for the model you picked, on the length of the transcript. A local model (Gemma 4 on this device, Ollama, LM Studio) costs nothing. Lighter models are cheaper and faster; heavier ones produce richer output. Live translation and Live Q&A make many small requests during a meeting, which is why they start on a fast, cheap model (see Choosing a model).

There is no plan to buy. When any engine refuses to keep transcribing - an expired AWS session, a key out of quota, an OpenRouter account without enough credits - Foxl says why and stops the recording; no note is filed and the audio is not kept. AWS account numbers, ARNs and access key ids are removed from that message.

How your audio is handledCopy Anchor Link

• Audio is streamed for transcription only while you're recording, and only to the engine you chose.
• Amazon Transcribe (default): the Foxl desktop signs a short-lived session with your own AWS credentials and your device streams the audio straight to AWS. Foxl's servers are not in that path. On the phone, your desktop hands over a one-hour, transcribe-only pass so the phone can sign for itself.
• Deepgram, AssemblyAI, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Gemini: your audio goes from your device to your Foxl desktop, which opens the connection to the vendor with your key and passes the audio through. The key is stored encrypted on that computer and is never sent to Foxl. On the iPhone and Android apps (after the App Store update to 0.9.3, or the 0.9.3 APK), a Deepgram, AssemblyAI, OpenAI or ElevenLabs key you paste there is kept in the phone's own secure storage instead, and the audio goes from the phone straight to the vendor, with no computer and no Foxl server in the path; that key is never sent to Foxl either. On Google's free tier, Google may use the audio and transcripts to improve its products; a key on a paid plan is not used that way (Gemini API pricing).
• OpenRouter: your audio goes from your device to your Foxl desktop, which cuts it into passages at the speaker's pauses and sends each passage to OpenRouter with your key; OpenRouter passes it to the company that runs the model you picked. Your OpenRouter account's privacy settings decide which of those companies may receive it; Refuse providers that train on your data in Settings > Model & provider does not cover this audio yet. The key is stored encrypted on that computer and is never sent to Foxl.
• On device: the audio never leaves your computer.
• Your Foxl credits (the Foxl Relay engine, and Automatic where nothing else can transcribe): the audio goes from your device to Foxl's own cloud service on Foxl's AWS account (US West, Oregon), which passes it to Amazon Transcribe, measures it for billing and keeps none of it. Foxl never stores your raw audio.
• The transcript, your notes and the recorded audio (so you can play a transcript line back) are kept on the device you recorded on - the desktop app's data folder, the phone app's own storage, or your browser's storage on app.foxl.ai.
• Sync. With Sync notes on (the default, per device, under Settings > Notes > Sync across devices), the note itself - transcript, notes, summary and report, not the audio - also goes to Foxl on your computer, which holds the shared copy and passes it to your other devices. A phone, iPad or browser sends and fetches notes only in requests sealed with the key it shares with your computer (the relay forwards them without it), and Foxl's servers keep none of them; a device with no encrypted connection yet waits rather than sending (see Transport security). The audio stays on the device that recorded it. For a file on disk, auto-save is still the way (see Exporting & saving).
• Deleting a note removes it and its audio from that device, and with sync on the note is deleted on your other devices too (an edit made elsewhere in the meantime wins, and the note comes back). Signing out of the web app clears the notes kept in that browser.
• When you're signed in, Foxl's relay is told when a transcript, summary or report has finished - the note's title and id, nothing else - so it can push a notification to your phone.
• What the AI sees: the transcript or note text, the Background tab, and My context for AI from Settings go to your model provider, or stay on this computer when that model runs on it (Gemma 4 on this device). With Use Foxl Agent tools on (the default), an ask can also read your files and run commands under Settings > Tools > Tools/MCP and your permission rules. A summary written in the cloud while your computer is offline sends the note's text to Amazon Bedrock through Foxl Relay, which does not store it.
• With Let Foxl Agent search your notes on (on by default, desktop only), Foxl keeps a copy of each note's title, summary and your own notes - and transcript, with Include transcripts (also on by default) - on this computer so Foxl Agent can search it. Notes the Agent reads go to its model provider like the rest of the chat, unless that model runs on this computer. Turning the option off deletes the copy.
• On the phone and the web, Notes AI replies (summaries, Ask AI answers, reports, automatic titles and live translation) stream back from your desktop through Foxl's relay protected by TLS only, so the relay can read them while they pass. See Transport security.

When everything runs on your computerCopy Anchor Link

On a Mac with Apple Silicon, a Windows PC or a Linux x64 computer you can keep a meeting on the computer: pick On device (Apple Silicon, offline) (on Windows and Linux, On device (offline)) under Settings > Notes > Recording and download Gemma 4 under Settings > Model & provider > On this device (or press Run Notes on this Mac in first-run setup, or Install both on this Mac on the Notes home; on Windows and Linux, Run Notes on this computer and Install both on this computer).

• The audio, the transcript and the summary stay on the computer. Once installed, the speech engine needs no network, and starting a recording contacts nothing.
• Summaries, coaching reports and the assistant run on Gemma when it is Foxl Agent's model, or when you pick it as the Summary AI model. The Title model, Run live features on and Live translation AI model rows start on Automatic, which prefers a fast model on a cloud provider this computer has set up, such as Amazon Bedrock (AWS keys or a profile) or an Anthropic API key. Pick the Gemma model in each of those rows to keep them on the computer too.
• What still goes online: when you are signed in to Foxl, the relay is told that a transcript, summary or report finished (its title and id) so it can notify your phone; an Outlook calendar or iCal link is read from its provider (see Calendar meetings); a Foxl Agent chat that reads your notes sends what it reads to the model that chat uses; and a phone, iPad or browser that syncs Notes on your account fetches the notes through the relay, sealed as described above.

Cost todayCopy Anchor Link

Foxl is free and there is no plan to buy. The two halves of Notes are affected differently, because only one of them is model inference:

• Transcription is unaffected. It is a streaming session on the engine you chose, not a model completion: on your own AWS account or the on-device engine it works with no Foxl account at all, and anywhere else a Foxl sign-in transcribes on your Foxl credits.
• AI summaries, titles and the assistant normally use the provider you set for Foxl Agent, through your desktop: your own key, local model or supported subscription. Foxl-hosted models spend credits on accounts enabled for that service. Offline cloud Notes jobs also spend credits and require the separate pilot access described above. With no provider configured, Settings > Notes > AI features shows a notice with a Model & provider button instead of a model list. Outside the cloud access described above, the phone and app.foxl.ai also need your computer reachable over the desktop relay for these AI features.

See Free tier for included features and account-access requirements, and Cost & model access for each billing path.