What’s covered — Lifetime Local-Only
Every item below ships to your machine, runs locally, and is yours with no further payment. Your installed version keeps working forever.
On-device transcription
Transcribes 98 languages on your laptop — all on-device. One engine, named on the What runs on your machine page, with automatic speaker labels for every recording. No audio is ever sent to Kajo or any third party.
Unlimited imports
No per-minute cap and no file count after the purchase. Import a 4-hour interview or a 10-second voice note — same licence.
On-device summaries and cited chat
The built-in Gemma 4 model summarizes each recording — every summary carries a review-required line — and answers questions across a folder, or, with a confirm, the whole library, with citations back to the moment in the recording. No token bill, no API key.
On-device translation
The same Gemma 4 model translates transcripts into 59 languages entirely on your machine — no per-character cloud bill, no text sent to a translation API.
Folders
File recordings into nested folders — the only organization axis in your private library. Available on Free; Lifetime removes the import cap and lifts the 50-entry cap on the chat index.
Your installed version keeps working forever
There is no subscription to renew. The Lifetime licence unlocks unlimited imports and the Lifetime-gated surfaces; the copy you install keeps working, and the recordings, transcripts, and index stay on your disk whatever happens to us.
The Lifetime-gated surfaces
The same one-time $49 purchase unlocks the two convenience surfaces that stay off on Free — there is no separate tier:
Watch folders. Point Kajo at a directory of masters — new files land in the import queue automatically.
Batch export. Export many transcripts from the Library in one go.
Privacy is not a tier. Audio and transcripts never leave the device on Free or Lifetime, because there is no cloud-processing path — see /trust and /security. Because no vendor processes the audio, there is no transcription vendor that would need a Business Associate Agreement for that step.
Why lifetime is local-only — the honest explanation
On-device features have a fixed cost structure. Once the model weights are on your machine, there is no ongoing cloud bill for every transcript you run. We can honor a one-time price here because the economics are predictable — the cost is the initial download, then nothing per use.
That predictability is exactly why we can sell lifetime at all. Everything on your device — transcription, translation, summaries, cited chat, and library search — costs us almost nothing to keep running once the software is in your hands.
The “local-only” label is not a trick. It is an honest accounting: the entire on-device feature set, with no recurring fee and no surprise bills. The one thing that touches the network is licence validation — the app checks in when it is online, keeps Lifetime working for at least 30 days offline after the last check, and falls back to the Free allowance after that until it can check in again.
Lawyers with strict confidentiality requirements, journalists protecting sources, and researchers under an IRB protocol can run the whole loop locally — nothing leaves the machine.
Lifetime Local-Only — one $49 purchase
A single $49 one-time charge unlocks unlimited imports and Lifetime convenience (watch folders, batch export). Free already includes transcribe, translate, summarize, library folders, and cited chat within the allowance. Your installed version keeps working forever, local-only. Start free up to 5 files or 150 minutes.
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