Call recorder apps have a bunch of legitimate uses. Some people like to keep phone calls recorded for legal and security reasons. However, the practice borders on illegal in a lot of areas. We recommend looking up your country’s laws before using one of these apps.
Call recorder apps have a lot of issues. Android’s support is sketchy at best and it’s actually quite difficult to record calls on newer versions of Android. There are some ways around it. Many call recorders record the loudspeaker, similar to a voice recorder app, but that requires you to make all of your calls over speakerphone. Others have different ways, but require complicated set-ups and insane amounts of permissions. In short, Google has made it very difficult to make these work.
Some of these may work in Android 8.0 and earlier and some may work in Android 9 and 10. It’s honestly impossible to tell for sure on every device. Those that work on Android 10 have complicated installation instructions and even then, it’s not guaranteed.
From Android 11 onward, the Phone by Google app (Google Play) will record your calls both automatically and on-demand. Download it and go into the settings to get started. That is the best solution for newer versions of Android. We plan on entirely revamping this list in the future to reflect these changes so stay tuned.
Here are the best call recorder apps for Android. We hope Google allows these to be used more easily in the future.
The best call recorder apps for Android
Automatic Call Recorder
Price: Free / $6.99
Automatic Call Recorder by Appliqato is one of the most popular call recorder apps for Android. It was hit hard by the call log change in Google Play’s policies, but it’s still a functional call recorder. The app features Google Drive and Dropbox integration along with some other neat little functions to help things out. The pro version is expensive but adds a few additional features as well. It works well aside from the call log thing.
This app is a lot like the other Automatic Call Recorder app on this list, just less popular. It comes with a lot of good features, including automatic call recording, some organization features, the ability to record in several different audio codecs, and more. It also supports backup over cloud storage and a few other little features as well. It’s about as good as the other one with the same name so you can go with either one.
Blackbox Call Recorder
Price: Free trial / $0.99 per month
Blackbox bills itself as a professional call recorder app. It has the usual array of features, including call recording, cloud backup support, and recording quality settings. However, this one takes it a step further with a lock function for security, Bluetooth accessory support, and dual-SIM support. It has one of the longer feature lists and cleaner interfaces of any call recording app on the list. The monthly subscription may chase some away, but at least it’s not very expensive.
Boldbeast Call Recorder is one of those apps that either works perfectly for you or it doesn’t work at all. You can check the Google Play ratings if you don’t believe us. In any case, the call recorder app is actually pretty well made. You can set it to manually record calls with a hotkey if you need to. It also functions as a voice recorder in case you need to do that. The app boasts support for all phones with Android 8.1 down to Android 5.0. It works on Android 9.0 with root and Android 10 if you don’t mind using some potentially intrusive workarounds. You can find the Android 10 method here.
Call Recorder Automatic
Price: Free / $4.99
Call Recorder Automatic is a decent app for recording phone calls. It works well, but you have to keep your phone on speaker to record both sides of the conversation. The app is simple and it’s easy to use. It records the calls and then you can organize them, share them, or save them as you want to. Most of the negative reviews are from people angry about the call log problem and some additional restrictions starting with Android Pie. It worked fine in our testing.
Cube Call Recorder is one of the few call recording apps on this list with an actual name. We appreciate that. This app not only works with regular phone calls, but with VoIP services like Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, and others. It has most of the useful features, including organizational features, playback features, and recording quality features. You can even exclude contacts from automatic call recording. This one appears to work on Android 10 but requires a similarly complicated set-up like Boldbeast Call Recorder. You can find a Reddit thread full of people who actually got this to work.
Otter Voice Notes
Price: Free / $4.99 per month
Otter Voice Notes is a transcription service and voice note organizer. You can listen and organize your notes, transcribe existing voice notes, and more. It doesn’t actually record calls like these other call recording apps. However, you can import recordings from some of those apps into this one for additional organization. You get 600 minutes of transcription service per month for free. After that there is a subscription. Thus, if you get a good recording from another app, you can get it transcribed with this one so you have both audio and written records at your disposal.
Smart Recorder is a voice recorder app. It wasn’t designed for call recording, but it can do it in a pinch. Most of its features are for call recording, including an interesting feature that skips silences so you don’t have to listen to it. It’s a good all around voice recorder and the call recording feature is perfunctory. You may need to exempt this app from battery saving in order to make it work for longer recordings. This one is also free if you use Google Play Pass.
Smart Voice Recorder
Price: Free
Smart Voice Recorder is another voice recording app with some call recording features. It’s a free app with ads so there are no paywalls for features. It can switch between normal recording and call recording if you need it to. You can also record in a variety of audio codecs and share it with your cloud storage if needed. It works well for a free app and it’s not bad as long as you can handle the advertisements.
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Voice Recorder by Splend Apps is yet another voice recorder with call recording functionality. Most of its features are for voice recording so the call recording stuff is a bit light. Some of the features include variable bitrate settings, background recording, and, of course, call recording. It’s a cheap and effective voice recorder and not a bad way to go if you want to kill two birds with one stone. This one is also available on Google Play Pass if you use that.
Bonus: Google Voice
Price: Free / Varies
Google Voice is kind of a diamond in the rough. It does have the ability to record phone calls. In fact, Google support has a tutorial on it right here. There are some caveats with this one, though. First and foremost, you can only record incoming calls. It’s an unfortunate limitation, but you can work around it. Additionally, this requires you to set up a number with Google Voice and integrate it as a middle man for your normal number or as an entirely separate entity. This is even more complicated than some other solutions, but it’s a solution nevertheless.
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