Short answer first: Glean is now Genio. The domain glean.co redirects to genio.co, the rebrand was announced on 3 June 2025, and the tool behind it is the same recorder that turns a lecture into a transcript, a Cornell-style summary and multiple choice questions. Genio publishes no price. Its pricing page lists a department package from ten users, an institution-wide package and an individual quote form. For most UK students the licence arrives through the university or through Disabled Students' Allowance rather than off a card. The alternatives below are what is left if neither route is open to you.
This article is about note-taking support software and the funding that pays for it. It is not a tour of every study app: that list, with the pound prices and the data questions, is in the best note-taking app for students in the UK. Every price below came off the vendor's own page in September 2026, in the currency that page showed.
What is Glean, and why does the site say Genio?
Glean was a lecture recorder built around a note-taking method rather than a raw transcript. The company announced the rebrand on 3 June 2025: "Glean, provider of study and note taking tools that significantly improve student success, has rebranded to Genio." The post told existing users the transition was simply a change of name, with the same platform and features staying accessible. The note-taking product is Genio Notes, and there is now a second one, Genio Present, for rehearsing presentations.
This matters when you search. Half the UK university pages still write it as "Genio (formerly Glean)", and the old domain redirects, so you will land on the new site whichever name you type.
What Genio Notes actually does, from its own features page:
- It records the class. "Capture every last word from your classes, in person or online, on any device", with a live transcript running while you record.
- It transcribes afterwards. "Convert any of your audio recordings into text, with automated speaker diarization and timestamps."
- It summarises. AI Outline creates structured summaries from recordings and transcripts, and the provided study notes come in formats such as Cornell.
- It makes questions. Quiz Me generates multiple choice questions from recorded class content. The page does not mention flashcards.
- It handles the slides. You can upload slides and images and pull text out of them, and there is a handwriting mode and a focus timer.
The page says live captions are available in multiple languages but does not list which, and adds that they are not available on individual plans, so if you study in Welsh, or your lecturer switches into another language, ask before you assume.
How do UK students actually get it, and what does it cost?
Genio's pricing page is the shortest part of this article, because it carries no figures. There is a department package with a minimum of ten users, an institution-wide package for every student on campus, and a link to request an individual quote. No pounds, no dollars, no euro. A vendor that publishes no price is a vendor you cannot compare, and that is a fact about the vendor rather than a gap in this page.
What the site does publish is the routes. Genio's eligibility page says some institutions provide free access for their students, that UK students can get Genio Notes at no cost through university disability support grants or the DSA programme, and that everyone else can take a 30-day trial of unlimited access.
Three ways a licence reaches you
- Your university bought it. Ask the library or the assistive technology team, not the vendor.
- DSA bought it. You apply, you attend a needs assessment, and the supplier sends a licence key.
- You bought it. For Genio that means filling in a quote form, because there is no checkout price.
The university route splits in a way worth checking before you spend anything. At Sheffield it sits behind the disability service: if you are registered with the service, you contact your adviser to see whether you are eligible. At Swansea any current student can request a copy by registering their interest, and the page adds that students who qualify for DSA may already have a licence as part of their individual adjustments. Two universities, two different answers, and neither of them is the vendor's answer.
The funding route itself, what DSA pays for and how long the application takes, is set out in Disabled Students' Allowance. Start there if you think you might be eligible, because it changes which column of the table below you should be reading.
Caption.Ed
Caption.Ed is the closest thing to a direct rival, and it is the one that publishes a price in pounds.
Its student page describes live captions during a lecture, an editable and searchable transcript afterwards, the ability to mark important sections and annotate them, and AI summaries that turn long transcripts into chaptered ones. The same three routes apply: DSA, a university licence, or paying yourself. For DSA it sets out the steps plainly, which is apply, get assessed, then receive a licence key from a reseller.
On price, the pricing page gives Lite at 25 pounds a month with 1,000 transcription minutes, and Pro at 50 pounds a month with 3,000 minutes. Both include captions, transcripts, note-taking and AI summaries; Pro adds preset templates. Team is 50 pounds per user a month and Enterprise is quoted. Those are the figures as of September 2026.
A thousand minutes is roughly twenty fifty-minute lectures, which is more than a normal week and less than a term of a heavy timetable. Three hundred pounds a year is the honest number for Lite if you pay it yourself for a full academic year. The page does not say which languages are supported.
Otter and Notta
Both are transcription services rather than study tools, and both bill in US dollars, so your card converts and the amount moves with the rate.
Otter's pricing page gives Basic free with 300 minutes of transcription a month and three file imports for the lifetime of the account. Not three a month. If your plan is to record on a phone and upload afterwards, the free tier closes in week one. Pro is 16.99 US dollars a month, or 8.33 a month billed annually, for 1,200 minutes and ten imports a month. There is a 20 per cent discount for individual students and teachers, 13.59 dollars monthly or 6.67 on the annual plan, and the page words the eligibility as a ".edu email address". UK universities use .ac.uk, so ask support before you count on it. The pricing page lists AI transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, and names no British English variant.
Notta's pricing page is also in dollars. Free gives 120 minutes a month with a three-minute limit on any single file, which rules out a lecture. Pro is 8.17 US dollars a month billed annually, 97.99 dollars a year, for 1,800 minutes and files up to five hours. Business is 16.67 a month billed annually with unlimited transcription. The page advertises a 50 per cent education discount for accounts registered with an educational email.
Neither gives you anything to revise from. That gap is the whole subject of why a transcript is not a set of notes, and it is the reason a cheap transcription subscription often turns into an expensive way to avoid studying.
Word's Transcribe and the phone in your pocket
Before paying anyone, check what you already have.
Microsoft's documentation for Transcribe says a Microsoft 365 subscription transcribes up to 300 minutes of uploaded audio a month, and a Copilot licence raises that to 30,000. It runs in Word and OneNote for Microsoft 365, and in Word for the web in Edge or Chrome. It works with 80 or more locales, and English (United Kingdom) is listed separately from US English, which is more than most vendors on this page manage. The documentation does not say whether a university tenant includes the transcription minutes, so record ten minutes in week one and find out rather than discovering it in week ten. On data it says only that your audio files are sent to Microsoft and used to provide the service.
Your phone is the other free option. Google's Recorder help page lists English (United Kingdom) as a live transcription language on Pixel 3 and later, and notes that re-transcribing may process audio files on Google servers. On an iPhone, Voice Memos transcribes and the transcript can be copied out. Both are free, both are already in your pocket, and both stop at words on a screen.
Neither is a substitute for permission. Which rooms you may record in, and how to ask, is university by university in recording lectures at UK universities. Ask first, then choose a tool.
How do they compare?
Prices verified in September 2026 on the vendor's own page, in the currency that page showed. "Not stated" means the pages we read do not say.
| Tool | What it records | What you get back | Languages | Price as of September 2026 | Where the data is processed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genio (formerly Glean) | Classes in person or online, on any device | Transcript with speakers and timestamps, AI Outline summaries, Cornell study notes, Quiz Me questions | "Multiple languages", not listed | No price published; department, institution and quote-only plans; 30-day trial | Not stated |
| Caption.Ed | Audio and video of a session, with live captions | Editable transcript, notes and annotations, chaptered AI summaries | Not stated | Lite 25 GBP a month, Pro 50 GBP a month | Not stated |
| Otter | Live recording and uploads | Transcript and summary | English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese; no UK variant named | Free 300 min a month; Pro 16.99 USD monthly, 8.33 annual | Not stated |
| Notta | Uploads and recordings, files up to 5 hours on paid plans | Transcript | Not stated on the pricing page | Free 120 min a month, 3-min file cap; Pro 8.17 USD a month annually | Not stated |
| Word's Transcribe | Uploaded audio, or recording inside Word | Timestamped transcript with speaker labels | 80+ locales, English (United Kingdom) listed | Included with a Microsoft 365 licence your university may already pay for | "Sent to Microsoft"; country not stated |
| Phone recorder | Whatever you press record on | Transcript | English (United Kingdom) listed on Pixel | Free with the phone | On device, with server processing for re-transcription on Pixel |
| Notibo | A lecture you record, or an audio file you upload | Transcript, structured notes, flashcards with spaced repetition | 89 languages | 14-day Pro trial, no card, then free 30 min a month; Pro 9.99 EUR a month or 88.99 a year | Stored in the EU; transcribed on US processors |
Which one fits which student?
If DSA is paying. Genio and Caption.Ed are the two built for this route, and the needs assessor recommends the software, not you. Go to the assessment with a description of what goes wrong in a lecture rather than a product name. If you are choosing between two recommendations, the deciding question is whether you want questions to answer afterwards, which is Genio's Quiz Me, or captions live in the room, which is Caption.Ed's strength.
If your university is paying. Ask before you shop. Swansea lets any current student request Genio Notes; Sheffield routes it through the disability service. Your library or assistive technology team will know in one email, and a licence you already have beats a subscription you are about to buy.
If you are paying for it yourself
Caption.Ed Lite at 25 pounds a month is 300 pounds over a twelve-month year, and Genio will not quote you a price without a form. That is a lot next to a Microsoft licence you already own and a phone that already transcribes. If money is the binding constraint, the order is: test Word's Transcribe, then the phone, then a cheap transcription plan in dollars, and only then a subscription in pounds.
If you need revision material, not a transcript. A fifty-minute lecture is around seven thousand words. Reading it again is not revision. The tools that produce something you can be tested by are Genio, with multiple choice questions, Caption.Ed, with chaptered summaries, and Notibo, with notes and flashcards. Everything else on this page hands you the words and leaves the studying where it was.
What should you check before you commit?
The ten-minute test before you pay
- Record ten minutes of a real lecture, with your actual lecturer and your actual room, not a quiet desk.
- Read the output for names and terms. Accents, module jargon and abbreviations are where transcription fails, and a demo never shows you that.
- Ask the vendor where the audio is processed and treat a vague answer as a no.
- Check the file limits against what your phone produces for a full lecture.
- Check what happens at the end of the licence. A DSA or university licence ends with the course, and you want your notes to outlive it.
The rest is procedural. Ask permission before you record anyone. Do not share a recording with people who were not in the room. And write down which of the four constraints actually binds for you: funding, permission, language, or whether you need notes rather than words. One of them will decide this, and it is rarely the feature list.
Where Notibo fits
Notibo records a lecture, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards, which covers a slide deck or a downloaded lecture capture. It transcribes 89 languages. You can try Pro free for 14 days, with 240 minutes of recording and no card. After that the free plan is 30 minutes of recording a month. Pro is 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year, and that is euro, so your card converts it. Uploads are capped at 50 MB, and long recordings are saved in smaller parts as they run and joined back into one transcript.
On data the answer has two halves. Files are stored in the EU, on Supabase in Frankfurt. The transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses. If you need a recording that is processed only inside the UK, Notibo is out, and on the pages we read most of this list is out with it. Notibo is also not a DSA product: no needs assessor will hand you a licence key for it, so it is a self-funded option sitting next to Caption.Ed rather than a replacement for the funded route. What the plans include is on the pricing page.