Frequently asked questions

Getting started

Which languages are supported?

60 languages: most official EU languages, the Balkans, Arabic, Russian and Ukrainian, plus Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional and Cantonese), Hindi and nine other languages of India, and a growing list of others including Hebrew, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese. 10 spoken languages are detected automatically — Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish; for the rest you name the spoken language once. See the full list on our languages page.

Does SubLive work with Google Meet, Zoom and Teams?

Yes. SubLive captions any Chrome tab that plays audio, so Google Meet, Zoom Web, Microsoft Teams in the browser, webinars, YouTube and podcasts all work the same way. There is nothing to invite to the meeting and nothing to install besides the extension.

Does it work with YouTube, Twitch, courses and podcasts?

Yes. SubLive captions whatever audio the tab is playing, so videos, live streams, online courses, podcasts and radio work exactly like a meeting does. Live streams are the case people ask about most: there is nothing to download and translate afterwards, so the subtitles have to arrive while it is being said.

Can I listen to the translation instead of reading it?

Yes. Turn on dubbing and each translated sentence is read aloud, about a sentence behind the speaker, while the tab gets quieter. The browser voice is free; the AI voice sounds more natural and spends 1 minute of balance per minute of conversation. Subtitles stay on screen either way.

Does it work with the Zoom or Teams desktop app?

No. SubLive hears Chrome tabs, not other applications on your computer. Join the meeting in the browser instead — Zoom Web, Teams in the browser, Google Meet — and everything works. What gets translated is only ever the audio a tab is already playing. Your microphone stays off unless you save a transcript (your own replies are then added to it) or turn on “Stop dubbing while I speak” (only loudness is measured, on your computer). Your own voice is never translated or shown as subtitles.

Can other people in the call tell?

No — SubLive reads the audio your browser already plays. That is exactly why you are responsible for having the consent your jurisdiction requires. Read the Recording & Consent notice.

Is my audio stored?

No. Audio exists only in memory while a sentence is being processed. Text transcripts are saved only if you turn that on, and they expire automatically.

Does SubLive use my microphone?

SubLive translates what the tab plays — the other people, not you. The microphone is used in two cases only, and both are your choice. When you turn on transcript saving, the extension asks for the microphone so your own replies are in the transcript too; you can mute it from the subtitle window at any time. When you turn on “Stop dubbing while I speak”, the microphone only measures how loud it is around you, on your computer, so the dubbing pauses while you talk; nothing from it is recorded or sent. Your own voice is never translated and never shown as subtitles.

What happens if the connection drops?

The extension keeps the last 10 seconds of audio and re-sends whatever the server did not receive, so the conversation does not lose a sentence.

Is SubLive free to install?

Yes. Installing is free and you get free minutes after confirming your email — no card required. After that you buy hours of subtitles. The smallest pack is 5 hours for €14.99, which is €3 an hour; 25 hours cost €59.99, which is €2.40 an hour. Hours bought this way never expire. If you use SubLive every week, a monthly plan is cheaper per hour — those hours refresh each month and unused ones do not carry over. When the minutes run out, subtitles keep working for free on Chrome’s own recognition and translation — fewer languages, and no AI voice, Answers or saved conversations.

Which browsers are supported?

SubLive is built for Google Chrome 116 or newer and works in Chromium-based browsers such as Edge, Brave and Arc. Safari and Firefox are not supported yet.

Can someone else use my minutes?

Yes. Create a code in the extension, choose how long it stays valid and hand it out. Anyone who enters it runs subtitles from your balance, you see how many people are using it, and you can revoke it at any moment. Their time is spent at the same rate as yours, so two people translating at once use two minutes per minute.

Am I charged while nobody is speaking?

You pay for the time subtitles are switched on, counted in 15-second steps — not per translated sentence. Pausing stops the meter: minutes spent on pause cost nothing, and resuming continues the same session rather than starting a new one.

Can SubLive tell speakers apart?

Yes. Dialog mode separates the conversation by voice and labels each turn, so a three-way call reads like a chat instead of one unbroken block of text. If you would rather have a single running line of captions, subtitle mode does that instead — you switch between them in the extension.

Can I change how the subtitles look?

Font, size, number of lines on screen, text and background colour, opacity, shadow and auto-hide are all in the extension settings, and the subtitle window can be dragged and resized. You can also show the recognised original under each translation — the first thing most people learning the language turn on.

Can we connect SubLive to our own AI tools?

Yes, on a company account. Ask Claude, Cursor or your own agent to find a call, summarise it, or turn last week's conversations into a report — the same way you'd ask a colleague. Under the hood, that's SubLive's MCP server reading the archive your company saved: an administrator turns it on, every read is logged, and an agent only ever sees what the person behind it may see. See the MCP page.

Is there a delay?

It depends on what you are watching. When a video has its own subtitles — on YouTube or in a player with a subtitle track — SubLive translates them ahead, and each line appears together with the speech, with no delay. Everywhere else it translates what it hears: a phrase has to be said before it can be translated, so subtitles run about a sentence behind the speaker, and the spoken translation a little later still. Calls and live streams always work this second way.

Meetings and calls

Will other participants know I am using it?

Nothing appears in the meeting: no extra participant, no notification, no change to what they see or hear. That is exactly why the law, not the interface, decides whether you may use it — read the Recording & Consent notice before a call where consent is required.

Does it work with Zoom and Microsoft Teams?

In the browser, yes: Zoom Web and Teams in a tab work the same as Google Meet. The installed desktop apps do not, because their audio never reaches Chrome.

Is the meeting recorded?

No. Audio is processed in memory and never written to disk. A text transcript is saved only if you switch that on yourself. On a personal account it waits under Recordings in the extension until you download it, and the server deletes it 24 hours later; a company keeps it in its admin panel for as long as the company decided, up to 30 days.

Can I keep a summary of the call?

Yes, if transcript saving is on. A saved conversation can be summarised by AI, and you can have that summary emailed to you when the call ends. Both are off until you turn them on.

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Lectures and courses

Does it work with recorded lectures as well as live ones?

Yes. SubLive does not know or care whether the audio is live: it subtitles whatever the tab plays, at the speed it plays. Playing a recording faster works too, up to the point where the speech itself stops being clear.

Can I get one summary of a three-hour lecture?

Yes. Long conversations are summarised in passes and folded into one result, so length is not a reason it fails. A summary costs one minute from your balance and reading it again is free.

Is this allowed on my university's platform?

That depends on their rules, not on us. Many institutions are fine with a student captioning a lecture for their own use and strict about sharing the result. Check the platform's terms — and keep in mind that SubLive is a study aid, not a source you should quote as the lecturer's words.

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Live streams

How far behind the speaker is it?

About one sentence. Speech is only translated once the speaker finishes a phrase, because translating half a sentence produces confident nonsense — the ends of sentences carry the meaning in most languages.

Does it work on Twitch and YouTube Live?

Yes. Both play their audio in an ordinary tab, which is all SubLive needs. The same is true of news channels, radio players and sports broadcasts that stream in the browser.

Does watching a four-hour stream cost four hours of balance?

Yes — the meter runs while subtitles are on, and pausing them stops it. For long viewing, buy hours in a larger pack: the price per hour drops and bought hours never expire.

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Videos and podcasts

Does it work on YouTube?

Yes, on anything that plays in the tab — including live streams, where YouTube's own translated captions are usually not available at all.

Does it work on Netflix and other paid film services?

Assume not. Those services protect their audio, and an extension is not given a usable copy of it. SubLive does not try to get around content protection, so it either works on a site or it does not start.

Can I use it to learn a language?

That is one of the most common uses. Turn on “show original” and you get the sentence as it was said and as it means, on the same screen. Save the transcript and you have the vocabulary of the episode afterwards.

Is there a delay on videos?

Not on videos that have their own subtitles. SubLive takes the subtitle track, translates it ahead and shows each line exactly when it is spoken. If a video has no subtitles, SubLive listens to the audio instead, and then the translation runs about a sentence behind the speaker.

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Pricing and billing

Do prices include VAT?

Yes. Every price on this page already includes VAT — what you see is what you pay. Paddle, our merchant of record, applies your country's rate at checkout. EU business customers who enter a VAT ID pay without VAT under the reverse charge.

Can I get a refund?

EU consumers have a 14-day withdrawal right. Unused minutes are refunded pro rata; minutes you already spent are not. See the Refund Policy.

Should I buy hours or take a monthly plan?

Buy hours if your use comes in bursts — a trip, a course, a hiring round. They cost more per hour and they never expire, so nothing is lost when a quiet month happens. Take a monthly plan if you use SubLive most weeks: the hour is cheaper, but the hours refresh with each billing period and unused ones do not carry over. If you are unsure, start with a pack — the hours you buy stay yours either way.

What happens to my hours if I cancel a monthly plan?

You keep them until the end of the period you have already paid for, and they expire when that period ends — the same as any other month on the plan. Hours you bought as a one-off pack are separate and are not affected: they stay on your balance. When both are on one account, plan hours are spent first, so the pack you paid for outright is the last thing to go.

Which plan does a company need?

Anything on the company tab: one balance for everyone, topped up by an administrator, with the conversation archive in the admin panel. Company plans come as 50- and 200-hour steps, one-off or monthly, and the monthly ones are cheaper per hour. Storing conversations centrally requires a signed DPA — the checkbox is part of company registration, not something to arrange later.

Can our own tools read the conversation archive?

Yes, on a company account. SubLive includes an MCP server: an AI client or automation can search conversations, read summaries and pull usage — under a person’s own permissions, with every read logged, and only after an administrator turns it on. See the MCP page.

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Compared with other tools

Is SubLive an alternative to Otter.ai?

For the part where you need to understand a meeting in another language, yes — and without a bot in the participant list. For the part where you want everything archived and summarised afterwards, a note-taker is built for that and we are not a drop-in replacement.

Can I get translated subtitles in a Zoom call without a bot joining?

That is the case SubLive was built for. Run the call in the browser, switch subtitles on in your own tab, and nothing is added to the meeting. The other participants see the same call they always saw.

Does SubLive record or store the meeting?

No recording is created and audio is not stored. Sound is processed as it plays and discarded; what remains is a transcript, and only if you asked for one before you started.

How is this different from the translated captions in Google Meet?

Two things: it is not tied to one platform, so the same extension covers streams, webinars, lectures and videos; and it does not depend on your licence tier or on the organiser enabling anything.

Can the other people on the call tell I am using it?

Nothing is added to the call, so there is nothing for them to see. Your microphone stays off unless you save a transcript (your own replies are then added to it) or turn on “Stop dubbing while I speak” (only loudness is measured, on your computer). Your own voice is never translated or shown as subtitles. That is not the same as permission — whether they need to be told depends on your jurisdiction.

Is it as accurate as a transcript someone has checked?

No, and no live system is. Translation happens a second after the words are spoken, with no chance to revisit them once more context arrives. For anything you publish, use a tool built for finished recordings.

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For companies

Does SubLive support single sign-on (SSO)?

Not yet — it is on our roadmap. Today, company accounts join by domain, checked against a DNS record, or by an email invitation from an admin.

Who can delete a saved conversation?

Only a company admin. A member's request to delete goes through them.

What happens to a personal balance when someone joins a company?

It is frozen while they are a member — their usage is billed to the company instead — and it comes back the moment they leave.

Is this a certified or legally binding translation?

No. Machine transcription and translation make mistakes; check anything with legal or contractual consequences.

Can our data stay off the shared cloud tier?

SubLive supports a local processing tier resolved per company for stricter data requirements — talk to us about your setup.

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MCP and your AI tools

Do we need anything besides a company account?

A company plan, the Data Processing Agreement accepted — it is part of company registration — and an administrator who signs the MCP acknowledgement. After that it is a switch.

Which AI clients work?

Any client that speaks MCP. Browser-based clients connect with OAuth and no key. stdio-only clients use the small bridge, npx @sublive/mcp, with an API key. Your own scripts call the endpoint directly with a key.

Where does the conversation data go?

To the model your client is connected to. That is the point of MCP: SubLive hands over the data, the client’s model does the reasoning, and the connecting company is the controller for that processing. It is named in the DPA and the Subprocessors list.

Can an agent change or delete our conversations?

No. Four of the five tools are read-only. The only write is appending glossary terms, which adds and never replaces, and an administrator can undo it.

What happens when someone leaves the company?

Their access ends, and any key or token tied to it stops working on the next request. The agent stops seeing the company archive at the same moment the person does.

Is a copy of our data now sitting in the AI tool?

It can be — an answer, a cache or a log on the client’s side is outside SubLive. Every response includes the conversation’s expiry date so your automation can respect it, and the DPA places that responsibility on the connecting company.

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