Live captions and AI voice for Teams calls — no Teams Premium, no M365 Copilot, no IT ticket, just a Chrome extension.
Microsoft Teams has a translation story — but it is gated. Translated Live Captions are part of the Teams Premium add-on, a paid per-seat license on top of your existing Microsoft 365 subscription that has to be enabled by your IT administrator. The Teams Interpreter agent, which can actually speak translated audio into a meeting, is locked behind M365 Copilot — another paid per-seat add-on — and works only inside Teams. Together those add-ons stack more per-seat cost and require organizational purchasing cycles that most individuals and small teams cannot drive.
For consultants, external vendors, freelancers, and anyone meeting with a Teams tenant they do not belong to, Premium and Copilot are simply unavailable. External guests joining a Teams call have no way to turn on translated captions regardless of the host's license.
Gaavala bypasses the license hierarchy entirely. It is a Chrome extension that runs on your machine, capturing audio from the Teams web client tab through Chrome's built-in tabCapture API. Your IT admin does not approve it, your tenant does not need to license it, and your meeting host does not need any feature flag turned on. You join the meeting at teams.microsoft.com or teams.live.com in a Chromium browser, click the Gaavala icon, pick languages, and press Start — capture begins instantly with no screen-share dialog, and captions start streaming in any of 60 languages.
The audio flows from your browser directly to Soniox over an encrypted WebSocket. Gaavala's backend is never in the audio path — which matters for regulated industries where sending meeting audio through an additional vendor would require legal review. For security-conscious organizations, this architecture is often easier to get approved than a cloud-native translation tool that proxies audio through its own servers.
Pro ($24.99 per month, one-time 5-minute free trial available) unlocks Speak Mode, where you can speak in your native language and Gaavala synthesizes your translated voice directly into the Teams meeting. This is the same category of feature as the Teams Interpreter agent, but without the M365 Copilot license requirement and with cross-platform support — you can use Speak Mode equally well in Zoom, Meet, and Webex, not just Teams.
| Feature | Microsoft Teams built-in | Gaavala |
|---|---|---|
| Live translation | Gated by enterprise SKU or license | Included on Free and Pro |
| Language coverage | Platform-dependent, narrower set | 60 languages across every plan |
| Privacy | Audio proxied through vendor cloud | Direct browser-to-Soniox streaming |
| Setup | Admin or tenant-level enablement | Chrome Web Store install, 30 seconds |
| Cross-platform | Microsoft Teams only | Teams, Zoom, Meet, Webex |
| AI voice Speak Mode | Limited or unavailable | Pro includes PTT + Timed Speak |
Meet with external partners whose language you do not share — without needing them or yourself to carry a Teams Premium license.
Engineering managers whose teams span Poland, Brazil, and Vietnam can follow technical depth in the original language without forcing English at everyone.
Legal, finance, and healthcare teams that cannot send audio through another vendor backend get a direct-to-Soniox architecture that stays out of Gaavala's servers entirely.
Sales engineers presenting to non-English-speaking prospects can use Speak Mode on Pro to respond in the prospect's language even without fluency.
No. Gaavala is fully independent of your Teams license. It works with any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plan, including the free Teams tier and external guest access. Gaavala does not replace Teams Premium or M365 Copilot — it sidesteps them. If you already have Premium Translated Captions enabled, Gaavala does not interfere; they simply co-exist in your browser tab.
No tenant-level approval is required because Gaavala never touches your Microsoft 365 tenant. It is a Chrome extension running locally on your machine, authenticated with your personal Gaavala account (signed in via Google or Microsoft OAuth), and communicating directly with Soniox endpoints. Your IT team's role, if any, is whether your organization allows Chrome extensions at all — which is usually governed by browser policy.
Gaavala captures audio from Chrome browser tabs, so you need the Teams web client at teams.microsoft.com or teams.live.com. The Teams desktop app runs outside the browser and its audio cannot be captured via the Chrome tabCapture API. Both web hosts are fully supported — if your organization uses teams.live.com for certain scenarios, Gaavala works there too.
Teams Premium and the M365 Copilot Interpreter are both paid, per-seat add-ons on top of Microsoft 365, gated behind enterprise procurement. Gaavala Pro is $24.99/month, self-serve via Lemon Squeezy, with a one-time 5-minute free trial (no credit card, never resets) so you can try it before upgrading. Gaavala additionally works in Zoom, Meet, and Webex — Teams Premium features do not.
Gaavala's architecture is designed for this specific case. Meeting audio streams directly from your browser to Soniox over an encrypted WebSocket. Gaavala's backend is not in the audio path and cannot receive, store, or log meeting audio. AI meeting summaries are generated on-device with Chrome's built-in AI — the transcript never leaves your machine, and no meeting content ever reaches Gaavala's servers. For HIPAA, GDPR, or SOC 2 contexts, this is a materially smaller surface than vendors that proxy audio through their own cloud.
How to translate a Microsoft Teams meeting
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