How long can a recording be?

There's no fixed cap on recording length — Canto is built for long-form audio, and multi-hour recordings (an all-day workshop, a long interview) are normal use. The limit you'll actually meet is a different one: on the free plan, only 100 min / mo of audio get transcribed each month.

Recording time vs. transcription minutes

These are two separate things:

• Recording — capturing and storing audio. Effectively unlimited in length; a recording runs until you stop it.
• Transcription — turning that audio into a transcript, which is what the plan meters. Every recorded or imported minute that gets transcribed counts.

So a three-hour recording is never cut off at the recorder — but on the free plan it alone uses a large share of the month's transcription allowance. Recordings past the allowance are kept, playable, and untranscribed until you upgrade or the month resets — see Why is my recording locked or not transcribed?. Pro removes the transcription cap; see What do Free, Pro, and Team include?

What actually constrains a very long recording?

Practical device things, not Canto rules:

• Battery on mobile — the biggest factor for all-day sessions. Lock the screen and start charged, or plug in. See Does Canto record in the background?
• The open tab on the web — the browser tab must stay open the whole time, so multi-hour web recordings mean a laptop that doesn't sleep. Prefer the phone for long sessions.
• Upload size — audio is compressed for upload at roughly 15 MB per hour, so even a long session uploads quickly on Wi-Fi and tolerably on mobile data.
• Interruptions — on a phone, an incoming call pauses the recording until it ends ("Paused by another app — will resume automatically" on iOS). For hours-long coverage where you can't touch the phone, put it in Do Not Disturb.

Is there a minimum length?

No, but transcription needs something to work with — a two-second clip won't produce notes. Short voice memos of a sentence or more work fine; see Use Canto for dictation and voice notes.

FAQ

Does pausing extend how long I can record?

Paused time isn't recorded and isn't transcribed, so a meeting with long breaks costs only its spoken parts. Pause freely during breaks — see Start, pause, and resume a recording

I'm mid-recording and worried about my remaining minutes

Finish the recording — stopping never discards audio. If you're over the allowance it's stored untranscribed, and upgrading transcribes it automatically without re-recording. See What happens when I hit my limit?