A translator that gets out of the way.

Why metcha exists

The most-used translation tools today were designed around a screen. You tap, you speak into a phone, you wait, you hold the phone out, the other person reads or listens, then it's their turn. It works, but it doesn't feel like a conversation.

We started building metcha after one too many attempts to have an actual back-and-forth across a language gap with a handheld translator wedged between us. Earbuds change the shape of the problem. If each person hears the other in their own language, in their own ear, the conversation starts to feel ordinary again — which is the whole point.

The product, in three sentences

You and another person each take one earbud. You pick two languages and start talking. They hear you in theirs; you hear them in yours; the phone stays in your pocket.

The default translation runs on Apple's on-device framework, so the simple case costs you nothing and stays on your phone. metcha Plus adds premium voices, optional voice cloning, and a more natural cloud-assisted translation when you want them.

Who builds it

metcha is an independent project, built and shipped by a small team based in the United States — careful, slow, and honest about what works and what doesn't. The free tier runs on Apple's on-device Translation framework. metcha Plus adds premium voices, optional voice cloning, and a cloud-assisted translation path through a small number of carefully chosen third-party providers.

What we believe

• The free tier should be a real translator, not a teaser. metcha is genuinely useful before you ever pay us.
• The premium tier should be honest about why it costs money. Cloud voices and voice cloning are paid because they ride on services we pay per second. That's the pitch.
• Conversations are private. Your conversations are not stored on our servers, and we will never use them to train a model.
• The interface should disappear. The right translation app is the one you forget you're using.

Where we're going

metcha is launching on iPhone first. Beyond that, we're working on better support for hospitality venues — bars, cafés, hotels, lounges — where multilingual guests are the norm. See metcha for business if you run a place where this would be useful.

Get in touch

Press, partnerships, pilots, feedback, complaints: hello@metcha.io.

Follow along: @metchachat on X.