The best remote recording tool for most interviews and podcasts is Riverside, because it records each person locally in high quality instead of capturing a laggy video call. SquadCast is the close second and a great pick if you want a simpler, audio-first setup. Zoom is fine when you just need a usable recording fast and quality is not the point. Pick Riverside if the recording is the product, and Zoom if the conversation is.
Remote recording has one core problem that a normal video call does not solve. When you record a Zoom call directly, you capture whatever survived the internet on the way, which means dropped frames, blurry faces, and audio that dips when someone's wifi hiccups. The good tools fix this by recording each person's camera and mic on their own device at full quality, then syncing the files afterward. Understand that one idea and the whole category makes sense.
What is the best tool to record a remote interview?
It depends on whether the recording is the deliverable or just a byproduct. If you are making a podcast or a video people will watch, you want local recording and you want Riverside or SquadCast. If you are grabbing a quick internal chat or a testimonial and you do not care about broadcast polish, Zoom already does it.
Here is how I would choose by the job.
- You want the highest quality video and audio to publish: Riverside.
- You want a clean, reliable, audio-first recording: SquadCast.
- You want fast and good enough, no new tool to learn: Zoom.
Riverside
Riverside is my top pick for anyone publishing interviews. It records up to 4K video and separate audio tracks locally for every guest, so a shaky connection during the call does not ruin the final file. It also transcribes automatically and can spit out short clips, which saves real editing time. Paid plans run somewhere in the mid teens to thirties per month depending on features, with a limited free tier to test it. Skip it if you never publish the footage, because you would be paying for quality you throw away. For a real show, it is worth every dollar.
SquadCast
SquadCast built its reputation on rock-solid audio and a simpler experience, and it is the one I recommend to podcasters who care more about sound than video. It records locally like Riverside, keeps guests on separate tracks, and tends to feel less busy for people who just want to hit record and talk. Pricing sits in a similar range to Riverside. If your show is audio-first or your guests are not technical, SquadCast is the gentler tool. If 4K video and built-in clip creation matter to you, Riverside edges ahead.
Zoom
Zoom is the honest budget answer. Everyone already has it, guests know how to join, and it records to the cloud or your machine in one click. The quality is call-quality, not studio-quality, and if someone's connection drops, that dip lands in your recording. But for internal interviews, quick testimonials, or a first episode you are testing the format on, that is completely acceptable. Skip the paid recording tools until you know the show is real and the footage is going out to an audience.
Record each person on their own device, not the call in the middle. That single choice separates a professional recording from a video-call screenshot.
A simple pick-by-job checklist
Before you pay for anything, run through this. It saves people from buying a studio tool for a job Zoom could do.
- Is the recording the thing people will watch or hear? Use Riverside or SquadCast.
- Do you need it clean and fast with no learning curve? Use Zoom.
- Do you mainly care about audio? Lean SquadCast.
- Do you want 4K video and auto-generated clips? Lean Riverside.
- Are your guests non-technical? Favor whichever tool joins from a browser with one link, which both Riverside and Zoom do well.
Whatever you pick, always record a local backup on your own end too. Tools fail, files corrupt, and the guest you finally booked is not going to re-record because a cloud upload died.
What the recording tool will not do
Here is the gap these tools share. Riverside gives you a gorgeous file. SquadCast gives you clean tracks. Zoom gives you something usable. Not one of them decides what the interview should be about, which questions will make people share the clip, or which five-minute chunk of a sixty-minute conversation is worth cutting into a short. That editorial judgment is the whole reason one podcast grows and another posts into the void.
This is the layer Batchly works on, and it sits above every recording app here. It scores your past content weighted toward shares and saves, clusters the winners into pillars, and writes scripts, so you walk into an interview already knowing the angles your audience responds to. On Pro, its repurpose mode lets you paste a transcript, the exact one Riverside hands you after the call, and get short-form scripts back from it. The recording tool captures the conversation. Batchly decides what the conversation should cover and what to cut from it, which is also how one long recording becomes a week of posts, a move I break down in repurpose one idea into five posts.
Do this next
Before your next remote interview, decide in one sentence whether the recording is the product or just a conversation, then pick Riverside or Zoom to match, and always run a local backup. If nerves are the real blocker before you hit record, I wrote through that in how to be confident on camera. Then, when you want the interview angles chosen from data, Batchly reads your analytics and hands you the topics and hooks worth recording.