Amical: Amical is an open-source, local-first AI dictation and voice-notes app that transcribes speech to text on your own machine using Whisper and open-source LLMs. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Amical when dictating emails, messages, and documents hands-free with app-appropriate formatting matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Amical is an open-source, local-first AI dictation and voice-notes app that transcribes speech to text on your own machine using Whisper and open-source LLMs.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Amical is an open-source, MIT-licensed AI dictation application that turns speech into formatted text directly on your device. It runs OpenAI's Whisper for speech recognition locally and uses open-source LLMs (via Ollama) for intelligent processing, so dictation can work offline once a local model is set up; for machines that can't handle local inference, it offers a cloud fallback. Built with Electron and TypeScript, it runs on Mac and Windows as a desktop app with a floating widget interface and configurable hotkeys. Its standout feature is context-aware formatting: it detects the active application and adapts tone and structure accordingly, producing professional text in email, casual phrasing in chat apps, or prompt and command-style output in IDEs and terminals. It supports many languages plus mixed-language dictation, and custom vocabulary for domain-specific terms. Beyond dictation, it is adding smart voice notes with summaries and task generation. It targets privacy-conscious writers, developers, and professionals wanting a free alternative to paid dictation tools.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free, open-source desktop application for offline speech transcription, developed by researchers at the Business Analytics and Data Science Center of the University of Graz in Austria. It provides a graphical interface around OpenAI's Whisper model (via the faster-whisper implementation) so users with no programming experience can transcribe recorded meetings, interviews, lectures, and other audio. Because all processing happens locally on the user's own computer, no audio or text is uploaded to any server, which makes it well suited to privacy-sensitive and GDPR-conscious environments such as universities, public institutions, and research teams. aTrain supports a wide range of languages and adds speaker detection through pyannote.audio so contributions from different participants can be separated. Transcripts can be exported in formats compatible with qualitative-analysis software such as MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo. It runs on Windows (including a Microsoft Store distribution) with GPU acceleration on NVIDIA hardware, and is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license. It is best for researchers, academics, and organizations that need accurate, local, no-cloud transcription of recorded conversations. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Amical is open source (open source); aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Amical | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Local speech-to-text transcription powered by OpenAI Whisper | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | On-device LLM processing via Ollama, with a cloud fallback option | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Context-aware formatting that adapts tone to the active app (email, chat, IDE, terminal) | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | Multi-language and mixed-language dictation support | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Custom vocabulary for domain-specific terms and configurable hotkeys | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Smart voice notes with summaries and task generation (in development) | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Amical
Choose Amical if you need dictating emails, messages, and documents hands-free with app-appropriate formatting — strengths include fully open source (mit) and actively maintained with frequent releases.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Amical
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Amical is strong for dictating emails, messages, and documents hands-free with app-appropriate formatting, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Amical is open source and aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
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