aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. joinly: Open-source, self-hostable connector that lets AI agents join Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams calls to transcribe, listen, and act in real time via MCP. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist aTrain when researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis matters most, and joinly when self-hosted, privacy-first real-time meeting transcription for regulated teams matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Open-source, self-hostable connector that lets AI agents join Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams calls to transcribe, listen, and act in real time via MCP.
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
joinly is an open-source middleware project (by joinly-ai) that makes meetings accessible to AI agents. It runs as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that equips any agent with the tools to join a live video call, capture a real-time transcript, and interact by voice or chat during the meeting. Rather than being a finished notetaker app, joinly is a framework developers use to build interactive meeting agents that can listen, answer, search the web, draft documents, and post chat messages while the meeting is in progress. It works cross-platform across Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams (and browser-based calls), and is model-agnostic, supporting OpenAI, Anthropic, and local models through Ollama. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are modular, with Whisper or Deepgram for transcription and Kokoro, ElevenLabs, or Deepgram for synthesis. The project is MIT licensed and deployed via Docker (with a separate CUDA GPU image), giving teams full data sovereignty. The MCP server exposes join/leave controls, transcript and participant access, audio control, chat messaging, and video snapshots, making it a building block for custom, privacy-first meeting automation. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); joinly is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | aTrain | joinly |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device | MCP server that exposes meeting tools (join/leave, transcript, chat, audio control, snapshots) to AI agents |
| Standout feature | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine | Real-time transcription with timestamps and speaker information, subscribable for live updates |
| Team usage | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio | Cross-platform support for Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and browser-based calls |
| Integrations | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo | Modular speech-to-text and text-to-speech backends (Whisper, Deepgram, Kokoro, ElevenLabs) |
| Languages & capture | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills | Model-agnostic: works with OpenAI, Anthropic, and local LLMs via Ollama |
| Best-fit workflow | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support | Docker-based self-hosting with optional CUDA GPU image |
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
joinly
Choose joinly if you need building custom ai meeting agents that answer questions and run tasks during live calls — strengths include fully open source (mit) and self-hostable for complete data control.
aTrain
joinly
It depends on your workflow. aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis, while joinly is strong for building custom ai meeting agents that answer questions and run tasks during live calls. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades and joinly is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Yes. Many teams run more than one meeting assistant when the workflows are complementary.
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