aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. noScribe: Free, open-source desktop transcriber that runs Whisper and pyannote fully locally with speaker identification and a synchronized editor. We compare them on cost, capture approach, and day-to-day fit so you can choose faster.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist aTrain when researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis matters most, and noScribe when journalists generating diarized transcripts of recorded conversations 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.
Free, open-source desktop transcriber that runs Whisper and pyannote fully locally with speaker identification and a synchronized editor.
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
noScribe is a free, open-source desktop transcription tool that runs entirely on the user's own computer to protect the confidentiality of recordings. Licensed under GPL-3.0 and actively maintained, with a v0.7.2 maintenance release in June 2026, it is built around OpenAI's Whisper (via the faster-whisper library) for speech recognition and pyannote for speaker diarization, so it can distinguish between different speakers and label who said what. It understands around 60 languages and supports automatic or manually specified speaker counts. noScribe is primarily designed for producing high-quality transcripts of interviews for qualitative social research and journalistic work, and it ships with a dedicated companion editor, noScribeEdit, that synchronizes audio playback with the transcript text and provides search and replace, formatting, zoom, and playback-speed controls. It supports Windows (with optional CUDA acceleration on Nvidia GPUs), macOS on Apple Silicon, and Linux in both CPU and CUDA versions. Additional capabilities include batch transcription, pause detection and marking, an experimental overlapping-speech detection mode, and export to multiple formats such as HTML, VTT, and TXT, plus an available command-line interface for scripted use. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); noScribe is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | aTrain | noScribe |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device | Fully local transcription using Whisper via faster-whisper |
| Standout feature | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine | Speaker diarization with pyannote (automatic or manual speaker counts) |
| Team usage | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio | Support for around 60 languages |
| Integrations | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo | Synchronized companion editor (noScribeEdit) with playback follow-along |
| Languages & capture | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills | Batch transcription, pause detection, and experimental overlapping-speech detection |
| Best-fit workflow | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support | Exports to HTML, VTT, and TXT plus a command-line interface |
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
noScribe
Choose noScribe if you need researchers transcribing qualitative interviews while keeping data on their own machine — strengths include runs 100% locally to keep sensitive recordings confidential.
aTrain
noScribe
It depends on your workflow. aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis, while noScribe is strong for researchers transcribing qualitative interviews while keeping data on their own machine. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades and noScribe 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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