aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. oTranscribe: A free, open-source web app that eases manual transcription of recorded interviews by integrating media playback controls beside a text editor. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist aTrain when researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis matters most, and oTranscribe when academic and qualitative researchers transcribing fieldwork or oral-history recordings matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
A free, open-source web app that eases manual transcription of recorded interviews by integrating media playback controls beside a text 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
oTranscribe is a free, open-source (MIT license) web app, created by Elliot Bentley and maintained by the MuckRock Foundation, that takes the pain out of transcribing recorded interviews. It runs in the browser on desktop computers and places an integrated audio or video player alongside a text editor, so you can pause, rewind, and fast-forward your recording using keyboard shortcuts without taking your hands off the keys or switching between apps. It is built for journalists, researchers, oral historians, and students who type up interviews and recordings themselves. Rather than using automatic speech recognition, oTranscribe assists manual transcription: you listen and type, inserting interactive timestamps (Ctrl+J) that you can click to jump back to that moment in the media. Your transcript autosaves to the browser's local storage, and audio files never leave your computer, keeping work private. Finished transcripts can be exported to Markdown, plain text, or oTranscribe's own .otr format, or sent to Google Drive. Rich-text formatting and adjustable playback speed are supported.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); oTranscribe is open source (open source). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | aTrain | oTranscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device | Integrated audio/video player next to the transcript editor |
| Standout feature | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine | Keyboard shortcuts to pause, rewind, fast-forward, and adjust playback speed without leaving the keyboard |
| Team usage | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio | Clickable interactive timestamps that jump to the matching point in the media |
| Integrations | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo | Automatic saving to browser local storage with transcript history backups |
| Languages & capture | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills | Export to Markdown, plain text, .otr format, or send to Google Drive |
| Best-fit workflow | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support | Local, private processing - audio and transcript never leave the user's computer |
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
oTranscribe
Choose oTranscribe if you need journalists typing up recorded interviews for articles — strengths include completely free and open source under the mit license.
aTrain
oTranscribe
It depends on your workflow. aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis, while oTranscribe is strong for journalists typing up recorded interviews for articles. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades and oTranscribe is open source. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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