Aurelius: Research repository and insights platform for tagging interview data, surfacing themes, and keeping qualitative insights discoverable over time. Handy: Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Aurelius when organizing and tagging interview transcripts and notes matters most, and Handy when privacy-sensitive voice-to-text where audio must stay on-device matters most. Test each on your own meetings; the right choice tends to become obvious quickly.
Research repository and insights platform for tagging interview data, surfacing themes, and keeping qualitative insights discoverable over time.
Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field.
Aurelius is a research repository and insights platform designed for UX researchers, designers, and product teams to manage qualitative research data end to end. It sits between a note-taking tool and a full research repository: teams bring in raw data such as interview notes and transcripts, organize and tag it, and the tool surfaces patterns and helps create reusable insights over time. Core capabilities include centralized storage for research data, note organization, data tagging, theme and pattern identification, and report generation, so findings can be referenced long after a study concludes. Aurelius is built with larger research organizations in mind, supporting consistent taxonomy across projects and keeping insights discoverable as repositories grow, while also enabling multi-team collaboration and research history and archival features. Researchers describe it as a low-effort way to tag and create insights they can reference in later product discussions. The platform positions itself as an alternative to fragmented approaches that rely on spreadsheets, Confluence, or Airtable for storing research. By centralizing qualitative data and making it searchable and well-organized, Aurelius aims to ensure that interview insights remain accessible and actionable across an organization. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Handy is a free, open-source desktop application that turns your voice into text completely offline, with no audio ever leaving your computer. You press a configurable keyboard shortcut, speak, and release (push-to-talk), or use a toggle mode to start and stop; Handy transcribes what you said and automatically pastes the result into whatever text field is active. Because it runs entirely on-device, it is built for privacy-conscious users who want dictation without cloud uploads or subscriptions. Under the hood it is built with Tauri (a Rust backend with a React/TypeScript frontend) and supports multiple local speech-recognition models, including OpenAI's Whisper variants with GPU acceleration and the CPU-friendly Parakeet V3 model with automatic language detection. Silero Voice Activity Detection filters out silence so only speech is processed. Handy runs on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux, and is released under the MIT license. It positions itself as an accessible, extensible alternative to paid dictation tools, and is best suited for hands-free typing rather than recording multi-party meetings.
Best suited for
Aurelius is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Handy is open source (open source). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Aurelius | Handy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Centralized repository for interview notes and transcripts | Push-to-talk and toggle dictation modes with a configurable global keyboard shortcut |
| Standout feature | Data tagging and note organization | Fully offline, on-device transcription with no cloud uploads |
| Team usage | Theme and pattern identification across research | Multiple local speech models including Whisper (GPU-accelerated) and Parakeet V3 (CPU, auto language detection) |
| Integrations | Insight creation and report generation | Silero Voice Activity Detection to filter silence and process only speech |
| Languages & capture | Consistent taxonomy across projects for large repositories | Automatically pastes transcribed text into any active application text field |
| Best-fit workflow | Multi-team collaboration with research history and archival | Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) built with Tauri |
Aurelius
Choose Aurelius if you need organizing and tagging interview transcripts and notes — strengths include keeps interview insights discoverable and reusable over time.
Handy
Choose Handy if you need hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors — strengths include completely free, open-source (mit) with no subscription or paywall.
Aurelius
Handy
It depends on your workflow. Aurelius is strong for organizing and tagging interview transcripts and notes, while Handy is strong for hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Aurelius is a free tier with paid upgrades and Handy is open source. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Often yes: teams combine tools when one handles capture and another handles analysis.
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