Ava: AI live captioning and transcription app for accessibility, providing real-time captions for conversations and video meetings. WhisperLiveKit: Open-source, self-hosted real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization toolkit with a FastAPI server and web interface, suitable for meeting transcription. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Ava when real-time captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing participants matters most, and WhisperLiveKit when building privacy-first transcription into custom applications via compatible apis matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
AI live captioning and transcription app for accessibility, providing real-time captions for conversations and video meetings.
Open-source, self-hosted real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization toolkit with a FastAPI server and web interface, suitable for meeting transcription.
Ava is a live captioning and transcription service built primarily for deaf and hard-of-hearing users, as well as for organizations that need accessible meetings and conversations. The app captures audio from in-person conversations and from video conferencing tools, then generates real-time captions on a phone, computer, or in the meeting interface. Ava combines automatic speech recognition with an optional professional scribe service for higher-accuracy, ADA-compliant captioning, giving users a choice between fast AI captions and human-assisted transcription. Features include color-coded speaker identification so users can follow who said what, support for many languages, and stored transcripts and summaries after a conversation ends. Through its Ava Connect integration, the service connects with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and it is available across mobile (iOS and Android), web, and desktop (Windows and Mac). Ava is aimed at individuals who need accessibility support in daily conversations and meetings, as well as at educational institutions, healthcare providers, corporations, and event venues that must provide compliant real-time captioning without committing to a traditional CART contract. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
WhisperLiveKit is an open-source, self-hosted toolkit for ultra-low-latency real-time speech-to-text and speaker diarization. Rather than naively running Whisper on each audio chunk, it uses state-of-the-art simultaneous-speech research for intelligent buffering and incremental processing, which preserves transcription quality while streaming results with minimal latency. The project ships a complete backend built on FastAPI with WebSocket support, an OpenAI-compatible REST API, a Deepgram-compatible WebSocket protocol, and a simple, customizable HTML and JavaScript web interface that captures microphone audio and streams it to the server. It supports multiple ASR backends including Whisper variants, Voxtral, and Qwen3-ASR, covers 200+ languages with translation, and includes real-time speaker diarization and voice activity detection to reduce processing overhead. It can handle multiple concurrent users on a single backend and is distributed via PyPI with Docker images for both GPU and CPU. Licensed under Apache 2.0 and actively maintained into 2026, the project explicitly lists meeting transcription, accessibility tooling, and podcast or call transcription with speaker identification among its intended use cases, making it a practical building block for private, on-premise meeting transcription pipelines. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Ava is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); WhisperLiveKit is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Ava | WhisperLiveKit |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Integration with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams | Real-time streaming speech-to-text with low latency over WebSocket |
| Standout feature | Real-time live captions for in-person and online conversations | Real-time speaker diarization to distinguish multiple speakers |
| Team usage | Color-coded speaker identification | FastAPI backend with OpenAI-compatible REST API and Deepgram-compatible WebSocket protocol |
| Integrations | Optional professional scribe service for higher accuracy | Multiple ASR backends (Whisper variants, Voxtral, Qwen3-ASR) and 200+ language support with translation |
| Languages & capture | Mobile, web, and desktop apps | Included customizable HTML/JavaScript web interface and Docker images (GPU and CPU) |
| Best-fit workflow | Saved transcripts and conversation summaries | Voice activity detection and multi-user support on a single backend |
Ava
Choose Ava if you need real-time captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing participants — strengths include strong accessibility focus for deaf and hard-of-hearing users.
WhisperLiveKit
Choose WhisperLiveKit if you need self-hosted real-time meeting transcription with speaker labels — strengths include fully open source (apache 2.0) and self-hostable for private, on-premise transcription.
Ava
WhisperLiveKit
It depends on your workflow. Ava is strong for real-time captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing participants, while WhisperLiveKit is strong for self-hosted real-time meeting transcription with speaker labels. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Ava is a free tier with paid upgrades and WhisperLiveKit 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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