Backtrack: An AI meeting intelligence tool for trade shows and hosted buyer events that captures 1:1 conversations and turns them into CRM-ready notes and insights. 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. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Backtrack when exhibitors capturing booth and 1:1 buyer conversations at trade shows 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.
An AI meeting intelligence tool for trade shows and hosted buyer events that captures 1:1 conversations and turns them into CRM-ready notes and insights.
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.
Backtrack is an AI meeting intelligence product focused on a niche that most notetakers ignore: in-person B2B conversations at trade shows, conferences, and hosted buyer events. Rather than running as a meeting bot, Backtrack captures live 1:1 conversations and converts them into transcripts, structured summaries, and CRM-ready follow-up notes so sales teams do not have to take notes during busy events. Its consumer app, marketed as Backtrack, also offers retroactive recording that continuously buffers recent audio and saves only the last several minutes when the user explicitly chooses to, which is useful for capturing a conversation that has already started; the company stores audio locally on-device until the user decides to upload or share, and recordings are not live-streamed. For events, Backtrack offers pre-configured capture that activates around scheduled meetings, transcription tuned for noisy venues, summaries covering buyer intent, objections, priorities, and next steps, and anonymized trend reports for organizers. It supports transcription in over 100 languages and provides an opt-out path for attendees, emphasizing transparency around recording. Backtrack is aimed at exhibitors, event organizers, and sales teams who need reliable conversation capture and follow-up in event settings. 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
Backtrack 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 | Backtrack | Handy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Capture of in-person 1:1 conversations at trade shows and hosted events | Push-to-talk and toggle dictation modes with a configurable global keyboard shortcut |
| Standout feature | Retroactive recording that saves the most recent minutes on demand (consumer app) | Fully offline, on-device transcription with no cloud uploads |
| Team usage | Transcription tuned for noisy venues in 100+ languages | Multiple local speech models including Whisper (GPU-accelerated) and Parakeet V3 (CPU, auto language detection) |
| Integrations | Structured summaries covering buyer intent, objections, priorities, and next steps | Silero Voice Activity Detection to filter silence and process only speech |
| Languages & capture | CRM-ready follow-up notes and anonymized organizer trend reports | Automatically pastes transcribed text into any active application text field |
| Best-fit workflow | Local on-device storage until the user uploads or shares, with attendee opt-out | Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) built with Tauri |
Backtrack
Choose Backtrack if you need exhibitors capturing booth and 1:1 buyer conversations at trade shows — strengths include purpose-built for in-person event conversations that most notetakers miss.
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.
Backtrack
Handy
It depends on your workflow. Backtrack is strong for exhibitors capturing booth and 1:1 buyer conversations at trade shows, while Handy is strong for hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Backtrack 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.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
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