Balto: Real-time AI guidance and agent-assist platform that coaches contact-center and sales agents live during calls. Steno: Steno is a tech-enabled court reporting and litigation support platform that captures, transcribes, and analyzes legal proceedings such as depositions, including an AI transcript analysis tool. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Balto when guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements matters most, and Steno when using ai to summarize, search, and compare deposition transcripts for case strategy matters most. Test each on your own meetings; the right choice tends to become obvious quickly.
Real-time AI guidance and agent-assist platform that coaches contact-center and sales agents live during calls.
Steno is a tech-enabled court reporting and litigation support platform that captures, transcribes, and analyzes legal proceedings such as depositions, including an AI transcript analysis tool.
Balto is a contact-center AI platform centered on real-time guidance during live customer and sales calls. Rather than focusing on post-call review, Balto listens to conversations as they happen and surfaces dynamic prompts, objection-handling cues, compliance checklists, and knowledge-base answers to the agent in the moment. Its Agent Assist pulls relevant information so reps can respond to customer questions instantly, while real-time QA automatically scores interactions across all calls and flags compliance risk early, maintaining an audit trail for supervisors. Coaching automation tailors recommendations to each agent's performance, and real-time note generation produces call summaries without manual write-ups. Balto also offers voice AI agents to handle high-volume, repeatable calls and supports omnichannel context across voice and digital channels. It integrates with CRMs and telephony systems such as Salesforce and RingCentral. The platform is used across industries including healthcare, insurance, banking, collections, and home improvement, and is aimed at contact centers and sales teams that want in-the-moment guidance, compliance assurance, and automated quality management at scale. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Steno is a court reporting and litigation services company built for law firms and attorneys. It provides access to a network of certified court reporters who capture spoken proceedings and produce transcripts in rough, original, and certified formats, with realtime, next-day, and expedited delivery options. For remote work, Steno Connect is a Zoom app purpose-built for depositions, adding secure exhibit handling, annotation, and a live technical assistant; the company reports SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance. Video capabilities include standard video plus text-to-video synchronization. Its AI tool, Transcript Genius, reads case transcripts to generate summaries, answer conversational questions with page and line citations, run semantic and exact-match search, and compare multiple transcripts to surface contradictions; users can also upload outside .txt and .pdf transcripts. A Firm Dashboard handles scheduling, file access, and invoicing, and integrations include Zoom, Clio, and Litify. Steno also offers deferred, contingency-friendly payment. It is aimed primarily at litigators and legal support staff rather than general business meetings.
Best suited for
Balto is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Steno is custom pricing (contact sales). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Balto | Steno |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Real-time, in-call guidance with dynamic prompts and objection cues | Certified court reporters producing rough, original, and certified transcripts |
| Standout feature | Agent Assist that surfaces knowledge-base answers live | Interactive realtime transcription during proceedings |
| Team usage | Automated quality assurance scoring across 100% of calls | Steno Connect Zoom app for remote depositions with exhibit handling |
| Integrations | Real-time compliance monitoring with audit trails | Transcript Genius AI for summaries, semantic search, and Q&A with page/line citations |
| Languages & capture | Automated call summaries and coaching recommendations | Multi-transcript comparison to surface contradictions and discrepancies |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with CRMs and phone systems such as Salesforce and RingCentral | Firm Dashboard for scheduling, file access, and invoice management |
Balto
Choose Balto if you need guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements — strengths include guides agents during the call rather than only analyzing afterward.
Steno
Choose Steno if you need scheduling and capturing certified transcripts for remote or in-person depositions — strengths include combines human-certified court reporting with ai-powered transcript analysis.
Balto
Steno
It depends on your workflow. Balto is strong for guiding agents live through objections and compliance requirements, while Steno is strong for scheduling and capturing certified transcripts for remote or in-person depositions. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Balto is a free tier with paid upgrades and Steno is custom pricing. 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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