Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Bubbles when teams replacing status meetings with async video updates matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Async video and AI meeting notes with action items
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Bubbles is an AI meeting notetaker combined with an asynchronous screen and video recorder. For live meetings, it can automatically join and record calls on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, then produce AI-generated summaries and extract action items so participants do not have to take notes manually. Recordings, transcripts and notes are organized in a centralized workspace and tied to calendar events, making it easy to find and share what was discussed. Beyond live meetings, Bubbles is built around reducing the number of meetings teams hold: users can record short async videos with screen capture and voice, then collect threaded video and text replies, which lets routine updates, design feedback and quick questions happen without scheduling a call. It connects with calendars such as Google Calendar and Outlook and integrates with a wide range of other tools including Slack, Notion and Asana for routing notes and recordings into existing workflows. Bubbles is aimed at marketers, designers, product managers and other collaborative teams that want to cut meeting time while keeping a clear record of decisions and next steps. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
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
Bubbles is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Bubbles | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Automatic meeting recording across Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | AI-generated summaries and action item extraction | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Async screen and video recording for replacing live meetings | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | Threaded video and text replies on recordings | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Calendar integration with note and recording organization | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with Slack, Notion, Asana and many other tools | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Bubbles
Choose Bubbles if you need teams replacing status meetings with async video updates — strengths include combines live meeting notes with async video collaboration in one tool.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Bubbles
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Bubbles is strong for teams replacing status meetings with async video updates, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Bubbles is a free tier with paid upgrades and aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades. 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.
More head-to-head comparisons involving Bubbles and aTrain.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items BuildBetter: A no-bot meeting recorder (BB Recorder) that captures and processes calls locally on Mac, with optional cloud upload for team collaboration. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CLOVA Note: South Korean AI meeting-minutes service by Naver that records meetings, transcribes speech, separates speakers, and generates summaries and action items. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Calendly Notetaker: An AI meeting notetaker built into the Calendly scheduling platform that records meetings and generates summaries, transcripts, and action items. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CallBro: Bot-free AI meeting assistant that transcribes calls from system audio and produces structured notes without joining the call. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Callabo: Korean AI meeting-notes service from Return Zero that records, transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings for individuals and teams. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Canopy Notetaker: AI meeting assistant built for accounting firms that records client calls and produces accounting-specific summaries and tasks. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CaptureMyMeeting: AI meeting assistant that imports Zoom and Webex cloud recordings to generate notes, action items, and insights. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Carv: AI assistant for recruiters that records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews and intake calls, then drafts documents and updates the ATS. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Castmagic: AI content platform that transcribes podcasts, videos, and recorded meetings with speaker diarization and turns them into show notes, summaries, and other assets. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Celeste AI: Brazilian Portuguese-focused AI voice and transcription platform offering on-demand transcription plus a meeting assistant and AI notes, with credit-based and subscription plans. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Choppity: AI video and audio platform that transcribes recordings, generates styled captions, and turns long-form content into short clips. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.