Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Gladia: Developer-focused speech-to-text API with real-time and async transcription, diarization, and meeting-bot integrations. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Buzz when transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline matters most, and Gladia when adding live captions and transcripts to video-conferencing products matters most. Test each on your own meetings; the right choice tends to become obvious quickly.
Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper.
Developer-focused speech-to-text API with real-time and async transcription, diarization, and meeting-bot integrations.
Buzz is a widely used open-source desktop application that transcribes and translates audio offline on the user's personal computer, powered by OpenAI's Whisper. It is MIT-licensed and actively maintained, with v1.4.4 released in March 2026, and it has grown a large community with roughly 19.7k GitHub stars. Buzz runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, with installation options including Flatpak, Snap, and PyPI. It supports both importing existing audio and video files and real-time transcription from microphone input, and it can export results in formats such as TXT, SRT, and VTT for subtitling and documentation. The app includes an advanced transcript viewer with search and playback controls, a watch folder for automatically transcribing new files, and a command-line interface for automation. It offers GPU acceleration through CUDA for Nvidia cards, Apple Silicon support, and Vulkan for many other GPUs, which makes faster transcription practical even on laptops. Buzz also provides speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio, plus a plugin system that adds capabilities like AI-generated summaries. Because all processing happens locally, recordings and transcripts remain on the user's machine rather than being uploaded to a cloud service. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Gladia is a speech-to-text API built for developers and product teams who want to embed transcription and audio intelligence into their own applications, including meeting assistants and note-taking tools. It offers both asynchronous transcription of pre-recorded audio and video files and a real-time streaming engine over WebSocket that returns results with low latency, making it suitable for live meetings and calls. The platform handles a wide range of languages with automatic language detection and code-switching, so it can follow conversations where participants switch languages mid-call. For meeting use cases, Gladia provides speaker diarization to label who said what, word-level timestamps, custom vocabulary, and audio-intelligence features such as summarization, sentiment analysis, and action-item extraction. It also offers meeting-bot integration that can join Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams sessions to capture audio. Gladia positions itself as infrastructure rather than an end-user product, so companies typically use it to power their own transcription, captioning, or conversation-analytics features while relying on Gladia's compliance posture for data handling. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Gladia is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Gladia |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Real-time streaming transcription over WebSocket with low latency |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Asynchronous transcription for pre-recorded audio and video files |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Speaker diarization with word-level timestamps |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Multilingual transcription with automatic language detection and code-switching |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Audio intelligence: summaries, sentiment analysis, and action-item extraction |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Meeting-bot integration for Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams |
Buzz
Choose Buzz if you need transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline — strengths include fully offline so audio and transcripts stay on the user's computer.
Gladia
Choose Gladia if you need powering a custom ai meeting assistant or note-taker — strengths include single api covers both batch and real-time transcription use cases.
Buzz
Gladia
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Gladia is strong for powering a custom ai meeting assistant or note-taker. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Gladia 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.
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