Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Meeting Transcriber: Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device. We compare them on cost, capture approach, and day-to-day fit so you can choose faster.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Buzz when transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline matters most, and Meeting Transcriber when recording and summarizing teams, zoom, or webex calls without inviting a cloud meeting bot 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.
Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device.
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
Meeting Transcriber is an open-source, local-first meeting transcriber for macOS, distributed under the MIT license and developed in the open on GitHub (pasrom/meeting-transcriber) with its own product site at meetingtranscriber.app. It runs as a menu bar application that automatically detects and records calls on Teams, Zoom, and Webex, capturing the meeting app's audio and your microphone as separate tracks so that transcription and speaker separation stay clean. Transcription happens fully on-device using one of three selectable speech-recognition engines: WhisperKit (covering 99+ languages), Parakeet TDT v3 (25 European languages with a small, fast model), or Qwen3-ASR (30 languages, requiring macOS 15+). It performs dual-track diarization and can recognize recurring speakers by storing voice embeddings across meetings and matching them with cosine similarity. After a meeting, it can generate a structured Markdown protocol containing a summary, participants, topics discussed, decisions, tasks, open questions, and the full transcript, using either the Claude Code CLI, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama or LM Studio, or a transcript-only mode with no LLM. Because everything runs locally, audio, transcripts, and summaries stay on the user's Mac. It installs via Homebrew Cask and requires macOS 14.2 or later. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Meeting Transcriber |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Automatic recording of Teams, Zoom, and Webex meetings via a macOS menu bar app |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | On-device transcription with selectable engines: WhisperKit, Parakeet TDT v3, or Qwen3-ASR |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Dual-track diarization with separate app and microphone tracks for clean speaker separation |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Recurring-speaker recognition using stored voice embeddings matched by cosine similarity |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Structured Markdown protocols (summary, participants, topics, decisions, tasks, open questions, transcript) |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Pluggable summarization backends: Claude Code CLI, OpenAI-compatible APIs (Ollama, LM Studio), or transcript-only |
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.
Meeting Transcriber
Choose Meeting Transcriber if you need privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac — strengths include fully open source under the mit license with development in the open on github.
Buzz
Meeting Transcriber
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Meeting Transcriber is strong for privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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