Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. oTranscribe: A free, open-source web app that eases manual transcription of recorded interviews by integrating media playback controls beside a text editor. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Buzz when transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline matters most, and oTranscribe when academic and qualitative researchers transcribing fieldwork or oral-history recordings matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper.
A free, open-source web app that eases manual transcription of recorded interviews by integrating media playback controls beside a text editor.
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
oTranscribe is a free, open-source (MIT license) web app, created by Elliot Bentley and maintained by the MuckRock Foundation, that takes the pain out of transcribing recorded interviews. It runs in the browser on desktop computers and places an integrated audio or video player alongside a text editor, so you can pause, rewind, and fast-forward your recording using keyboard shortcuts without taking your hands off the keys or switching between apps. It is built for journalists, researchers, oral historians, and students who type up interviews and recordings themselves. Rather than using automatic speech recognition, oTranscribe assists manual transcription: you listen and type, inserting interactive timestamps (Ctrl+J) that you can click to jump back to that moment in the media. Your transcript autosaves to the browser's local storage, and audio files never leave your computer, keeping work private. Finished transcripts can be exported to Markdown, plain text, or oTranscribe's own .otr format, or sent to Google Drive. Rich-text formatting and adjustable playback speed are supported.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); oTranscribe is open source (open source). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | oTranscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Integrated audio/video player next to the transcript editor |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Keyboard shortcuts to pause, rewind, fast-forward, and adjust playback speed without leaving the keyboard |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Clickable interactive timestamps that jump to the matching point in the media |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Automatic saving to browser local storage with transcript history backups |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Export to Markdown, plain text, .otr format, or send to Google Drive |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Local, private processing - audio and transcript never leave the user's computer |
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.
oTranscribe
Choose oTranscribe if you need journalists typing up recorded interviews for articles — strengths include completely free and open source under the mit license.
Buzz
oTranscribe
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while oTranscribe is strong for journalists typing up recorded interviews for articles. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and oTranscribe is open source. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Yes. Many teams run more than one meeting assistant when the workflows are complementary.
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