Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. QEval: QEval is an AI contact center quality assurance platform that transcribes and scores customer conversations across voice, chat, email, and SMS against customizable scorecards. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Buzz when transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline matters most, and QEval when real-time compliance monitoring and de-escalation support during live customer calls matters most. Trial each on a few real meetings before you commit — the better fit usually shows fast.
Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper.
QEval is an AI contact center quality assurance platform that transcribes and scores customer conversations across voice, chat, email, and SMS against customizable scorecards.
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
QEval, built by Etech Global Services, is an AI-powered contact center quality assurance and performance management platform. It automatically transcribes recorded and live customer interactions across voice, chat, email, and SMS channels, then applies speech analytics, sentiment detection, and topic classification to evaluate every conversation against customizable quality scorecards rather than a small manual sample. Built for contact center QA teams, compliance officers, and operations leaders, it converts interactions into searchable transcripts in near real time, scoring both human and AI agents. QEval includes real-time agent assist that surfaces compliance prompts and de-escalation guidance during live calls, automated PCI/HIPAA/GDPR compliance monitoring with PHI/PII redaction, and coaching workflows with analytics and gamification to drive agent improvement. A flexible scorecard builder supports numeric, weighted, blind, and holistic scoring formats. Distinct from generic LLM wrappers, QEval emphasizes a proprietary multi-expert evaluation architecture, vendor-neutral scoring of third-party AI agents, and a roughly 30-day deployment timeline aimed at enterprise contact centers.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); QEval is custom pricing (contact sales). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | QEval |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Automated transcription of recorded and live calls into searchable text via speech analytics |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Customizable quality scorecards (numeric, weighted, blind, and holistic scoring formats) |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Evaluation across 100% of voice, chat, email, and SMS interactions instead of manual samples |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Real-time agent assist with live compliance prompts and de-escalation guidance |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Compliance monitoring for PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR with PHI/PII redaction |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Scoring of both human agents and third-party AI agents, plus coaching, analytics, and gamification |
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.
QEval
Choose QEval if you need automating quality monitoring and scoring of agent customer interactions at scale — strengths include transcribes and analyzes 100% of interactions across multiple channels rather than a sampled subset.
Buzz
QEval
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while QEval is strong for automating quality monitoring and scoring of agent customer interactions at scale. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and QEval is custom pricing. 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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