Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Speak: Speak AI is a meeting transcription and conversation-analysis platform with an auto-joining bot for Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Webex, plus sentiment and theme analysis. 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 Speak when analyzing customer interviews and research calls for themes and sentiment matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper.
Speak AI is a meeting transcription and conversation-analysis platform with an auto-joining bot for Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Webex, plus sentiment and theme analysis.
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
Speak (Speak AI) is a transcription and conversation-intelligence platform that turns voice and video into searchable, structured data. Its meeting notetaker bot auto-joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex calls to deliver real-time transcription with speaker identification across 100+ languages, and it also handles file uploads, phone-call transcription, an embeddable web recorder, and iOS/Android capture. Beyond transcripts, Speak extracts custom fields, themes, and sentiment, and lets you chat with your data using multiple AI models. It exports to CSV and JSON, integrates with Slack, Zapier, and a developer API, and offers an MCP server connecting Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. New accounts get a free 7-day trial (no credit card) with 30 minutes of transcription. It is geared toward researchers, analysts, and sales/ops teams rather than simple note-taking alone.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Speak is from $25/mo (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Speak |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Meeting notetaker bot |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Real-time transcription |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Sentiment and theme analysis |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Multi-model AI chat |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | CSV/JSON export |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Meeting notetaker bot |
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.
Speak
Choose Speak if you need recording and transcribing zoom, teams, meet, and webex meetings — strengths include auto-joining meeting bot supports zoom, teams, google meet, and webex.
Buzz
Speak
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Speak is strong for recording and transcribing zoom, teams, meet, and webex meetings. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Speak is from $25/mo. 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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