Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Tongyi Tingwu: Alibaba Cloud's AI assistant that transcribes, translates, and summarizes meetings and lectures in real time. 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 Tongyi Tingwu when students and educators turning lectures into searchable summarized notes 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.
Alibaba Cloud's AI assistant that transcribes, translates, and summarizes meetings and lectures in real time.
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
Tongyi Tingwu is an AI assistant from Alibaba Cloud focused on audio and video content for work and study, including meetings and lectures. It transcribes spoken audio into text, translates speech, and generates summaries using large language models, helping users record, organize, and analyze multimedia content. The service operates in real time, transcribing meetings and lectures as they happen, and it separates speakers so transcripts can attribute statements to different participants. Beyond core transcription and summarization, Tongyi Tingwu can extract structured information from recordings, including pulling slide content from video, which is useful for capturing presentations alongside spoken discussion. It supports multiple languages for transcription and translation, with strong coverage of Chinese and English among other major languages. The tool is accessible through a web interface and a browser extension, and it integrates with Alibaba's cloud ecosystem, including cloud storage. Tongyi Tingwu is aimed at professionals, students, and content creators in the Chinese market who need to efficiently turn meetings, lectures, and other audio or video into organized, searchable, and summarized text rather than reviewing recordings manually. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Tongyi Tingwu is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Tongyi Tingwu |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | Real-time transcription of meetings and lectures |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Speech translation across multiple languages |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | LLM-based summarization of audio and video content |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Speaker separation for attributed transcripts |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Slide/PPT extraction from video content |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Web interface and browser extension access |
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.
Tongyi Tingwu
Choose Tongyi Tingwu if you need chinese professionals transcribing and summarizing meetings in real time — strengths include backed by alibaba cloud with llm-powered summarization.
Buzz
Tongyi Tingwu
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Tongyi Tingwu is strong for chinese professionals transcribing and summarizing meetings in real time. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Tongyi Tingwu 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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