Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Voicy: Voicy is a privacy-focused AI dictation app and Chrome extension that turns speech into formatted text inside any website or desktop application. 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 Voicy when dictating prompts into ai assistants like chatgpt, claude, and gemini 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.
Voicy is a privacy-focused AI dictation app and Chrome extension that turns speech into formatted text inside any website or desktop application.
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
Voicy is a cross-platform AI speech-to-text (dictation) tool that lets you write with your voice instead of typing. It runs as a desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, plus a Chrome extension, and also has iOS and Microsoft Store versions. Once active, you trigger dictation system-wide and speak into whatever app or website you're using — email clients, word processors, chat tools, note apps, AI assistants, IDEs, and many others, advertised as 20,000+ destinations. Voicy transcribes in real time using cloud processing, automatically adding punctuation, fixing grammar, and formatting the result, with support for dozens of languages. It also offers AI editing commands, letting you reshape dictated text (for example into bullet points) right after speaking. On privacy, the company states transcripts and recordings are stored only locally on your device and voice data is not used to train AI models, though speech is sent to the cloud for processing. It's aimed at writers, professionals, and anyone who wants to draft faster than typing across their existing tools.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Voicy is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Voicy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | System-wide voice dictation across desktop apps, browsers, and websites |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Chrome extension plus Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop apps (also iOS and Microsoft Store) |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Automatic punctuation, grammar correction, and formatting |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Real-time cloud transcription with multi-language support |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Inline AI editing commands to reformat dictated text (e.g. bullet points) |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Local-only storage of transcripts with no use of voice data for AI training |
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.
Voicy
Choose Voicy if you need drafting emails, documents, and chat messages by voice instead of typing — strengths include works inside virtually any app or website rather than a single editor.
Buzz
Voicy
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Voicy is strong for drafting emails, documents, and chat messages by voice instead of typing. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Voicy 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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Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. CLOVA Note: South Korean AI meeting-minutes service by Naver that records meetings, transcribes speech, separates speakers, and generates summaries and action items. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
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