Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. YOMEL: Japanese AI meeting-minutes tool that records, transcribes, and auto-summarizes online and in-person meetings. 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 YOMEL when teams needing accurate transcription of in-person and online japanese meetings 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.
Japanese AI meeting-minutes tool that records, transcribes, and auto-summarizes online and in-person meetings.
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
YOMEL is a Japanese AI meeting-minutes (議事録) service developed by PKSHA Infinity, part of the PKSHA group. It is designed to automate the work of capturing, transcribing, and summarizing meetings so teams can produce structured minutes shortly after a discussion ends. After installing a desktop or smartphone app, users start recording with one click, and YOMEL transcribes the audio, automatically identifies speakers, and generates a draft of the minutes. Its speech recognition is tuned for Japanese and aims to handle unclear or noisy audio. The tool works with major web-conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex, as well as in-person meetings recorded on a phone. Features include automatic summarization, custom summary formats tailored to different meeting types, key-point extraction, a registered dictionary for specialized terms, search and bulk replace, and external sharing via URL. A more recent AI chat capability lets users ask questions against their meeting logs to organize agendas and extract follow-up tasks. The company reports the service is used by thousands of companies and processes a large volume of meetings each month. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); YOMEL is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | YOMEL |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | One-click recording via desktop and smartphone apps |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Japanese-optimized speech-to-text transcription |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Automatic speaker identification |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | AI summarization with custom summary formats per meeting type |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Works with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex plus in-person meetings |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Registered dictionary, search and bulk replace, and URL-based external sharing |
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.
YOMEL
Choose YOMEL if you need japanese companies automating internal meeting minutes — strengths include speech recognition specifically tuned for japanese, including noisy or unclear audio.
Buzz
YOMEL
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while YOMEL is strong for japanese companies automating internal meeting minutes. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and YOMEL 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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