Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Zeemo: Zeemo is an AI auto-captioning and transcription tool that converts videos, podcasts, interviews, and voice recordings into text and time-synced subtitles, with translation into many languages. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Buzz when transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline matters most, and Zeemo when auto-generating and styling captions for social media and youtube videos 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.
Zeemo is an AI auto-captioning and transcription tool that converts videos, podcasts, interviews, and voice recordings into text and time-synced subtitles, with translation into many languages.
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
Zeemo is an AI-powered captioning, subtitling, and transcription platform aimed at content creators, podcasters, YouTubers, educators, and marketing teams. Users upload an audio or video file (or paste a video link), and Zeemo's speech recognition automatically converts the speech into time-synced captions or a plain-text transcript. Beyond social-video subtitles, it offers a dedicated transcription service for recorded interviews, meetings, lectures, podcasts, songs, and voice recordings, producing editable text that can be exported. It supports a broad set of languages for recognition and can translate captions and subtitles into many additional languages for localized content. A batch-editing interface lets users correct and refine transcripts efficiently, and captions can be styled with fonts, colors, templates, emojis, and effects before export. Outputs include caption-burned video plus subtitle and text formats such as SRT, ASS, and TXT. Zeemo runs in the browser with no install required and also offers dedicated iOS and Android apps for transcribing and captioning on the go.
Best suited for
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Zeemo is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Buzz | Zeemo |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Offline transcription and translation using OpenAI's Whisper | AI auto-captioning that generates time-synced subtitles from video and audio |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription from microphone input | Audio/video transcription for interviews, meetings, lectures, podcasts, and voice recordings |
| Team usage | Speaker identification and speech separation for noisy audio | Multilingual subtitle recognition with translation into many additional languages |
| Integrations | Exports to TXT, SRT, and VTT | Batch transcript and subtitle editing for fast corrections |
| Languages & capture | Watch folder for automatic transcription and a command-line interface | Caption styling with fonts, colors, templates, emojis, GIFs, and stickers |
| Best-fit workflow | GPU acceleration via CUDA, Apple Silicon, and Vulkan | Export to multiple formats including captioned video, SRT, ASS, and TXT |
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.
Zeemo
Choose Zeemo if you need transcribing recorded interviews, podcasts, and voice recordings into editable text — strengths include handles both polished social-video captions and plain transcription of meetings, interviews, and podcasts.
Buzz
Zeemo
It depends on your workflow. Buzz is strong for transcribing recorded meetings, interviews, podcasts, or lectures offline, while Zeemo is strong for transcribing recorded interviews, podcasts, and voice recordings into editable text. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Buzz is a free tier with paid upgrades and Zeemo is a free tier with paid upgrades. 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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