CallBro: Bot-free AI meeting assistant that transcribes calls from system audio and produces structured notes without joining the call. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist CallBro when transcribing legal client meetings, consultations, and intake calls without a visible recorder matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Trial each on a few real meetings before you commit — the better fit usually shows fast.
Bot-free AI meeting assistant that transcribes calls from system audio and produces structured notes without joining the call.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
CallBro is a desktop AI meeting assistant that records and transcribes meetings in real time directly from your device's system audio and microphone, without sending a separate bot to join the call. Because capture happens locally at the system level, it works with any meeting platform, including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, as well as in-person conversations, and it remains invisible to other participants. CallBro combines the live transcript with the user's own typed notes to generate structured summaries that highlight key decisions, action items, and next steps, and it includes an AI chat that can answer questions about the meeting or draft follow-ups using the full context of the transcript and notes. The product is offered as a downloadable application for macOS and Windows, with Linux noted as upcoming, and the website lists dedicated use cases for lawyers and students alongside general business meetings. Its bot-free, device-only approach makes it relevant for professionals handling sensitive conversations, such as legal client meetings and consultations, where a visible third-party recorder may be undesirable. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free, open-source desktop application for offline speech transcription, developed by researchers at the Business Analytics and Data Science Center of the University of Graz in Austria. It provides a graphical interface around OpenAI's Whisper model (via the faster-whisper implementation) so users with no programming experience can transcribe recorded meetings, interviews, lectures, and other audio. Because all processing happens locally on the user's own computer, no audio or text is uploaded to any server, which makes it well suited to privacy-sensitive and GDPR-conscious environments such as universities, public institutions, and research teams. aTrain supports a wide range of languages and adds speaker detection through pyannote.audio so contributions from different participants can be separated. Transcripts can be exported in formats compatible with qualitative-analysis software such as MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo. It runs on Windows (including a Microsoft Store distribution) with GPU acceleration on NVIDIA hardware, and is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license. It is best for researchers, academics, and organizations that need accurate, local, no-cloud transcription of recorded conversations. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
CallBro is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | CallBro | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Bot-free capture from system audio and microphone, no participant bot | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | Real-time transcription with speaker-aware formatting | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Structured notes combining the transcript with the user's own notes | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | In-meeting and post-meeting AI chat for recall and follow-up drafting | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, or in-person meetings | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Downloadable apps for macOS and Windows | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
CallBro
Choose CallBro if you need transcribing legal client meetings, consultations, and intake calls without a visible recorder — strengths include no bot joins the call, which suits sensitive or private meetings.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
CallBro
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. CallBro is strong for transcribing legal client meetings, consultations, and intake calls without a visible recorder, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
CallBro is a free tier with paid upgrades and aTrain 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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