Circleback: AI meeting assistant that automatically takes notes, transcribes in 100+ languages, assigns action items, and runs automations across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, and in-person calls. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. 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 Circleback when automatically capturing notes and action items so attendees can stay focused in meetings matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
AI meeting assistant that automatically takes notes, transcribes in 100+ languages, assigns action items, and runs automations across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, and in-person calls.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Circleback is a Y Combinator-backed AI meeting assistant that captures, transcribes, and organizes conversations automatically. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo, Slack huddles, and in-person meetings, and offers a botless option via its desktop app for those who prefer not to send a bot into calls. After each meeting it produces structured notes, identifies and auto-assigns action items, and provides searchable transcripts with speaker identification across 100+ languages. AI-driven automations and "Insights" can push data into connected tools and answer questions across past meetings. Integrations include Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Google Calendar, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio, Zoho, Linear, Notion, Monday, Zapier, and Make, plus developer access through MCP, a CLI, and webhooks. Circleback states SOC 2, GDPR, EU-US DPF, and HIPAA compliance, and offers mobile and desktop apps. New users can try it free before subscribing.
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
Circleback is from $20.83/mo (paid); aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Circleback | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | AI meeting notes | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | Action item tracking | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Multi-language transcription | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | AI search across meetings | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Workflow automations | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | AI meeting notes | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Circleback
Choose Circleback if you need automatically capturing notes and action items so attendees can stay focused in meetings — strengths include works across zoom, google meet, microsoft teams, webex, goto, slack huddles, and in-person meetings.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Circleback
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Circleback is strong for automatically capturing notes and action items so attendees can stay focused in meetings, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Circleback is from $20.83/mo and aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
More head-to-head comparisons involving Circleback and aTrain.
Circleback is automation-first (it triggers CRM, Linear and Slack actions); Granola is a bot-free personal notepad. Automation versus privacy.
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