Cleft Notes: AI voice-note app that turns spoken thoughts and meeting audio into structured, organized notes. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. 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 Cleft Notes when capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
AI voice-note app that turns spoken thoughts and meeting audio into structured, organized notes.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Cleft Notes is an AI-powered voice-note app that captures spoken thoughts, meeting recaps, and other audio and converts them into structured, readable notes. Users record by speaking, and the app transcribes the audio and reshapes it into organized output, offering formats such as bulleted and headed notes, flowing paragraphs without bullets, or a cleaned-up verbatim transcript. It performs transcription on-device, which allows it to work offline and supports a privacy-focused approach, with encrypted cloud sync and local file storage that users control. Cleft integrates with a range of productivity tools, including Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Todoist, and automation via Zapier, so notes can flow into existing workflows. The app is available across the Apple ecosystem, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay, making it convenient to capture thoughts hands-free. While it is broadly a voice-to-notes tool, it is commonly used to capture meeting summaries and post-meeting recaps, and it is aimed at professionals and individuals who think out loud and want spoken input turned into well-formatted notes rather than raw recordings. 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
Cleft Notes 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 | Cleft Notes | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | On-device transcription that works offline | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | Multiple output formats: organized, no-bullets, or verbatim | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Encrypted cloud sync with user-controlled local storage | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | Integrations with Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Todoist, and Zapier | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Hands-free voice capture of thoughts and meeting recaps | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Cleft Notes
Choose Cleft Notes if you need capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice — strengths include on-device transcription enables offline use and privacy.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Cleft Notes
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Cleft Notes is strong for capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Cleft Notes 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.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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