Cockatoo: AI transcription and note-taking service that records and transcribes meetings and lectures, then turns them into structured notes and summaries. 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 Cockatoo when transcribing recorded meetings and interviews into searchable, structured notes 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.
AI transcription and note-taking service that records and transcribes meetings and lectures, then turns them into structured notes and summaries.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Cockatoo is an AI transcription and note-taking service available through the web and an iOS app that converts spoken audio and video into text and structured notes. Users can record meetings and lectures directly or upload existing audio and video files in a wide range of formats, after which Cockatoo automatically generates a transcript with punctuation and capitalization, identifies speakers, and produces summaries with key takeaways and action items. Beyond transcription, the product offers voice typing, an AI chat agent for asking questions about content, full document translation across many languages, and video transcription with subtitles and captions. Transcripts and notes can be searched and exported to formats including PDF, DOCX, TXT, SRT, and audio, and the app syncs to the cloud. Cockatoo supports more than one hundred languages and is designed for individuals and professionals who need affordable, accurate transcription of recordings such as meetings, interviews, lectures, podcasts, and other spoken content. The service is operated by Cockatoo Inc. and is actively running in 2025 and 2026 at cockatoo.com. 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
Cockatoo 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 | Cockatoo | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Record or upload audio and video, then transcribe to structured text | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | AI summaries with key takeaways and action items | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Automatic speaker detection and punctuation | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | AI chat agent and full document translation across 100+ languages | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Video transcription with subtitles and captions | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Export to PDF, DOCX, TXT, SRT, and audio with cloud sync | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Cockatoo
Choose Cockatoo if you need transcribing recorded meetings and interviews into searchable, structured notes — strengths include handles both live recording and bulk upload of existing audio and video files.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Cockatoo
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Cockatoo is strong for transcribing recorded meetings and interviews into searchable, structured notes, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Cockatoo 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.
Often yes: teams combine tools when one handles capture and another handles analysis.
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