Cockatoo: AI transcription and note-taking service that records and transcribes meetings and lectures, then turns them into structured notes and summaries. ownscribe: Local-first command-line tool that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings on macOS entirely on-device, with natural-language search across notes. 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 Cockatoo when transcribing recorded meetings and interviews into searchable, structured notes matters most, and ownscribe when keeping fully on-device transcripts and summaries for privacy-sensitive discussions matters most. Test each on your own meetings; the right choice tends to become obvious quickly.
AI transcription and note-taking service that records and transcribes meetings and lectures, then turns them into structured notes and summaries.
Local-first command-line tool that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings on macOS entirely on-device, with natural-language search across notes.
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
ownscribe is a local-first meeting transcription and summarization command-line tool that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings entirely on the user's own machine without sending data to external servers. It is MIT-licensed and actively maintained, with v0.12.0 released in June 2026, and is written primarily in Python with a Swift component for system audio capture. On macOS 14.2 and later it captures system audio through Core Audio, and it transcribes with WhisperX to produce word-level timestamps, with optional speaker diarization via PyAnnote. For summaries it ships with a built-in local model (Phi-4-mini) and can also connect to Ollama or OpenAI-compatible backends, offering multiple templates tailored to meetings, lectures, and brief summaries. A standout feature is its natural-language search: the ask command lets users query across their stored meeting notes to retrieve relevant information. Quality-of-life features include silence-based auto-stop so recordings end cleanly when a meeting goes quiet. Because it is a CLI distributed through GitHub and runs entirely on local hardware, ownscribe targets developers and privacy-focused users who prefer scriptable, terminal-driven workflows over a graphical meeting notetaker while keeping all audio and transcripts on-device. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Cockatoo is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); ownscribe is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Cockatoo | ownscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Record or upload audio and video, then transcribe to structured text | Local-first recording, transcription, and summarization via CLI |
| Standout feature | AI summaries with key takeaways and action items | System audio capture on macOS 14.2+ through Core Audio |
| Team usage | Automatic speaker detection and punctuation | WhisperX transcription with word-level timestamps |
| Integrations | AI chat agent and full document translation across 100+ languages | Optional speaker diarization via PyAnnote |
| Languages & capture | Video transcription with subtitles and captions | Local summarization with a built-in Phi-4-mini model, plus Ollama and OpenAI-compatible backends |
| Best-fit workflow | Export to PDF, DOCX, TXT, SRT, and audio with cloud sync | Natural-language search across meeting notes with the ask command |
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.
ownscribe
Choose ownscribe if you need developers capturing and summarizing meetings from the terminal on a mac — strengths include runs entirely on-device with no data sent to external servers.
Cockatoo
ownscribe
It depends on your workflow. Cockatoo is strong for transcribing recorded meetings and interviews into searchable, structured notes, while ownscribe is strong for developers capturing and summarizing meetings from the terminal on a mac. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Cockatoo is a free tier with paid upgrades and ownscribe 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.
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