Condens: UX research platform for storing, transcribing, tagging, and analyzing user interviews in a searchable, collaborative repository. Handy: Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Condens when transcribing and tagging user interview recordings matters most, and Handy when privacy-sensitive voice-to-text where audio must stay on-device matters most. Trial each on a few real meetings before you commit — the better fit usually shows fast.
UX research platform for storing, transcribing, tagging, and analyzing user interviews in a searchable, collaborative repository.
Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field.
Condens is a user research platform that helps research teams store, analyze, share, and scale customer data in one collaborative hub. It supports importing recordings, notes, and user feedback, and provides automated multilingual transcription with AI-powered speaker recognition and automated captions. For analysis, Condens offers a split-screen interface that lets researchers review raw data and tag it simultaneously, along with AI-driven pattern identification across datasets and quick generation of evidence-backed findings. All research lives in a searchable, centralized repository with cross-project insight discovery, filtering, and role-based access control for managing confidential data. Condens emphasizes real-time collaboration, allowing multiple team members to build, edit, and tag data together, and integrates with tools such as Slack, Teams, Figma, and Miro, plus whiteboard functionality for interactive sessions. Additional AI capabilities include automated bookmarking, summarization, and pattern detection across multiple studies. Positioned as a lean, practical tool for researchers who want to move quickly, Condens aims to streamline the path from interview transcripts to shareable insights without the overhead of heavier enterprise systems. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Handy is a free, open-source desktop application that turns your voice into text completely offline, with no audio ever leaving your computer. You press a configurable keyboard shortcut, speak, and release (push-to-talk), or use a toggle mode to start and stop; Handy transcribes what you said and automatically pastes the result into whatever text field is active. Because it runs entirely on-device, it is built for privacy-conscious users who want dictation without cloud uploads or subscriptions. Under the hood it is built with Tauri (a Rust backend with a React/TypeScript frontend) and supports multiple local speech-recognition models, including OpenAI's Whisper variants with GPU acceleration and the CPU-friendly Parakeet V3 model with automatic language detection. Silero Voice Activity Detection filters out silence so only speech is processed. Handy runs on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux, and is released under the MIT license. It positions itself as an accessible, extensible alternative to paid dictation tools, and is best suited for hands-free typing rather than recording multi-party meetings.
Best suited for
Condens is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Handy is open source (open source). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Condens | Handy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Automated multilingual transcription with speaker recognition and captions | Push-to-talk and toggle dictation modes with a configurable global keyboard shortcut |
| Standout feature | Split-screen interface for simultaneous data review and tagging | Fully offline, on-device transcription with no cloud uploads |
| Team usage | AI-driven pattern identification across datasets | Multiple local speech models including Whisper (GPU-accelerated) and Parakeet V3 (CPU, auto language detection) |
| Integrations | Searchable centralized repository with cross-project discovery | Silero Voice Activity Detection to filter silence and process only speech |
| Languages & capture | Real-time collaborative analysis and tagging | Automatically pastes transcribed text into any active application text field |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with Slack, Teams, Figma, and Miro plus whiteboards | Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) built with Tauri |
Condens
Choose Condens if you need transcribing and tagging user interview recordings — strengths include fast, practical workflow from transcript to tagged insights.
Handy
Choose Handy if you need hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors — strengths include completely free, open-source (mit) with no subscription or paywall.
Condens
Handy
It depends on your workflow. Condens is strong for transcribing and tagging user interview recordings, while Handy is strong for hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Condens is a free tier with paid upgrades and Handy is open source. 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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