Cresta: Enterprise contact-center AI platform combining real-time agent assist, autonomous AI agents, and conversation intelligence. MacParakeet: Free, open-source local voice app for Apple Silicon Macs offering on-device meeting recording, live transcripts, dictation, and file transcription powered by NVIDIA Parakeet. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Cresta when assisting contact-center agents in real time during customer conversations matters most, and MacParakeet when system-wide dictation across applications for privacy-conscious users matters most. Trial each on a few real meetings before you commit — the better fit usually shows fast.
Enterprise contact-center AI platform combining real-time agent assist, autonomous AI agents, and conversation intelligence.
Free, open-source local voice app for Apple Silicon Macs offering on-device meeting recording, live transcripts, dictation, and file transcription powered by NVIDIA Parakeet.
Cresta is an enterprise customer-experience AI platform that unifies human and AI agents across voice and digital channels. It captures conversations through integrations with major contact-center systems such as Genesys, NICE, Salesforce, Twilio, and Amazon Connect, then analyzes those interactions at scale to surface behavioral insights and deliver real-time guidance. Its Agent Assist listens to live conversations and provides agents with in-the-moment suggestions, knowledge, and next-best actions, while a Knowledge Agent proactively surfaces context-aware answers without manual prompting. Cresta's conversation intelligence analyzes 100% of interactions to identify the behaviors that drive outcomes, and its automated quality management scores conversations across the board so supervisors gain visibility without manual sampling. The platform also offers autonomous AI agents that can resolve customer conversations end to end, plus an Agent Operations Center that gives supervisors real-time visibility and intervention tools across both human and AI-led conversations. Cresta is built for large enterprise contact centers in industries such as financial services, travel and hospitality, telecommunications, insurance, and healthcare that need real-time assistance, coaching, and analytics at scale. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
MacParakeet is a free, open-source voice application for Apple Silicon Macs that runs speech recognition entirely on-device using NVIDIA's Parakeet TDT model via FluidAudio CoreML. Beyond system-wide dictation and file or URL transcription, it includes a meeting recording mode with live transcript preview, in-app note-taking, and export, plus meeting calendar integration through macOS EventKit that can show reminders and optionally auto-start recording. Because all speech recognition runs locally, the project states that audio remains on the device, with no cloud speech-to-text, no required accounts, and opt-out telemetry. It supports around 25 European languages with automatic detection and includes a text cleanup pipeline for filler removal, custom word replacements, and snippet expansion. Optional AI features such as summaries, chat, and text formatting can be enabled through cloud or local providers when the user chooses. Built with Swift and SwiftUI and distributed under the GPL-3.0 license, MacParakeet is actively maintained on GitHub and can be installed via a notarized DMG, a Homebrew cask, or built from source. It is positioned as a privacy-respecting, bot-free option for capturing meetings directly from the Mac. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Cresta is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); MacParakeet is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Cresta | MacParakeet |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Real-time Agent Assist with live suggestions and knowledge | On-device meeting recording with live transcript preview and note-taking |
| Standout feature | Conversation intelligence analyzing 100% of interactions | Meeting calendar integration via macOS EventKit with optional auto-start |
| Team usage | Automated quality management and scoring across all calls | System-wide dictation with hotkey and push-to-talk modes |
| Integrations | Knowledge Agent that proactively surfaces context-aware answers | File and URL transcription on the device |
| Languages & capture | Autonomous AI agents for end-to-end conversation resolution | Local NVIDIA Parakeet TDT speech recognition with no cloud STT |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with Genesys, NICE, Salesforce, Twilio, and Amazon Connect | Text cleanup pipeline including filler removal and custom replacements |
Cresta
Choose Cresta if you need assisting contact-center agents in real time during customer conversations — strengths include delivers real-time guidance during live conversations, not just post-call review.
MacParakeet
Choose MacParakeet if you need capturing and transcribing meetings locally on a mac without a bot — strengths include free and open source with on-device speech recognition.
Cresta
MacParakeet
It depends on your workflow. Cresta is strong for assisting contact-center agents in real time during customer conversations, while MacParakeet is strong for capturing and transcribing meetings locally on a mac without a bot. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Cresta is a free tier with paid upgrades and MacParakeet is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Yes. Many teams run more than one meeting assistant when the workflows are complementary.
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