Meeting Transcriber and Shadow are both AI meeting assistants for recording, transcription, and summaries, compared here on pricing, features, and workflow fit. Meeting Transcriber: Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device. Shadow: A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant. They overlap on ai-meeting-assistants, so the right pick depends on team size, budget, and which meeting workflows you automate.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
For ai-meeting-assistants workflows, shortlist Meeting Transcriber when privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac matters most, and Shadow when capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining matters most. Both record across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams; trial each on real meetings before committing.
Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device.
A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant.
Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Shadow is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Meeting Transcriber | Shadow |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Automatic recording of Teams, Zoom, and Webex meetings via a macOS menu bar app | Bot-free capture that records system audio without joining the meeting as a participant |
| Standout feature | On-device transcription with selectable engines: WhisperKit, Parakeet TDT v3, or Qwen3-ASR | On-device (local) transcription on macOS |
| Team usage | Dual-track diarization with separate app and microphone tracks for clean speaker separation | Speaker identification during transcription |
| Integrations | Recurring-speaker recognition using stored voice embeddings matched by cosine similarity | Captures on-screen content in addition to spoken audio |
| Languages & capture | Structured Markdown protocols (summary, participants, topics, decisions, tasks, open questions, transcript) | Customizable prompts/Skills to generate notes, summaries, and emails |
| Best-fit workflow | Pluggable summarization backends: Claude Code CLI, OpenAI-compatible APIs (Ollama, LM Studio), or transcript-only | Webhook integration to connect outputs to other tools |
Meeting Transcriber
Choose Meeting Transcriber if you need privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac — strengths include fully open source under the mit license with development in the open on github.
Shadow
Choose Shadow if you need capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining — strengths include does not add a visible bot to meetings.
Meeting Transcriber
Shadow
It depends on your workflow. Meeting Transcriber is strong for privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac, while Shadow is strong for capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades and Shadow 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 and the budget is justified.