Willow Voice: Willow Voice is a system-wide AI dictation app for Mac, Windows, and iPhone that converts speech into cleaned-up, formatted text and inserts it at the cursor in any application. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Willow Voice when drafting emails, slack messages, and chat replies by speaking instead of typing 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.
Willow Voice is a system-wide AI dictation app for Mac, Windows, and iPhone that converts speech into cleaned-up, formatted text and inserts it at the cursor in any application.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Willow Voice is an AI dictation tool that turns spoken words into polished written text inside any application. Instead of recording meetings, it works at the cursor: you place your cursor in a text field (such as Gmail, Slack, Notion, iMessage, or a code editor), hold a hotkey, speak naturally, and formatted text appears in place. As it transcribes, Willow automatically removes filler words, fixes punctuation, and applies formatting, and it can learn your writing style to adapt tone across different apps. The product is built for professionals who want to write messages, emails, and documents faster than typing. It runs on Mac, Windows, and iPhone, supports voice commands for inserting line breaks and bullet points, handles many languages, and offers an auto-learning dictionary for names and terminology. Willow advertises low-latency transcription and an AI mode that expands brief spoken notes into complete messages. For organizations, it markets SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance, zero data retention, and admin controls. It is a dictation tool rather than a meeting or call recorder.
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
Willow Voice 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 | Willow Voice | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | System-wide dictation that inserts transcribed text at the cursor in any app via a hotkey | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | Automatic cleanup that removes filler words, fixes punctuation, and applies formatting | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Style and tone matching that learns and adapts to your writing across apps | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | AI mode that expands brief spoken notes into complete, polished messages | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Voice commands for formatting (e.g. new line, bullet point) and an auto-learning dictionary for names and terms | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | Cross-platform availability on Mac, Windows, and iPhone with support for many languages | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Willow Voice
Choose Willow Voice if you need drafting emails, slack messages, and chat replies by speaking instead of typing — strengths include works everywhere you type instead of being locked to a single app or note interface.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Willow Voice
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Willow Voice is strong for drafting emails, slack messages, and chat replies by speaking instead of typing, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Willow Voice 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.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
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