Buzz vs Happy Scribe

Buzz is a free desktop application for transcribing and translating audio on a personal computer, using OpenAI’s Whisper. It accepts audio and video files, YouTube links, and live microphone audio. Its tools include speech separation, speaker identification, a searchable transcript viewer, keyboard shortcuts, and a watch folder for automatic transcription. Transcripts can be exported as TXT, SRT, or VTT files. Buzz supports Whisper, Whisper.cpp, Faster Whisper, and compatible models from Hugging Face. After downloading the necessary models and copying them to a computer, it can work without an internet connection; it can also use the OpenAI API for remote recognition when an API key is set in Preferences. A command-line interface supports scripting, while a plugin system includes examples such as AI summaries and transcript resizing. Smaller models run faster but may be less accurate; larger models need more capable hardware or more time. Buzz requires AVX2 CPU support. On macOS it requires Apple silicon, and the Windows app is unsigned and may trigger an installation warning.

Happy Scribe turns recordings and meetings into transcripts, subtitles, and translations, with support for 150+ languages. It identifies speakers, adds timestamps, and offers summaries, action items, custom templates, AI Chat, diarization, and searchable transcripts. Exports are available in DOCX, TXT, SRT, and MP4, and API access is supported. Meetings can connect with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, and Outlook Calendar. iPhone and Android apps offer offline recording. A Mac desktop app for recording calls without a bot is described as coming soon. The free plan allows unlimited meeting recordings, limited to 45 minutes each, with limited history and a 10-minute AI trial. Basic is $8.50 a month, Pro is $19 a month, and Business is $59 a month. Users can also buy credit top-ups without a subscription; plan credits reset each billing cycle, while top-ups remain until used. Data is not used to train AI models unless users opt in. Happy Scribe lists SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, EU data residency, and TLS encryption.