Buzz vs Superwhisper

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.

Superwhisper turns speech into formatted text for use across applications. Its Super Mode reads the screen and adjusts dictated text to the current app, for example treating email as a message or coding prompts technically. It supports more than 100 languages, automatic language detection, and translation between languages. On-device speech models process audio locally, work without internet, and keep audio off the device's outbound path. With cloud models, audio and text pass through the Superwhisper proxy to the provider; the product says they are not retained for training. It works wherever text can be entered and names Slack, Cursor, and Notion, with coding plugins for Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, and Pi. A CLI can search and export transcripts, report recording statistics, and start a local MCP server. Free includes voice-to-text, meeting recording and transcription, and email support. Pro costs $8.49 per month or $84.99 per year and adds audio and video transcription, cloud and local models, custom API keys, and priority support. Pro features can be tried for 3,000 words before free-tier features remain available.