Best AI Transcription Tools and Software in 2026

Otter.ai is still the default choice for transcribing meetings and interviews in English. It joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls automatically, labels speakers, and produces summaries and action items, while AI Chat lets you ask questions across all your past meetings. Transcription covers six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese), so it suits English-first teams best.

• Live transcription with automatic speaker labels
• AI summaries, action items and AI Chat across meetings
• Auto-joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet
• Shared notes with highlights and comments
• Transcription in 6 languages

Rev.ai is the developer API from Rev, the transcription company, and pairs low-cost machine transcription with Rev's human transcription service when a result has to be right. Its Reverb models cover 57+ languages, and per-use add-ons handle translation, summaries, language identification and sentiment. Human transcription is what makes Rev a go-to for legal, academic and published work.

• Reverb speech recognition in 57+ languages
• Human transcription with a 99%+ accuracy guarantee
• Pay-per-use add-ons: translation, summaries, sentiment
• Well-documented REST and streaming APIs
• Free credits worth 5 hours to start

AssemblyAI is an API-first speech platform for teams building transcription into their own products. Its Universal models handle pre-recorded and streaming audio, Universal-3.5 Pro (July 2026) switches between 18 languages mid-conversation, and add-ons cover sentiment analysis, PII redaction, content moderation and topic detection. LLM Gateway connects transcripts to large language models for summaries and Q&A.

• Universal speech models for batch and real-time audio
• Code-switching across 18 languages (Universal-3.5 Pro)
• PII redaction, content moderation and sentiment add-ons
• LLM Gateway for summaries and questions over transcripts
• Voice Agent API for conversational apps

Happy Scribe combines automated transcription with optional human proofreading, making it a versatile choice for users who need transcripts for interviews, podcasts, meetings, and video content. The platform supports transcription in multiple languages, automatically identifies speakers, and includes tools for editing transcripts, translating content, and generating subtitles. Users can also export transcripts in different formats to fit their workflows.

• AI transcription and subtitle generation in 150+ languages
• Automatic speaker identification and editable transcripts
• AI-powered translation and subtitle creation
• Export options including TXT, DOCX, SRT, and VTT, depending on the plan
• Optional human transcription and proofreading for higher accuracy

Deepgram is built for high-volume and real-time workloads, from call analytics to voice agents. Its Nova-3 model transcribes 50+ languages and is designed to stay accurate on noisy, real-world audio, while Flux adds turn detection for conversational apps. Aura-2 text-to-speech and a Voice Agent API sit alongside transcription, so one vendor can cover a full voice pipeline.

• Nova-3 speech-to-text in 50+ languages
• Streaming and batch transcription at very low per-minute cost
• Flux model with built-in turn detection for voice agents
• Aura-2 text-to-speech and Voice Agent API
• Custom model training through sales

Speechmatics is strongest where speakers mix languages, accents and dialects. Its Melia 1 model (June 2026) transcribes 56 languages and switches language mid-sentence without being told which one to expect, and the platform now covers 55+ languages overall. Self-serve pay-as-you-go pricing replaced quote-only plans, and there are specialist medical and voice-agent models.

• 55+ languages with mid-sentence language switching
• Custom vocabulary and domain adaptation
• Real-time and batch transcription
• Medical (Oak 1) and voice-agent (Linden 1) models
• Confidence scores and word-level timestamps

Descript turns a transcript into an editing timeline: delete a sentence from the text and it disappears from the audio or video. That makes it the fastest way for podcasters and video creators to cut interviews, remove filler words and fix mistakes, with transcription in 25 languages. AI Speech (formerly Overdub) can regenerate a misspoken line in your own voice, and the Underlord co-editor automates rough cuts.

• Edit audio and video by editing the text
• AI Speech voice cloning to fix flubbed lines
• Automatic filler-word removal and Studio Sound
• Underlord AI co-editor for rough cuts
• Transcription in 25 languages

Riverside (renamed from Riverside.fm in May 2026) records each guest locally in up to 4K, so remote interviews sound and look like they were made in one studio. Transcripts arrive automatically in 100+ languages, Magic Clips cuts short highlight videos, and an AI Co-Creator helps edit. Webinars, live streaming and podcast hosting have joined the recording tools.

• Local multi-track recording up to 4K video
• AI transcription in 100+ languages
• Magic Clips for short highlight videos
• AI Co-Creator editing agent
• Direct publishing, live streaming and podcast hosting

Castmagic transcribes a podcast, webinar or meeting and then turns it into the assets around it: show notes, summaries, social posts, newsletters and blog drafts. Transcripts are speaker-labelled in 60+ languages, Magic Chat answers questions about your content, and Studio creates captioned clips and audiograms for social channels.

• Speaker-labelled transcription in 60+ languages
• AI show notes, summaries and social posts
• Custom prompt templates for repeatable content
• Studio clipping, captioned audiograms and AI images
• API access from the Starter plan

Azure Speech (now branded Azure Speech in Foundry Tools) is Microsoft's developer service for transcription, with real-time, fast and batch modes in 100+ languages and variants. Custom speech models learn company terminology, and enterprise security and compliance come with Azure. Note that Teams' built-in meeting transcription is a separate Microsoft 365 feature; Azure Speech is for building your own apps.

• Real-time, fast and batch transcription
• Custom speech models for your terminology
• 100+ languages and variants
• MAI-Transcribe models alongside the standard engine
• Azure security, compliance and data residency

Google Cloud Speech-to-Text gives developers Google's speech models through an API, now led by Chirp 3, a foundation model trained across 100+ languages. The service supports 125+ languages, speaker diarization, automatic punctuation, streaming and model adaptation, with single- or multi-region data residency. Dynamic batch mode makes large back catalogues cheap to process.

• Chirp 3 speech foundation model
• 125+ languages and variants
• Speaker diarization and automatic punctuation
• Model adaptation for custom terms
• Regional data residency on the V2 API

Amazon Transcribe adds speech recognition to applications already running on AWS. Batch transcription fell to a flat $0.006 per minute in June 2026, billed per second, and specialist versions cover medical dictation and contact-center call analytics. Custom vocabularies, custom language models and automatic PII redaction help with domain-specific and sensitive recordings.

• Batch and streaming transcription billed per second
• Custom vocabulary and custom language models
• Automatic content and PII redaction
• Transcribe Medical and Call Analytics versions
• Native integration with other AWS services

Verbit combines its Captivate speech engine with human reviewers for organizations where captions and transcripts carry compliance weight. Its Campus Complete plans target ADA Title II and WCAG 2.1 AA requirements in education, while Legal Capture and Legal Visor serve court reporters and attorneys. Pricing is by quote, with demos instead of a free trial.

• AI transcription with human verification
• Education plans built for ADA Title II and WCAG 2.1 AA
• Legal Capture and Legal Visor for legal work
• Live and post-production captions in 100+ languages
• Enterprise security and integrations

Fireflies.ai records and transcribes meetings in 100+ languages, then turns them into searchable notes, summaries and action items, with the AskFred assistant answering questions across calls. It can join as a bot or record bot-free through its desktop app and Chrome extension. Conversation intelligence and team analytics sit on the Business plan, which makes it popular with sales teams.

• Meeting transcription in 100+ languages
• Bot-free recording via desktop app and Chrome extension
• AI summaries, action items and AskFred search
• CRM sync and conversation intelligence (Business)
• Unlimited transcription on the free plan

Grain records and transcribes customer calls, writes AI notes, and makes it easy to share the moments that matter as clips and highlight reels. It has grown into a revenue-intelligence tool for sales and success teams, with coaching, trackers and HubSpot and Salesforce sync on the Business plan, plus bot-free desktop capture and custom vocabulary.

• AI meeting notes and custom note templates
• Shareable clips and highlight reels
• Bot-free desktop capture
• AI coaching, trackers and CRM sync (Business)
• Custom vocabulary and multilingual transcripts

Whisper is OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model, free under the MIT licence and able to run entirely on your own computer, which makes it the go-to option for private or offline transcription. It covers 98 languages, with accuracy that varies by language. For hosted transcription OpenAI now recommends its newer gpt-transcribe model, while the whisper-1 API remains for timestamps, subtitle formats and translation into English.

• Free and open source (MIT licence)
• Runs locally, so audio never leaves your machine
• 98 languages, plus translation into English
• Hosted whisper-1 API, with newer gpt-transcribe models
• Widely built into other apps and tools

Sonix pairs fast automated transcription with one of the most usable browser editors, which is why researchers, journalists and media teams like it. It transcribes and translates 54+ languages, exports SRT and VTT subtitles, and its AI Analysis summarizes files, finds themes and answers questions with citations across a whole folder. Sonix states SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliance.

• Transcription and translation in 54+ languages
• In-browser editor with speaker labels
• AI Analysis: summaries, themes and cited answers
• SRT and VTT subtitle export
• SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliance

Trint is designed for journalists and producers who work through large volumes of interviews. Transcripts become a searchable library where you can find quotes, mark up passages and build stories together, with transcription in 50+ languages and translation into 70+. Newsroom integrations, an API and SSO sit on the Business plan.

• Searchable transcript library for quotes and topics
• Collaborative editing and story building
• 50+ transcription and 70+ translation languages
• AI summaries and a caption editor
• Newsroom integrations on the Business plan

Transkriptor keeps transcription simple and inexpensive: upload a file or record, and get a transcript in 100+ languages that you can export to TXT, Word or SRT. It now doubles as a meeting assistant with a bot for Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, a desktop recorder and AI summaries, and a 50% education discount makes it popular with students.

• Transcription in 100+ languages
• Meeting bot for Zoom, Google Meet and Teams
• iOS and Android apps plus a Chrome extension
• AI summaries and Ask Transkriptor chat (Pro)
• TXT, Word and SRT export

Transcribe by Wreally is a browser-based tool that suits people who transcribe for themselves and want help, not a full platform. A $20 yearly licence unlocks the editor with dictation and foot-pedal support, and automatic transcription in 80+ languages costs $6 per hour on top. The editor works offline, and exports cover DOC, TXT, SRT and WebVTT.

• Browser-based editor that also works offline
• Automatic transcription in 80+ languages
• Dictation and foot-pedal support for manual work
• Automatic timecodes and speaker identification
• DOC, TXT, SRT and WebVTT export

Notta records meetings, calls and voice notes and transcribes and translates them in 58 languages. Meeting bots join Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and Webex, and a bot-free desktop recorder and Chrome extension cover everything else, while Notta Brain searches across meetings to draft follow-ups. Notta also absorbed Airgram, its former sister product, in 2024.

• Transcription and translation in 58 languages
• Meeting bots for Zoom, Meet, Teams and Webex
• Bot-free desktop recorder and Chrome extension
• Notta Brain cross-meeting AI search
• Calendar integration and mobile apps

Live Transcribe is Google's free Android app for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, and it is just as useful for anyone who needs live captions of a conversation. It transcribes 80+ languages and dialects in real time, works offline on supported phones, and alerts you to sounds like alarms or your name. In 2026 it added Sign-to-text, which uses the camera to turn American Sign Language into text.

• Real-time captions in 80+ languages and dialects
• Offline transcription on supported Android phones
• Sound notifications, including your name being called
• Sign-to-text for American Sign Language (2026)
• Completely free

Ava provides live captions for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in conversations, meetings and classes. Individuals can start free, while organizations add Scribe, which combines AI with human review for 99% accuracy and is the option Ava positions for ADA compliance. Ava Connect brings captions into Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, and ASL interpretation is also available.

• Live AI captions for conversations and calls
• Scribe human-reviewed captions for organizations
• Ava Connect captions in Zoom, Teams and Meet
• Translation into 15+ languages
• ASL interpretation services

Speechnotes is a clean online notepad for dictation: speak, and your words appear with punctuation and formatting from spoken commands. It runs in Chrome and Edge, with an Android app, and is free with ads. A separate pay-as-you-go service transcribes audio and video files with speaker labels, timestamps and SRT export.

• Distraction-free dictation notepad
• Spoken punctuation and formatting commands
• Free with ads; ad-free Premium is inexpensive
• File transcription with SRT export ($0.10/minute)
• Export to Google Drive and email

Dragon Medical One from Microsoft (Nuance) lets clinicians dictate straight into electronic health records with medical vocabulary built in and no voice training required. It integrates with Epic, Oracle Health and MEDITECH, and PowerMic Mobile turns a phone into a dictation microphone. Microsoft now steers customers toward Dragon Copilot, which adds ambient note-taking from patient conversations.

• Medical vocabulary with no voice training needed
• Direct dictation into Epic, Oracle Health and MEDITECH
• PowerMic Mobile smartphone microphone
• Shared AutoText shortcuts across teams
• Upgrade path to Dragon Copilot ambient AI

Dragon Legal Anywhere is Nuance's cloud speech recognition for lawyers and legal staff, with legal vocabulary and citation formatting built in. It dictates into desktop applications, works in Citrix, VMware and RDS environments, and includes the Dragon Anywhere mobile app. Licences are sold through Nuance and its resellers rather than at a published price.

• Legal vocabulary and citation formatting
• Dictation into desktop applications
• Works in Citrix, VMware and RDS environments
• Dragon Anywhere mobile app included
• Central management of licences and custom words

CallRail transcribes the phone calls generated by your marketing and turns them into lead insights. Basic transcription comes with every Lead Tracking plan, while Premium Conversation Intelligence adds summaries, sentiment, automatic tagging, AI lead scoring and coaching. It suits businesses that win customers by phone and want to know which campaigns produce good calls.

• Automatic call transcription
• AI lead scoring and qualification by intent
• Call summaries, sentiment and auto-tagging
• Coaching and follow-up drafts
• CRM and marketing platform integrations

Supernormal records meetings from a desktop app without sending a bot into the call, then writes structured notes, decisions and action items. Its 2026 relaunch adds the ability to turn notes into slides, documents and spreadsheets, groups meetings into projects, and moves to shared credits with unlimited seats, which suits agencies and small teams.

• Bot-free meeting notetaker (desktop app)
• Structured notes, decisions and action items
• Turn meetings into slides, docs and sheets
• Projects that group related meetings
• Shared credits with unlimited seats

Recall.ai is the infrastructure behind many meeting tools: one API that sends bots into Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles and returns recordings, diarized transcripts and participant data. A Desktop Recording SDK captures meetings without a bot, and US, EU and Japan data residency is available.

• One API for Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex and more
• Real-time or async diarized transcripts
• Desktop Recording SDK for bot-free capture
• Free Calendar API
• US, EU and Japan data residency