Top AI Transcription Tools To Try

Transcription is the bridge between spoken communication 🗣️ and written documentation 📝. It is the process of converting spoken words into written text and retrieving valuable information. 

However, the traditional manual transcription process can be time-consuming ⏳ and requires detailed attention and resource investment. Hours spent listening and transcribing can hinder productivity and delay essential projects.

Fortunately, there are artificial intelligence (AI) transcription tools that revolutionize the way we transcribe audio and video content in 2024. Using the power of AI, these tools automate the transcription process, freeing up valuable time and resources. 

In this post, we will explore some of the top AI tools that can help you transform your work processes and enhance productivity.

What is AI Transcription & How Does it Work?

AI transcription is artificial intelligence technology that converts audio and video content into text. In traditional transcription, individuals had to listen to the recordings and then manually transcribe them. AI transcription tools have simplified and automated this process entirely, reducing the need for human intervention.

These tools are supported by sophisticated techniques, such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms, to transcribe spoken words.  

Here’s an overview of how AI transcription works:

Audio Input: First, users must upload their audio or video files to their desired AI transcription tool using a web interface or dedicated software.

Processing: The AI tool then processes the uploaded files, analyzes them, and interprets the speech within the audio or video content.

Text Output: After the conversion, the text version of the uploaded content is generated. Now, you can easily review, edit, and share the content.

What are the things to look for in AI transcription tools?

If you are thinking of choosing one of the AI transcription tools, it’s essential to consider things such as; 

• Accuracy: You must ensure the tool works well for someone like you. It must understand the languages, accents, and special words you use accurately.

• Customization: Also, look if the tools let’ you add your own touch by using words or phrases to improve accuracy.

• Languages: Check if the tool works with all the languages you need, especially if you use multiple languages.

• Editing and collaboration: Check if you and your team can easily edit together in real-time, promoting collaborations. This will help fix errors and annotations.

• Integrations: Look for tools that seamlessly connect with other software, such as storage systems and customer management tools. 

• File compatibility: You must see if the tool can handle different audio or video files and whether they can be saved in your preferred formats. 

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10 Best AI Transcription Tools in 2024

Even though you are an educator, podcaster, content creator, or journalist, we have selected the best AI transcription tools for you based on the following:

• Features
• Pros & Cons
• User Reviews, and
• Pricing

Here is an overview of Top AI Transcription Tools:

AI Tools	Features	Starting Price
Otter	Export Transcription with various formats, Integration with Google & Microsoft Calendars, Real Transcriptions	Free version available with limitations
Trint	Support 50+ languages, Collaboration features, Real-time transcriptions	$52/user/month for the basic plan
Rev	Speaker Identification, Transcription, Customizable Options	Machine transcription: $0.02/min
Sonix	Transcription & Translation, Real-time web editor, Speaker Identification,	Starts at $10/hour
Fireflies	Meeting Recording, Meeting Analytics, Free plan available	Free version available for individuals
Beey	Subtitling, Language Translation, Voice Recognition	Basic: 0.125 €/min
MeetGeek	Meeting Summaries, Integration with popular apps, Automated Transcriptions	Free basic plan available
Scribie	Supports 25+ formats, AI & human verified transcriptions, Customization options	Basic: $0.80/min
Temi	Encryption, Integration with YouTube, Google, & Google Drive	Free trial, Paid: $0.25/min
Verbit	Integration with external apps, real-time transcriptions	Pricing is available after login

1. Otter.Ai   

Otter is one of the most popular tools for automatic transcription. Some large businesses, such as IBM and Amazon, also use it. It converts audio and video into text and records real-time events in person or virtually.

Further, Otter allows smooth integration with Google and Microsoft Calendars and automatically connects to Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings. At the end of the meetings, it will send summarized notes to everyone involved via email. This tool is also helpful in clearing up background noise.

Otter Pros:

• You can export transcripts in different formats: TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, and MP3.
• Allows collaboration by letting the editor add highlights, notes, comments, images, etc.
• Enables the user to adjust playback speed from 0.5x to 3x, with an option to skip silence for quicker error correction.
• Offer personalization features that recognize specific names, jargon, and acronyms.

Otter Cons:

• It only supports the English language.
• Live notes and captions for Zoom are only supported by higher plan subscriptions. 
• The free version allows limited audio/video imports per account.

Otter Pricing:

• Free version for the basic plan
• Pro plan costs $9.17 per month per user.
• The business plan is $20 per month per user.
• Enterprise plan as per the features added.

2. Trint

Trint is AI-based transcription software founded by Jeff Kofman, an Emmy Award-winning reporter. It’s specially designed for journalists, researchers, and content creators. Well-known brands like BBC, Financial Times, The Washington Post, etc trust this tool. Further, it supports over 50+ languages and transcribes audio and video files in real-time, including live broadcasts. 

This app allows you to customize a dictionary and correct errors, enhancing transcription accuracy. It also offers collaborative features for team members.

Trint Pros:

• It can be tailored for journalists, researchers, and content creators per their needs.
• You can easily find transcripts in over 50 languages.
• Allows real-time transcription for live broadcasts
• Enables you to custom your own dictionary to enhance accuracy

Trint Cons:

• The loading time is slow when working on large files.
• Unlimited transcription isn’t available in the basic plan; you must upgrade it.
• The speaker isn’t consistently differentiated.

Trint Pricing:

• The starting price is $52 /user/month for the basic plan.
• The Advanced plan costs $60 /user/month.
• The Enterprise plan costs according to the added features.

3. Rev AI

Rev is also an AI-based technology product developed by Rev that offers a transcription feature to convert spoken words to text.  It is built upon the transcription services supported by Temi, which is also a Rev product. This tool is featured to cater to both live and pre-recorded audio and video content. 

This feature allows you to customize models with specific vocabulary and terminologies for accurate transcription. This app also identifies speakers, applies advanced punctuation and capitalization, and provides minute-by-minute time stamps in transcripts.

Rev AI Pros:

• It provides speech-to-text API  that you can easily integrate into your application.
• It is available in 36 different languages and up to eight speaker channels.
• Offers closed captions to make content accessible to people with visual and hearing impairments.
• It has the ability to filter profanity from text.
• Offers manual transcription to deliver higher-quality outputs.

Rev AI Cons:

• The accuracy of the transcription may not be right all the time.
• The pay-as-you-go pricing method can be costly if you must transcribe lots of content.  
• Speech recognition features may be difficult when dealing with different accents.
• You need to pay for additional features like sentiment analysis and topic extraction.

Rev AI Pricing:

You must pay for Rev each time you use the service. Machine transcription costs $0.02 per minute; human transcription costs $1.50.

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4. Sonix 

Sonix is an automatic transcription service technology best suited for project-based work. This tool supports over 38 languages and accents. The real-time web editor feature of Sonix will help the user search, modify, and share their transcript with other teams. Further, it offers more clarity since the transcripts generated by Sonix include time codes and speaker identification.

Sonix enables automated translation of your text summaries and subtitles. This tool can seamlessly integrate various tools, such as Dropbox, Zoom, Loom, etc. Some popular apps, such as IBM, Uber, and Microsoft, use it.

Sonix Pros:

• Custom dictionaries enhance accuracy across multiple projects.
• It organizes folders for transcripts with specific access permissions.
• Identify the speaker and separate their exchanges in different paragraphs.
• Combines multiple audio recordings into one transcript.
• Export the transcripts in Microsoft Word, TXT, and PDF formats.

Sonix Cons:

• The real-time transcriptions feature may not be supported.
• The level of accuracy decreases with poor audio quality, strong accents, and background noise.
• The premium plans contain expensive collaboration tools. 

Sonix Pricing:

• It starts at $10 per hour and is best suited to project-based work.
• The cost for premium options is $5 per hour + $22 per month per user for more frequent transcription.
• Enterprise pricing plans depend upon the level of personalization.

5. Fireflies

Fireflies is also an AI transcription tool and a personal meeting assistant for recording, transcribing, and summarizing meetings. It is trusted by notable companies such as Nike, Expedia, Compass, etc. The meeting analytics feature assists in future meetings, making it ideal for marketing, sales, and product teams to refine their communication flow. 

Another impressive feature of this tool is that it offers a free plan to try out features before seriously committing to purchase. Besides, you can also turn parts of your meetings into shareable sound bites, making the team collaboration smooth. 

Fireflies Pros:

• Provides meeting analytics such as speaker talk time, filler word usage, and talk-to-listen ratio
• The user can upload and export files in various formats such as DOCX, CSV, PDF, SRT, and JSON.
• It can transcribe meetings and files in 60 + languages
• Advanced search functionality to track speakers, meeting topics, etc
• Can seamlessly integrate with over 40 dialers, video conferencing, storage, CRM, and project management tools.

Fireflies Cons:

• It doesn’t provide a mobile app.
• It can support only one language per meeting.
• You cannot translate transcripts into other languages.

Fireflies Pricing:

• Free version available for individuals 
• Pro plan: $10/month per seat for individuals and small teams 
• Business plan: $19/month per seat for fast-growing businesses
• Enterprise: $ 39/month per seat for large-scale enterprises

6. Beey

Beey is a platform that supports transcribing online meetings, interviews, and podcasts. It also enables subtitling and language translation services, making content more engaging and understandable. This tool has an intuitive editor that edits and formats transcripts to ensure accuracy. 

It also allows voice recognition, speaker separation, voice recording, and machine translation. Video producers and podcasters best utilize Beey.

Beey Pros:

• It helps you transcribe live-stream content
• Effortless API integration.
• It enables you to search archived transcripts faster.
• You can download transcribed content in various formats.
• Enables translation into 20 different languages.

Beey Cons:

• It can be expensive for individuals and small teams.
• It offers only a few language support.
• Anyone can edit the shared transcripts, increasing the security threat.

Beey Pricing: 

• Offers a basic model for 0.125 € + VAT per minute of recording your audio. 
• The standard model for individual and small teams starts at a price of 7.5 € / hour + VAT.
•  For the enterprise model, the price is based on the added features.

7. MeetGeek

MeetGeek is an automated tool designed to streamline various processes during meetings. It allows users to focus on meaningful conversations by automatically transcribing live meetings and generating summaries of long recordings. It also organizes the transcribed content based on the users’ topics so that follow-up becomes fast and easy. 

Moreover, MeetGreek also adds time stamps to the transcripts to track different interactions that happened in audio or video files. This tool is best suited for recently established companies to increase meeting productivity and enhance workflow.

MeetGeek Pros:

• Promotes team collaboration by capturing and sharing meeting highlights.
• Fast retrieval of notes as if they can easily be accessed through a centralized location.
• Smoothly integrate with popular apps like HubSpot, Slack, and Notion.
• Allows the Identification of specific keywords in meetings and pre-recorded content.

MeetGeek Cons:

• The basic version comes free but offers only five hours of transcription per month.
• To download transcript files, you have to opt for paid versions.
• Support limited languages.

MeetGeek Pricing:

• MeetGeek offers a free basic plan
• Pro version starts with $15/per user/month 
• Businesses version costs $ 29/per user/month 
• The enterprise version costs $ 59 /per user/month 

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8. Scribie  

Scribie is one of the best AI transcription tools that uses AI and human-verified AI transcription services to produce an accuracy rate of over 99%.  Further, it follows a two-step verification process to achieve that accuracy. 

Users can edit transcripts using the online editor and request re-reviews at no additional cost. Scribie is globally trusted by different industries, such as the University of Chicago, Stanford, Kaito, etc.

Scribie Pros:

• It offers the most guaranteed accuracy. 
• Allows you to upload files from various sources like your computer, YouTube, Google Drive, etc.
• Enables transcription of files in over 25 formats.
• Offers customization options such as strict verbatim, timestamps, and rush transcription service.

Scribie Cons:

• Only able to support the English language.
• Comparatively slower than pure AI tools.
• Can’t transcribe live audio.
• Platform navigation may be confusing for new users.

Scribie Pricing:

• The basic feature costs $0.80/ minute.
• Advanced features cost the same as basic features, but you must also pay for all other features individually. 

9. Temi  

Temi is AI transcription software developed to transcribe English audio and video files. The creators of Rev.com also developed it. Temi has an outstanding accuracy rate of 90-95% for good-quality audio and delivers transcripts in 5-10 minutes.

Temi is specially designed to focus on end users by facilitating a simple editing tool for cleaning and optimizing generated transcripts to meet user demands, whereas Rev AI focuses on providing developer-centric transcription services. It is popular among companies like ESPN, Serial, and the University of Texas Austin.

Temi Pros:

• It allows encryption of files in over 25 formats.
• Allows you to transcribe content directly from your browser.
• Enable downloading transcripts in various formats such as TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, and VTT.
• It can be easily integrated with YouTube, Gmail, and Google Drive.
• Allows to share transcripts easily via link or email with teams.

Temi Cons:

• Offers limited language support.
• It doesn’t support strong accents.
• Security concerns are raised as anyone can edit it.

Temi Pricing:

• Offer a Free trial, but allow only one transcript under 45 minutes.
• The paid version offers $0.25 per audio minute, making it an affordable option for one-off transcriptions.

10. Verbit   

Verbit is a transcription software that uses both  AI technology and human experts. It helps in real-time transcription, closed captioning, note-taking, audio description etc. This tool is best suited for events like meetings and interviews.

 It first processes AI-generated initial drafts, which are then processed by a network of over 5,000 professional transcribers. Companies such as Anthology, Sphere, Udacity, etc., use it.

Verbit Pros :

• It uses both AI and human experts for accurate transcription.
• Offers live captions and transcripts for virtual events on platforms like Zoom and Webex.
• Seamless integration with over 20 external apps such as Blackboard, Canvas, etc.
• Produces accurate transcripts even with noisy audio.

Verbit Cons:

• Offers limited language support.
• No word highlighting during playback.
• Prices are only viewed after login.

Verbit Pricing:

• You have to log in to the app for price details.

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Conclusion: Which is the Best AI Transcription Tools?

AI transcription tools are becoming more dominant every day. Most of the listed tools can generate transcriptions with more than 90% accuracy within minutes. But before choosing anyone, you need to consider your business size and requirements. 

Before choosing the right AI transcription tool, you must also look for specific features such as its accuracy, the different languages it supports, customization options, integration with various other platforms, and more. Having said that,  AI transcription tools such as Otter and Rev have been widely popular among different industries to streamline their business processes.