Best 8 AI Transcription Software (Speech to Text Apps) + 5 Free Solutions

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It’s tough to imagine how to transform your everyday short speech conversations into written text. If you’re with a growing business, you know for sure that you need to save some time for more important things. So, what’s the best way possible? The answer is – by transcribing it!

AI transcribing software is the process of converting speech into text. It’d be a challenge to manually transcribe audio, let alone have someone do it for you. Thankfully, there are many AI transcription software solutions available.

In this article, I’m going to introduce you to the best AI transcription tools and compare their functionality, advantages, and disadvantages. After reading this, you will know exactly which AI transcription software is right for your company, with 5 free and premium options. Let’s get started…

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1. Nuance: Dragon Speech Recognition

Dragon Speech Recognition is a software program that helps you do your work faster and easier, using artificial intelligence technology to make sure your dictation is accurate every time. It can be used in a variety of industries, such as healthcare, finance, services, and retail—anywhere there are reports or documents that need to be created quickly and efficiently.

Dragon Speech Recognition is a cloud-based service that provides seamless integration with workflows, making it easy to use and giving users the ability to quickly and accurately document detailed information through voice alone.

It offers transcription solutions for businesses of all sizes: whether they have one employee or hundreds of thousands working together as one team across multiple locations worldwide.

Dragon Speech Recognition is a powerful tool for busy professionals who want to create detailed and accurate documentation quickly and easily using their voices.

It’s also a great option for remote workers who want to be empowered to use their voice naturally to create documentation.

Professionals in financial services, social services, law enforcement, and other industries who need a powerful speech recognition solution that integrates directly into their workflows will find Dragon Speech Recognition fits the bill nicely.

Pros and Contras

  • Easy to use
  • High rate of accuracy
  • Quick to catch on and mimic terms and phrases
  • Detailed personal profile
  • After the latest updates, some users have reported issues.
  • Cannot recognize difficult sentences and unfamiliar words, especially if they are spoken with an accent.

Pricing

Dragon Home

Price: $200 one-time payment
You will get:
Up to 99% speech recognition accuracy right out of the box
Create, format, and edit documents just by speaking
Create email and search the Web faster than ever using simple voice commands
Built on a ‘Deep Learning’ speech engine that continuously adjusts to your voice
Listen back to dictated text
Optimized for touchscreen devices
Includes Dragon Anywhere

Dragon Professional

Price: Starts at $500 for a one-time payment
You will get everything in Dragon Home, plus:
Create and edit your spreadsheets with full text control in Microsoft Excel
Create custom voice commands for standard texts
Import/export custom word lists for your sector
Turn recordings into editable text
Automatically transcribe your recordings
Sync customizations with the Dragon Anywhere mobile app
Combine with the Nuance PowerMic for ease-of-use
Network-managed licenses and volume discounts

Dragon Legal

Price: Starts at $500 for a one-time payment
You will get everything in Dragon Professional, plus:
Integrated legal terms specifically for legal professionals

Dragon Anywhere

Price: $15 per month or $150 per year
Includes 1-week free trial
You will get:
Fast dictation and high recognition accuracy
Access customized words and auto-text across all devices
Unlimited dictation to the cloud
Share documents by email, Dropbox, Evernote, and more
Powerful voice editing and formatting
Syncs seamlessly with Dragon Professional desktop products

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Dragon Speech Recognition can assist you in doing your work faster with voice-driven technology. It will take some practice to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it is a very useful tool to save you time and energy during your work day.

2. Braina

Braina is a voice-activated software program that can be used to control your computer. Braina understands speech no matter what language you speak and will convert it into text for typing or copying onto the screen — providing a personal assistant of sorts within any operating system.

It can convert speech to text in over 100 different languages, so no matter what language you speak, Braina will understand you.

It can be controlled using natural language commands. This means that instead of having to memorize keyboard shortcuts or complex commands, you can just tell Braina what you want it to do and it does it for you!

It has an Android and iOS app that converts your smartphone or tablet into a wireless microphone to command Braina on your PC over a Wifi network.

Braina is a virtual assistant that can understand natural language, think, and learn from experience like a human brain.

Braina is suitable for people who want to be more productive, control their computer using natural language commands, and have a digital assistant that can act as an intelligent assistant.

Pros and Contras

  • Easy to install and use
  • Has the ability to interpret what people say and understand any language.
  • Viable alternative to Cortana
  • Offers better features than some of its competitors
  • More affordable
  • Plug-ins let you transcribe prerecorded audio files
  • It stops responding to commands as soon as it goes inactive
  • Punctuation can be erratic in non-English languages

Pricing

Braina Lite

Price: Free
You will get:
English Voice Commands
English Text-to-Speech Reader
Play/Search Songs and Videos
Mathematics
Search Online Information
Dictionary and Thesaurus
Search Files and Folders
Open Programs, Files, Folders, and Websites
Weather Information
Alarms, Reminders & Task Scheduling
Notes
Software Updates (free features)
Remote WiFi Mouse

Braina PRO (1 Year)

Price: $79
You will get everything in Braina Lite, plus:
Dictate (Speech to Text) in any Software or Website in 90 Languages with up to 99% accuracy.
Multi-language Command mode (Non-English Voice commands)
Custom Voice Commands
Non-English Text to Speech Reader
Voice Music/Media Control (Pause, Play, Stop, Volume Up, Volume Down)
Artificial Brain
Teach Custom Replies
Premium Support
Window Control (Minimize, Maximize, Restore, Switch Applications, Scroll Up, Scroll Down)
Change Braina’s name
Hotkeys
Startup Command
Mouse Automation
Automate Keystrokes

Braina PRO Lifetime

Price: $199
You will get everything in Braina Pro, plus:
Software Updates (for 5 years)
Premium Support (for 5 years)

Conclusion

Braina is a powerful tool that can be used to make operating one’s computer more convenient. It doesn’t matter if you live in a different country or if you don’t speak the same language as your family and friends, Braina will understand what you want it to do and complete the task for you. It has a very user-friendly interface and is easy to use and set up, even for those without technical knowledge.

3. SpeechText.AI

SpeechTextAI is a service that helps to turn speech into text very accurately. It supports more than 30 languages and non-native speaker accents.

It has a powerful speech-to-text technology that automatically converts voice to text in seconds. It has editing tools that help users to proofread and verify speech recognition results.

SpeechTextAI provides fast and accurate voice transcriptions, so you can quickly get your transcripts done.

SpeechTextAI is a great fit for businesses that want to speed up their business processes by using automatic transcription software. It’s also a good option for individuals who need to transcribe interviews, medical data, conference calls, podcasts and videos. Researchers who need to convert MP3 files into text format will love this program as well. People who want to create subtitles for videos will also enjoy SpeechTextAI. Anybody who needs voice recognition software will be pleased with this software.

Pros and Contras

  • Accurately recognizes speech
  • Multi-language Support
  • Speaker identification
  • Domain-specific models
  • It supports a wide range of file formats
  • The output file format is in PDF, which can be difficult to edit compared to a Word document.

Pricing

Starter

Price: $10
You will get:
180 Transcription Minutes
30 MB Maximum File size
30+ Languages
General Models

Personal

Price: $19
You will get:
380 Transcription Minutes
60 MB Maximum File size
30+ Languages
Domain-Specific Models

Standard

Price: $49
You will get:
990 Transcription Minutes
200 MB Maximum File size
30+ Languages
Domain-Specific Models

Business

Price: $99
You will get:
2,000 Transcription Minutes
1 GB Maximum File size
30+ Languages
Domain-Specific Models

Conclusion

In summation, SpeechTextAI is a good choice for transcription needs. It’s accurate and precise, which means users won’t waste time fixing mistakes or fixing voice recognition results. It’s also affordable, meaning that people will be able to afford it. They also offer free trials.

4. Otter.ai

Otter.ai is a program that helps you take notes in meetings, record them, and then go back and listen to the recording later.

It does this by recording your meeting and taking notes in real time, generating an automated summary for you to share with everyone.

This is great because it helps you remember everything that was said during the meeting by automatically recording everything that was said and taking notes on what was discussed.

Otter.ai is available on iOS and Android devices as well as a Chrome extension.

Businesses can use it to help their teams be more productive in meetings and keep everyone aligned on key deliverables. Students and faculty can use it to help them succeed in their education by making sure they’re staying on track with what they’re learning and keeping up with assignments as they go. And individuals can use it to increase productivity by recording meetings and getting live transcription of those discussions so they don’t have to take notes or interrupt the meeting to send an email afterward.

Pros and Contras

  • The software can transcribe both recorded audio and live conversations
  • Ability to edit and collaborate on transcripts
  • Integrates with leading video conferencing platforms
  • Free Plan is available
  • Poor accuracy in the transcription of complex audio test recordings
  • Real-time transcription is fallible and cannot keep up with the pace of natural speech

Pricing

Basic

Price: FREE
You will get:
Record and transcribe your meetings in real time
Otter Assistant joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet to automatically take and share notes, even if you can’t join the meeting
Takeaways and Automated Outline
300 monthly transcription minutes; 30 minutes per conversation

Pro

Price: $16.99
You will get everything in Basic, plus:
Import and transcribe pre-recorded audio or video files
Otter Assistant joins meetings when you are double-booked
Advanced search, export, and playback
1200 monthly transcription minutes; 90 minutes per conversation

Business

Price: $30
You will get everything in Pro, plus:
Team features: shared custom vocabulary and speakers, assign action items to teammates
Otter Assistant joins meetings when you are triple-booked
Admin features: usage analytics, centralized billing, prioritized support
6000 monthly transcription minutes; 4 hours per conversation

Enterprise

Price: Depends on your business needs.
You will get everything in Business, plus:
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Organization-wide deployment
More payment methods

Conclusion

I think if you are looking for a great way to stay organized, whether at school, work or in your personal life, then Otter.ai is certainly worth looking into.

5. Speechmatics

Speechmatics is a machine that can understand what people are saying and turn it into text. It covers the majority of the global population’s native languages with unsurpassed accuracy. It has innovative features, such as Automatic Language Identification and Speaker Labels.

Speechmatics offers flexible deployment options to meet your specific business needs

Speechmatics is the perfect solution for businesses that want to transcribe human-level speech into text regardless of demographic, age, gender, dialect, or location.

Speechmatics is also a great option for developers who want to easily integrate speech-to-text technology into their services and solutions. And individuals who want to understand every voice can use Speechmatics to make sure they’re hearing what people are saying.

Pros and Contras

  • Easy to use
  • Great Integration
  • Speechmatics offers users the ability to save time by doing audio transcription with their ears and hands
  • Responsive customer support
  • Speechmatics has no ready-to-use solutions that meet your needs
  • Does not notify the user when a transcription is finished

Pricing

Free

You will get:
8 hours free per month (4 hours of Batch Transcription, 4 hours of Real-Time Transcription)
All 48 languages available
Cloud deployment
No Contract

On-Demand

You will get everything in Free Plan
Price:
Batch Transcription $1.25 per hour for Standard $1.90 per hour for Enhanced 2 hours free of Standard, and 2 hours free of Enhanced
Real-Time Transcription $1.65 per hour for Standard $2.15 per hour for Enhanced 4 hours free split across Standard and Enhanced

Enterprise

Price: Depends on your business needs.
You will get:
Minimum 200 hours per month
Choice of Standard or Enhanced*
All 48 languages available
Cloud / On-premises / Hybrid deployment
Online Support

Conclusion

To sum up, Speechmatics offers an innovative solution to convert human voice input into text. It has a host of features that make it the ultimate provider of transcription and computational linguistics. With its expansive language coverage, Speechmatics transcribes languages without biases or errors. And at a price point of dollars per hour, it’s more affordable than other competitors.

6. Speak.ai

Speak.ai is a tool that helps you understand what people are saying in different videos and recordings. You can use it to figure out what people are talking about, how they feel about things, and other important information. It uses speech recognition and natural language processing to uncover important insights into qualitative data.

It offers automated transcription, data visualization, and NLP software all in one platform. And the best part is that it has a seamless upload process for audio, video, and text data.

Speak.ai is a language analytics platform designed to help researchers, marketers, and anyone else who needs to analyze language data.

Pros and Contras

  • Speak AI has the ability to condense hours of audio into insightful summaries
  • Multi-Language Support
  • Seamless processing
  • Customizable voices
  • Speak AI Go To command is sometimes not working

Pricing

Starter

Price: $10 per month
You will get:
Pay-as-you-go transcription
1 user
All non-premium features

Custom

Price: Depending on features and your needs
You will get:
Unlimited hours
Unlimited users
Pick only the features you need

Premium

Price: $585 per month
10 hours per month
5 additional team members
All premium add-ons

Conclusion

Speak.ai is an incredibly powerful tool that gives you the ability to uncover insights in your data like never before. After using it once, you’ll likely want to integrate it into your workflow and use it whenever analyzing different types of data.

7. Fireflies.ai

Fireflies AI Notetaker is a powerful tool that can help you take your meetings and conferences to the next level. By recording and transcribing what’s being said, Fireflies helps you make sense of the information you’re getting—so you can use it later in your work or personal life. It can automatically record and transcribe meetings, so you don’t have to worry about missing important information.

You can also search through all of your past meetings in order to find things that you may have missed. It has a search function that allows you to quickly find important highlights from conversations.

Furthermore, it integrates with various platforms, making it easy to collaborate with teammates.

This tool is perfect for business professionals who need to record, transcribe, and search across voice conversations for insights. It’s also great for individuals who need an AI assistant to help manage meetings. But Fireflies is also perfect for developers who want to use the Fireflies API to create integrations with other tools out there that can take your meetings from ordinary to extraordinary!

Pros and Contras

  • The platform is easy to use and lets you dive straight in, without requiring any complex set up
  • The tool does a good job of picking out unique words and proper nouns
  • Great value for money
  • Saves a lot of time and effort
  • Excellent customer service
  • It’s unfortunate that they don’t support more languages

Pricing

Free

You will get:
Limited transcription credits
800 mins of storage per seat
Record Zoom, GMeet, MS Teams, and +more
Automated meeting summaries
Search within meetings
Playback (1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x)
Comments & reactions
Clip-out moments as soundbites
Uploads
3 public channels

Pro

Price: $18 per seat/month
You will get everything in Free, plus:
Unlimited transcription credits
8,000 mins of storage per seat
Download transcripts & recordings
Global search COMING SOON
Smart search filters
AI meeting summaries
Keywords & topic tracking
Meeting speaker talk-time
Unlimited public channels
Custom Vocabulary
CRM, Zapier, and Slack integrations

Business

Price: $29 per seat/month
You will get everything in Pro, plus:
Unlimited storage
In-depth AI meeting summaries
Video recording
Conversation intelligence
Team insights (For admins)
Unlimited public & private channels
API Access
Unlimited integrations
Priority support

Enterprise

Price: Custom Pricing (Annual Billing only)
You will get everything in Business, plus:
Custom speech models
Onboarding program
Dedicated account manager
SSO COMING SOON
Dedicated support
Payments by invoice
Tiered Discount

Conclusion

Fireflies is a powerful AI notetaking tool that can help you make the most of your meetings, conferences, and other gatherings. It is easy to use, and it integrates with various platforms for maximum efficiency. It has a host of features that make it a good choice for business meetings and events of all kinds.

8. Scribie.com

Scribie is a service that helps to turn spoken audio into text. This text can then be used for a variety of purposes, such as creating a website, writing a paper, or even subtitling a video.

It is an easy-to-use, hassle-free service. You can upload your audio file onto the website, and then select the type of transcript you need from their list of options.

The turnaround time is based on the customer’s needs. They also have a 99% accuracy guarantee for manual transcripts with free re-reviews.

It’s great for businesses that need to have audio or video transcribed into text for marketing, legal, or other purposes. It’s also great for academics who need to have lectures and seminars transcribed into text. And it’s perfect for individuals who need dissertation transcription services.

Pros and Contras

  • The service is fast and easy
  • Excellent accuracy
  • Affordable price
  • The user interface is a bit confusing
  • Does not offer live transcription

Pricing

Automated

Price: $0.10 per minute
You will get:
30 mins turn around
Around 80-95% accuracy
Audio time coding
Speaker tracking
Word document
SRT/VTT subtitle file
Minimum order of $1 per file

Manual

Price: $0.80 per minute
You will get:
24 Hours turn around
99% accuracy
Audio time coding
Speaker tracking
Word document
SRT/VTT subtitle file
Strict verbatim $0.50/min
Noisy/accented audio additional $0.50/min
Burnt-in-time coding (BITC) additional $0.50/min

Conclusion

The service is great for anyone who has had to transcribe audio files that they have recorded and want to turn into something useful. However, if accuracy is of paramount importance (and you don’t mind the wait), a manual translation can be done for relatively little money.

5 Best Free Transcription Solutions To Try

If you’re looking for a free way to have an audio file transcribed, then there are quite a few options.

1. Speechnotes

Speechnotes is an online notepad that allows you to write down your thoughts, and it also lets you speak your thoughts into the notepad, which will type them out for you.

It’s a speech-enabled online notepad designed to empower your ideas. It has a clean and efficient design, so you can focus on your thoughts. It incorporates cutting-edge speech-recognition technology for the most accurate results possible.

Speechnotes is for those who need help getting their thoughts out of their head and onto paper, but don’t want to spend all day doing it.

2. Apple Dictation

As part of its desktop and mobile operating systems, Apple offers a feature called Dictation, which uses Siri to convert speech into text.

You can use dictation to speak text into many apps and features on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch instead of typing it with the keyboard.

To use dictation in iOS, hold down the microphone icon on your stock keyboard. To use it with Mac’s built-in speech recognition tool, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation and then press the keyboard shortcut assigned to turn text into voice input.

3. Google Docs Voice Typing

Google Docs Voice Typing is a great way to write without using a keyboard. You can use your voice to say what you want to write, and Google Docs will type it out for you.

It uses voice commands like “Select all” and “Delete last word” to make edits to your text.

It’s available in the Google Chrome web browser. You can also use it with an external microphone or built-in microphone on your computer.

Google Docs Voice Typing is suitable for people who want to type faster than they can by a keyboard—and also for those who find typing on their device difficult because they have conditions that make typing difficult or painful.

4. Google Gboard

Google Gboard is a keyboard that you can use on your phone to type faster. It was also designed by Google, which is known for its focus on innovation and smart design.

Google Gboard offers a variety of features, including swipe typing, glide typing, and voice typing. These features make it easy to switch between text input methods, so you can type faster than ever before. The best part here is you can customize it and choose from various themes.

You can download it for free on the Google Play Store as well as on Apple App Store.

5. Windows 10 Speech Recognition

Windows Speech Recognition is a built-in speech-to-text software that allows you to operate your computer with voice commands alone, without the need for a keyboard or mouse.

It comes with a personal dictionary and speech-to-text options for recording pronunciations to improve voice recognition.

The system also supports custom language models to ensure that it understands your voice as well as any other user’s.

It is a locally processed speech recognition platform, which means that it doesn’t rely on cloud computing for accuracy.

You can use Windows Speech Recognition with any application that supports speech input, including Microsoft Office applications.

Final Thought

There are many types of speech-to-text software, and you have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting the right one. Some programs are free, while others charge fees. Most of them offer varying levels of quality and accuracy — but they all have one thing in common: they save time.

A good speech-to-text software tool can make your job a lot easier. It not only reduces the time needed for transcription but also promises to deliver high-quality and error-free transcripts.

We hope that after reading this list of speech-to-text apps, you have a better idea of which is the speech-to-text app that best fits your needs.

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