Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Which is the Best Transcription Tool?
9/30/2024
Are you looking for an AI-powered tool to transcribe your meetings, interviews, or audio files? You’re probably considering Happy Scribe, Otter, and Wave, three of the most popular transcription platforms on the market.
Each offers unique features and pricing plans for different use cases and budgets. So, how do you choose the right one for your needs? What are the differences between Happy Scribe, Otter, and Wave in terms of accuracy, ease of use, turnaround time, and more?
Key Takeaways
- Wave offers seamless audio recording with unlimited time and can run in the background, making it ideal for long meetings, lectures, and phone calls.
- The app intelligently transcribes, summarizes, and highlights important sections of conversations.
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave at a Glance
| Feature | Happy Scribe | Otter | Wave |
| Automatic Transcription | ★★ | ★★ | ★★★ |
| Human Transcription | ★ | – | – |
| Real-Time Transcription | – | ★ | ★★ |
| Speaker Identification | ★ | ★ | ★★ |
| Editing Tools | ★ | ★ | ★★★ |
| Supported Languages | 120+ | 35+ | 20+ |
| Integrations | Limited | Extensive (Zoom, Slack, Dropbox) | Limited |
| Monthly Pricing (Starter) | $10 for 120 mins | $8.33 | $12.99 |
Wave Overview
Wave is an AI-powered transcription and summarization app that captures and understands crucial information from audio recordings and phone calls. With this app, you can take your AI companion anywhere, anytime.
Life’s most important moments often unfold beyond the confines of the office; Wave empowers you to capture them effortlessly. Whether in a meeting, on a walk, or phone conversation, Wave ensures you never miss an important detail.
Wave Core Features
1. Effortless Recording
Wave makes audio recording a breeze on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. With unlimited recording time and a simple one-tap start, you can focus on the conversation without worrying about the technicalities.
The app runs seamlessly in the background, so you don’t need to keep it open during the recording. This feature is convenient for long meetings or lectures.
Wave also simplifies phone call recording. You can automatically record, transcribe, and summarize your phone conversations by initiating calls via the app. Additionally, it allows you to import audio files from other sources, such as voicemails or podcasts, for transcription and summarization.
2. Intelligent Transcription and Summarization
After capturing the audio, Wave’s advanced AI takes over. Its multilingual transcription ability in over 20 languages ensures accurate transcriptions regardless of the language. This feature is beneficial for international teams or businesses with a diverse customer base.
Wave can recognize and differentiate between multiple speakers in a conversation, making it easy to follow who said what in the transcript. In addition to full transcripts, Wave generates concise summaries of your audio, which you can adjust in length and format.
Finally, Wave intelligently identifies and highlights the most important parts of the conversation, making it easy to review the main takeaways.
3. Seamless Sharing and Collaboration
Wave makes sharing your audio recordings, transcripts, and summaries with others simple. You can export your transcripts and summaries in various formats, such as PDF or Word documents, for easy distribution and archiving.
Wave also allows you to share a public URL of your audio recording, along with the transcript and summary. This feature is handy for sharing meeting notes with colleagues or publishing podcast episodes with accompanying text.
For more focused collaboration, Wave integrates with popular productivity tools like Notion. You can export your transcripts and summaries directly to your Notion workspace, keeping all your meeting notes and ideas organized in one place.
Wave Pricing
Wave offers three pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets:
- Free Plan: Record up to 30 minutes per month at no cost, ideal for trying out the app and occasional use.
- Standard Plan: For $12.99, you can get 5 hours of monthly recording time. This plan is perfect for regular users who need more recording capacity.
- Pro Plan: For $21.99 per month, enjoy unlimited recording time and advanced features like podcast and YouTube video import. This plan suits power users and professionals who rely heavily on transcription and summarization.
Download the Wave app for Android or iOS
| Positives of Wave | What Could Be Better |
| Intuitive interface and one-tap recordingBackground Recording capabilityCustomizable SummariesMulti-Language Support (20+) | Wave offers integration with Notion only |
Happy Scribe Overview
Happy Scribe is an all-in-one platform for transcription, subtitling, and translation. It combines state-of-the-art AI with human services to deliver accurate results for various audio and video content needs.
Happy Scribe caters to individuals, small teams, and enterprises looking to convert their media files into text, add video captions, or translate content into multiple languages. The platform’s user-friendly interface and interactive editors simplify the transcription and subtitling.
Happy Scribe Core Features
1. Automatic and Human Transcription
Happy Scribe offers both AI-powered automatic transcription and 100% human-made transcription services. The automatic transcription feature supports over 120 languages and delivers results with up to 85% accuracy in minutes.
The human transcription service provides 99% accuracy for projects requiring higher precision with a 24-hour turnaround time. Professional transcribers ensure that complex audio files with multiple speakers or background noise are transcribed accurately.
Happy Scribe’s interactive transcript editor allows users to easily review, edit, and customize their transcripts. The platform supports multiple export formats, including TXT, PDF, and Word, making using the transcribed content for various purposes convenient.
2. Subtitle Generation and Translation
Happy Scribe’s automatic subtitle generator can create video captions in minutes with up to 85% accuracy. The platform supports SRT, VTT, and other popular subtitle formats, ensuring compatibility with various video platforms and players.
For multilingual content, Happy Scribe offers both automatic and human-made subtitle translation services. Users can translate their subtitles into over 100 languages, making their videos accessible globally.
The platform’s subtitle editor provides a user-friendly interface for fine-tuning the generated captions. Users can adjust their subtitles’ timing, formatting, and style to meet specific requirements or adhere to industry standards.
3. Collaboration and Sharing Tools
Happy Scribe’s sharing and workspace features facilitate collaboration among team members and stakeholders. Users can easily share work with colleagues or clients for review and feedback in view-only or edit mode.
They can assign roles and control access to projects and files within a shared workspace and ensure consistency in terminology and formatting across projects by creating and applying custom style guides and glossaries.
Users can also seamlessly connect with popular video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia for a streamlined workflow.
Happy Scribe Pricing
- Free Plan: Try out the platform with limited minutes for free
- Basic Plan: 120 minutes per month for $10/month, ideal for users with basic needs
- Pro Plan: 300 minutes per month for $17/month, suitable for professionals with recurring projects
- Business Plan: 600 minutes per year for $29/month, designed for teams with large-scale needs
| Positives of Happy Scribe | What Could Be Better |
| Transcription and translation in 120+ languagesOptions for individuals, small teams, and enterprisesInteractive editors for easy transcription and subtitle customizationWorkspaces, sharing, and style guide tools for seamless teamwork | Only a few minutes per month on the free plan24-hour turnaround for human transcription may not suit urgent projectsPrice per minute can add up for large-scale needsNo option for live captioning or transcription of ongoing events |
Otter Overview
Otter is an AI-powered voice meeting and real-time transcription tool for streamlining conversations and enhancing productivity. It automatically transcribes meetings, lectures, interviews, and other audio content.
Otter is available on Web, iOS, and Android platforms. The tool integrates with popular video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, enabling users to transcribe online meetings and webinars in real time.
Otter Core Features
1. Real-Time Transcription
Otter’s advanced AI algorithms accurately transcribe speech to text in real time, eliminating the need for manual note-taking. The tool supports multiple languages and accents, ensuring accurate transcriptions for diverse user bases.
Users can import pre-recorded audio and video files for transcription, making it easy to process content from various sources. Otter’s search functionality lets users quickly find specific keywords, speakers, or dates within their transcripts.
The tool offers a user-friendly text editor for making corrections or adding notes to the transcripts. Users can also export the transcripts in various formats, such as text, PDF, or SRT files, for further use or sharing.
2. Speaker Identification
Otter automatically identifies and labels different speakers in a conversation, making it easy to follow who said what. Users can tag speakers with their names, which helps the AI learn and recognize their voices in future conversations.
The tool’s speaker diarization feature visually represents who spoke when and for how long, giving users an overview of the conversation dynamics. This feature is handy for analyzing meeting participation and identifying dominant speakers.
3. Collaboration and Sharing
Otter facilitates seamless collaboration among team members by allowing users to share transcripts, highlights, and comments in real time. Users can Organize conversations and invite team members to access and contribute to specific folders or projects.
They can also generate shareable links for transcripts, enabling easy access for external collaborators or clients.
Otter annotates important parts of the transcript with comments or highlights, fostering discussion and feedback among team members. It also allows users to create and assign tasks directly from the transcript, ensuring that crucial takeaways are followed up on.
Otter Pricing
- Basic: Free plan with limited features, ideal for trying out the platform
- Pro: $8.33 per month, billed annually, suitable for individual professionals with advanced needs
- Business: $20 per month, billed annually, designed for teams and organizations requiring collaboration and administrative features
- Enterprise: Custom pricing, tailored for large organizations with specific security, compliance, and support requirements
| Positives of Otter | What Could Be Better |
| Intuitive interface and real-time transcription make it easy for users to capture and process audio contentSeamless integration with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet streamlines the transcription processSharing, commenting, and highlighting capabilities facilitate effective teamwork and knowledge sharingUsers can add custom terminology for accurate transcription of industry-specific or unique words | Otter’s AI transcription may struggle with heavy accents, overlapping speech, or poor audio quality, requiring manual editing.The speaker diarization feature may not accurately identify and label speakersThe free plan offers limited features and usage.The paid plans can be relatively expensive for individuals or small teams with budget constraints. |
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Transcription Accuracy
Happy Scribe offers both automatic and human-made transcription services. The automatic transcription has an expected accuracy rate of 85% and supports over 120 languages. For higher precision, the human transcription service provides 99% accuracy with a 24-hour turnaround time.
Otter uses advanced AI algorithms to accurately transcribe speech to text in real-time, supporting multiple languages and accents. Though generally accurate, it may struggle with heavy accents, overlapping speech, or poor audio quality, requiring manual editing.
Wave leverages state-of-the-art AI to provide fast, multilingual transcription support. It ensures high accuracy in transcriptions, but the clarity of the recording can also impact the accuracy. Wave allows users to easily adjust the summary’s length or format within the app.
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Collaboration Features
Happy Scribe facilitates collaboration by allowing users to share transcripts and subtitles in view-only or edit mode. It also offers workspace roles and permissions management and the ability to create style guides and glossaries for consistency across projects.
Otter enables seamless collaboration by allowing users to share real-time conversations, highlights, and comments. Users can create groups, share via links, add comments and highlights, and assign action items directly from the transcript.
Wave simplifies sharing audio recordings, transcripts, and summaries with others. Users can export transcripts and summaries in various formats for easy distribution and archiving. It also allows sharing via public URLs and integrates with popular productivity tools like Notion.
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Integrations
Happy Scribe offers limited integrations but plans to integrate with popular video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia for a streamlined workflow. It also provides an API for integrating its transcription and subtitle services into existing systems.
Otter seamlessly integrates with popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, streamlining the transcription process for online meetings and webinars. It also offers a wide range of integrations with third-party apps and platforms.
Wave has limited integrations but offers focused integrations with tools like Shas, so users can access the tools required to run an online store. Wave also integrates with Notion to export transcripts and summaries.
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Pricing
Happy Scribe offers a free plan with limited minutes for trying out the platform. The basic plan starts at $10/month for 120 minutes, while the pro plan is $17/month for 300 minutes. The business plan is $29/month for 600 minutes.
Otter provides a basic free plan with limited features. The pro plan is $8.33 per month, billed annually, while the business plan is $20 per month, billed annually. Enterprise pricing is available for large organizations with specific requirements.
Wave offers competitive pricing without hidden fees, providing excellent value for money. The free plan allows 30 minutes of monthly recording time, while the standard plan offers 5 monthly hours for $12.99. The pro plan provides unlimited recording time and advanced features for $21.99 monthly.
Happy Scribe vs. Otter vs. Wave: Which Should You Choose?
To help you make an informed decision, here’s a scoring table based on a 5-point scale that compares their features:
| Feature | Happy Scribe | Otter | Wave |
| Transcription Accuracy | 4.5 | 4.2 | 4.7 |
| Collaboration Features | 4.3 | 4.5 | 4.6 |
| Integrations | 3.8 | 4.6 | 4.2 |
| Pricing and Value | 4.1 | 4.3 | 4.8 |
| Average Score | 4.2 | 4.4 | 4.6 |
Get Started with Wave
Wave offers a user-friendly experience with advanced AI that ensures accurate transcriptions. Its ability to support multiple languages and provide customizable summaries makes it versatile for different needs. The seamless integration with Notion enhances collaboration and productivity.
While Happy Scribe and Otter provide strong transcription services, Wave stands out for its intuitive design and focused features. The platform’s competitive pricing and unlimited recording time in the Pro plan offer excellent value for money.
Wave’s ease of use, real-time transcription, and robust sharing options make it a top choice. It effectively balances functionality with simplicity, catering to individual users and teams.