10 Best Zoom Transcription Services to Transcribe Your Meeting
Zoom calls are often filled with important information, whether from your professor, boss, or coworkers. It’s important not to miss any details. However, taking notes during the meeting can be distracting and even impossible to keep up with, especially if there are multiple speakers. Fortunately, a good Zoom transcription service saves you time and frustration by recording accurate notes on everything said during your Zoom call.
In today’s guide, we’re sharing the top 10 best Zoom transcription services to transcribe your meeting, saving you time taking notes during the meeting.
Does Zoom provide a transcription service?
Yes, Zoom provides a transcription service built into their software. However, Zoom’s transcription service is limited and will require significant editing for a usable transcript, memo, or work report. For example, Zoom’s transcription doesn’t include capitalization or punctuation, so you need to edit and add in all punctuation to make your transcription readable.
Why do you need Zoom transcription service?
Instead of using Zoom’s transcription service, we suggest using a Zoom transcription service from another company. Here are just a few reasons you need a Zoom transcription service instead of using Zoom’s built-in transcription service:
Other Zoom transcriptions offer advanced editing capabilities: For example, Notta highlights text as you listen and allows you to edit the text in real-time.
Editing your transcription on the go: Some transcription services allow you to edit on your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or other devices, which is far more convenient than being limited to editing on your computer alone. These services are also designed to be user-friendly on different devices, so their functionality is often better than the default transcription service on Zoom.
Supports more languages: Zoom transcription supports 11 languages currently. However, other Zoom transcription services may support over 100 languages, giving you more options for transcribing.
Greater organization capabilities: Many Zoom transcription services provide organizational features such as creating folders, sorting and renaming your files, and the ability to save data to multiple formats. Some services, like Notta, even allow you to insert images, making your transcription more visually appealing.
What makes a good Zoom transcription service?
While creating this guide, we compared many features to understand what makes an excellent Zoom transcription service. Here are the top 5 features we found to be most important when creating this guide:
Accuracy: Above all else, accurate transcription software is crucial. Otherwise, you’ll waste valuable time editing your transcription for mistakes and formatting your transcription into a usable work memo, notes page, or report. When listed on the website, we included the exact accuracy percentage reported by the software company.
Pricing: An excellent Zoom transcription service is a worthwhile investment that can save money, time, and frustration. However, we did check if the pricing was both competitive and reasonable. After all, overspending on Zoom transcription services won’t do anything for you. We also included options with different pricing models, as some people may prefer a one-time fee for the audio transcribed, while others may prefer a subscription model.
Editing Capabilities: A great transcription software should offer a variety of editing features to quickly perfect your transcript and generate notes, reports, and memos. No transcription service is 100% accurate, so we looked into software that has user-friendly editing capabilities.
Flexibility: We looked into Zoom transcription services that offer great flexibility in how you can use them. For example, does the software provide a mobile app or Chrome extension so you can use them on your preferred device or browser?
Recording options: How does the Zoom transcription service integrate with Zoom? Does it offer a built-in recording option or a Live bot? Or do you need to record the Zoom meeting separately and upload it to the transcription service to work?
10 Best Zoom Transcription Services
1. Notta
Notta is the ultimate user-friendly, speech-to-text app with a mobile app, Chrome extension, and browser option. This software has over 98.86% accuracy, making it an excellent choice for anyone needing accurate transcriptions for their work, studies, or personal growth. You can use both live and post-recording audio transcription features with Notta.
However, the best way to use Notta for Zoom transcriptions is their Notta Bot. Notta Bot can be scheduled to automatically join your video meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. You can even connect your Google Calendar to Notta and have it automatically schedule Notta Bots to join Zoom meetings on the calendar.
We also love that Notta connects to Notion, allowing you to export your transcripts to Notion easily. In addition, you can export your transcripts in multiple formats, including pdf, docx, txt, and xlsx. Notta can also generate reports and memos from your transcriptions, saving time and energy. Its automatic correction and editing while you speak, will also save you time for making edits later.
Lastly, Notta doesn’t share data with third parties or collect data. The software keeps your private information encrypted while in transit to ensure this.
Verdict: Best for Transcribing Live Meetings & Editing Transcripts
Key Features:
Syncs transcripts across multiple devices
Mobile app and Chrome extension
Add images and comments to the transcript
Highlights text as it plays to make playback seamless
Pricing: Basic plan: $0, Pro: $8.25 per month billed annually, Team: $18 per month billed annually
Other supported meeting platforms: Microsoft Teams, Google Meet
Supported transcription languages: English, a total of 104 supported languages
2. Otter.ai
Otter has an Otter Assistant feature that allows you to record in-person, hybrid, virtual, and mobile meetings. Otter Assistant can also be synced to your Google or Microsoft calendar, allowing you to automatically schedule the Otter Assistant to join your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls.
Large companies like Dropbox, Rakuten, Zoom, and UCLA use Otter, demonstrating its reputability and high-quality services. Otter’s AI technology is advanced and continues to improve your transcriptions by learning your team’s conversational styles and vocabulary. You can also apply speaker identification and custom vocabulary to this service to make the transcription process even smoother.
Otter takes notes in real time and generates an automatic summary of the Zoom call. All your notes are stored in one central, accessible, secure place, helping you stay on track with your transcripts. We like that Otter allows you to edit, annotate, and share your transcripts with colleagues.
Verdict: Ideal for team-based businesses
Key Features:
Free plan available
Multiple export options
Live captioning available
Team collaboration features
Pricing: Basic plan: Free, Pro plan: $8.33 per month, Business plan: $20/per user per month, enterprise plans available
Other supported meeting platforms: Microsoft Teams and Google Meet
Supported transcription languages: English and regional accents
3. Verbit
Verbit is trusted by over 3,000 organizations, including Google, Blackboard, and CNN. They offer accessible, complaint events and meetings. Overall, Verbit is created for podcasts, events, meetings, and other live formats, making it an ideal platform for companies that host regular live events and large meetings.
Verbit offers professional-grade accuracy and the ability to schedule real-time services. We like that they have an accurate and searchable transcription base. Their software is also AI-based and can create customizable transcripts that you can format in many ways.
The biggest downside to Verbit is that they currently only offer transcription services in English and Spanish, which is a lot fewer supported transcription languages than other transcription services on this list.
Verdict: Best for accessibility and compliant meeting procedures
Key Features:
Integrated captions that support ADA guidelines
24/7 End-to-End Support
Integrates with Google Drive, Zoom, Vimeo, YouTube, Dropbox, and more
Pricing: Custom pricing based on each project
Other supported meeting platforms: Microsoft Teams
Supported transcription languages: English and Spanish
4. Grain
Grain can auto-record Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings when you connect your calendar and set record rules indicating which types of meetings you want Grain to record. Alternatively, Grain can capture meeting ad-hoc if you enter the Zoom meeting ID or link.
We like Grain’s “Share a Highlight” feature, which allows you to highlight a transcript section and export it to email, Notion, Slack, Twitter, and more. Another unique editing feature is Grain’s ‘Summarize Conversations’ feature, which compresses a 60-minute meeting into a 3-minute video summary. This feature is excellent for work as you can share a short summary of a meeting with coworkers unable to make the meeting or bosses wanting a quick overview of what was discussed.
Verdict: Ideal for individuals interested in sharing clips of the transcription
Key Features:
Integrates with Salesforce, Notion, Slack, and more
Search across conversations
Build a team’s video meeting workspace
Pricing: Free plan available, Business plan $19/month/person (annual pricing)
Other supported meeting platforms: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams
Supported transcription languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish.
5. Airgram
Airgram allows you to create productive discussions with built-in meeting agenda templates, making it easy to host meetings from start to finish. After the meeting is recorded, you can quickly organize your meeting notes, recordings, and transcripts in one user-friendly dashboard. Its high accuracy of 98.3% also saves you time when you have fewer edits to make later.
For Zoom meetings, Airgram offers an AI assistant who can join and record Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls, even if you can’t attend the meeting yourself. We like AIrgram’s advanced editing capabilities, which include a rich-text editor with the ability to add an agenda, text, images, bullet lists, and more with a simple slash command. The automatic time stamps included on transcriptions are another ideal feature that will make finding specific information later, such as deadlines or project information, faster.
Verdict: Best for individuals managing meetings from start-to-finish
Key Features:
100% data security and privacy protected
Offers a Chrome extension
Includes automatic time stamps
Meeting management features
Pricing: Free plan, $8.99 Pro plan, $17.99 Team plan - Special discounts available for students or non-profit organizations
Other supported meeting platforms: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams
Supported transcription languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese
6. Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is a conversation-tracking platform that transcribes, records, and analyzes meetings and video calls. If you are interested in assessing sales or client calls, Fireflies may be a good choice for you due to their detailed call analysis. This software is also widely acclaimed and featured on Forbes, TOI, and YOURSTORY. Over 200,000 users trust this company, including huge companies like Nike, Uber, Intuit, and Oyo.
You can schedule Fireflies to join your Zoom calls and record and transcribe the meeting. We like Fireflies’ collaborative features, such as highlighting specific parts of the Zoom call and sharing this highlight with coworkers or colleagues rather than sending them an entire transcription. We like that Fireflies also offers a free plan to dip your toes in and test out this software before committing to an ideal plan. Its search function is another win because it allows you to review an hour-long call in less than five minutes by searching for top highlights and action items within the transcript.
Verdict: Ideal for individuals interested in many integration options
Key Features:
Chrome Extension allows you to capture meetings directly and Zoom calls from your browser
SOC 2 Type 2 & GDPR Certified for top-notch security
Offers more supported video meeting platform integrations than most similar software
Pricing: Free plan, $10 Pro plan, $19 Business plan, and Custom plans for enterprises
Other supported meeting platforms: Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Skype, Bluejeans
Supported transcription languages: Only English. Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese are being released soon.
7. Happy Scribe
Happy Scribe offers transcription and subtitle services. They offer many sharing features, and you can even share your transcripts or subtitles in a view-only or edit mode, allowing you to collaborate with others on the transcript if you wish. Happy Scribe’s automatic transcription has an 85% accuracy rate, but their human-made and human translation offer a 99% guaranteed accuracy.
Happy Scribe is trusted by over 100,000 users worldwide, including Spotify, Forbes, BBC, and United Nations. We also like that it is team-friendly software because you can create spaces to share files with the rest of your team and integrate them with many popular work applications.
However, you must be the host of the Zoom call to use Happy Scribe as you will need first to record the Zoom call using Zoom’s built-in recorder, then upload it to Happy Scribe.
Verdict: Ideal for users needing nearly perfect accuracy
Key Features:
Upload unlimited audio or video
Files are protected and private
Integrates with Zapier, YouTube, and more
Pricing: $0.20 for automatic transcription, $2.00 per minute for human-made transcriptions, custom pricing available, students receive 25% off automatic options
Other supported meeting platforms: GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, Skype
Supported transcription languages: Over 60 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, German, and Dutch
8. Go Transcribe
Go Transcribe has a simple interface that converts video recordings into text in minutes. While Go Transcribe doesn’t offer a built-in bot that records Zoom calls, it will automatically transcribe a recording of Zoom meetings within a couple of minutes. The best way to use Go Transcribe to transcribe a Zoom call would be to record the Zoom call with Zoom’s built-in recorder, then upload the file to Go Transcribe. It supports various video formats, including AVI, FLV, M4V, MPEG, MPG, MTS, WMA, and WMV.
Go Transcribe offers a powerful editing suite that allows you to highlight, delete, edit, and comment on the transcript. You can also listen to your recording faster to make the task go by quicker. Its free trial is another perk, and no credit card is required.
Verdict: Best for Browser-Users
Key Features:
Email support
Unlimited storage
Timestamps by paragraph
Pricing: $12/hour for a pay-as-you-go option or $36/month for a subscription option. Business plans are available at $90/month.
Other supported meeting platforms: N/A
Supported transcription languages: 31 languages, including various accents and dialects. Languages include Arabic, English, Danish, German, French, Korean, Mandarin, and many more.
9. 3PlayMedia
3PlayMedia is trusted by over 10,000 customers, including Home Depot, Peloton, and Oracle. They offer accurate closed captioning and transcription services, including real-time live captioning and audio descriptions. Their software allows you to edit audio for derivative and research content easily.
If you work in the legal or medical industries, 3PlayMedia provides accurate, HIPAA-compliant, and secure solutions for transcriptions. Each video file goes through two rounds of professional transcription to ensure your transcription has the highest possible accuracy. Lastly, we like that 3PlayMedia offers organization features and allows you to monitor the status of your files as they are transcribed.
Verdict: Ideal for users needing HIPAA-compliant and secure transcriptions
Key Features:
Caption encoding and open captioning available
Integrates with Vimeo, YouTube, Zoom, JWPlayer, and more
Accessibility compliant
99% accuracy rate on all files
Pricing: Express plan is $2.95 per minute for English transcription, Pro and Enterprise plans are customized to your needs
Other supported meeting platforms: Amara, Brightcove, Cvent, Facebook, Vimeo
Supported transcription languages: English, Spanish, 20+ languages in total
10. Temi
Temi is a speech-to-text transcription service using advanced speech recognition software to create transcripts in under five minutes. With no additional cost, Temi includes simple editing tools to perfect your transcription, a review and edit function, speaker identification, and custom timestamps to make reviewing your transcript easier. We also like that they offer a mobile app to record memos, meetings, and lectures on the go.
Temi is trusted by over 10,000 customers worldwide, including The University of Texas, ESPN, and PBS. Their quick-turnaround time makes this service ideal for journalists, reporters, students, podcasters, and anyone on a tight deadline.
The biggest downside to Temi is that it doesn’t automatically integrate with Zoom, so you must record your Zoom call first, then upload it to Temi for transcription.
Verdict: Good for individuals needing text transcription in five minutes or less
Key Features:
Export your files as MS Word, VTT, SRT, PDF, and more
90 to 95% accuracy rate
Custom timestamps
Highly secure platform with data encryption
Pricing: Free trial, pre-purchase basis payments of $0.25 per minute
Other supported meeting platforms: N/A
Supported transcription languages: English
FAQs
Is it free to use Zoom live transcription?
Yes, Zoom live transcription is free. However, the accuracy of Zoom live transcription compared to other speech-to-text and transcription software is lower, making it a poorer choice for transcribing your meetings and calls.
How can I convert a Zoom recording to text?
You can convert a Zoom recording to text by uploading it to a transcription or speech-to-text service like Notta. The transcription service will convert the audio recording into a text file and, typically, provide you with tools to make edits to the transcription text, formatting, and punctuation so that you can convert the transcript into notes, memos, reports, or a study guide.
How to enable Zoom live transcription?
To enable Zoom live transcription, take the following steps in your user settings:
Go to ‘Settings’ and locate the Meeting section.
Scroll down to ‘Meeting Advanced settings.’
Locate ‘Closed Captioning’ under this section.
Click the toggle button and turn it from gray to blue.
Click ‘Enable’ when the new message box display appears on the screen.
Check the box beside ‘Allow live transcription service to transcribe meeting automatically.’
Click the ‘Save Captions’ toggle button and turn it from gray to blue. This will save a copy of the transcript for both hosts and participants.
Why my Zoom meeting is not live transcribing?
Your Zoom meeting is not live transcribing if you don’t have your closed captioning zoom settings set to ‘Enable live transcription service to transcribe meeting automatically.’ If this button isn’t toggled to blue under your ‘Settings,’ Zoom will not live transcribe.
How do you transcribe a Zoom meeting in real-time?
You can transcribe a Zoom meeting in real time by activating Zoom’s live transcription feature. Alternatively, we recommend using a 3rd party speech to text or transcription software to transcribe your Zoom meeting.
This software typically has better accuracy and more built-in features that allow you to quickly edit, collaborate, format, and share your transcription. Depending on the software, it may even offer a live bot that joins your Zoom call so that you can rest easy knowing your meeting is being transcribed live and nothing is being missed.
Conclusion
An excellent Zoom transcription software saves you time and energy by reducing the manual workload of needing to record notes during your Zoom call. Their features can streamline your work, allowing you to record critical information for yourself and your colleagues.
Before selecting a transcription service, we recommend you list essential features. For example, are you okay uploading a recording of the Zoom call to the transcription service, or would you prefer a real-time transcription service like the Notta Bot? Are editing and collaborative features a massive deal for you?
Notta is an ideal choice for Zoom transcriptions because it offers real-time and post-meeting transcription options and many editing, collaboration, and export features to save you time, frustration, and energy.
