Best Zoom Transcription Services, Ranked [Free & Paid]

In today’s remote working environment, Zoom transcription is necessary to improve your team collaboration.

Think about it. How many times have you finished a Zoom call, only to realize you didn’t capture a key piece of information in your notes? 

But wait, the meeting was recorded! You’re saved. Except now you have to spend time listening to the hour-long recording to find exactly what you need. Recording your meetings is a start, but it ends up taking more of your time—unintentionally creating a new problem.

With Zoom becoming the default way for teams to communicate internally (with your team) and externally (with prospects and customers), more often than not, you’re required to capture and share key information from the meetings. And, the ideal solution isn’t to take detailed notes or just record your calls to the Cloud. Transcribe your zoom meetings instead. 

We tested and reviewed the best zoom transcription apps available in the market to help you pick the more suitable one. Let's get started.

Zoom Transcription

Zoom transcription enables you to get a transcript of your Zoom meetings or webinars—so that you can quickly scan and retrieve the information, share it easily with others, and make your meetings accessible to people from a variety of backgrounds and learning styles.

There are generally two categories of transcription services available: Human transcription and AI transcription.

Human transcription Vs AI transcription

As the name suggests, human-powered transcription services use humans to manually listen to transcribe your meetings. Once the transcript is ready, you’ll receive it in a document—from which you can copy and share with anyone you’d like. 

But human transcription services are more expensive and offer you an ‘edited transcript’ (i.e., the transcript is edited for readability, clarity, and conciseness). You’d have to make a request by uploading your recording and wait for up to 24 hours to get the transcript. 

“We’d record the conversation, send it to a transcription service to get it transcribed, pay for it, and then wait for it to come back. Challenge is, many of these transcription services don’t provide a good transcription. And, two, I can’t easily make any marks in the transcript about what’s important for our employees. It isn’t helpful.”

- Kristen Gallagher, CEO, and founder of Edify.

On the other hand, AI transcription tools, also known as Zoom transcription apps, use speech-to-text engines trained on thousands of hours of human speech to transcribe your meetings in real-time. It’s faster, more efficient, and affordable. 

If you’re looking to transcribe meetings for legal reasons and prefer to have an impeccable transcription, human-powered transcription is more suitable for your use case. If speed, scale, and affordability are your priority, then an AI transcription tool is a better choice. 

Now that we’ve understood the difference between human and AI transcription, it’s time to look at the best transcription tools in the market. 

Best Zoom Transcription Services in 2023

We’re going to focus on the best AI transcription tools for Zoom, but some of the services offer both—human and AI transcription. With that in mind, here are the top-rated zoom transcription services for you to choose from:

• Grain
• Zoom Business
• Rev
• Fireflies
• Descript
• Trint
• Happy Scribe

1. Grain

Grain records, transcribes, and summarizes your video meetings with AI, allowing you to focus on the conversation without worrying about taking notes. With Grain, you can build a library to save, search, and access key moments from all your conversations.  

Key features 

- Automated meeting notes

Grain provides a concise summary of your meeting, along with the list of key points and action items. Each item includes clickable time-stamps so that you can jump to specific moments in the video.

- Real-time transcription

You can use your Grain recorder to join any meeting to record and transcribe the conversations in real-time. You can see the live transcript being generated with speaker labels automatically as the meeting progresses.  

Zoom, you can directly import from Zoom Cloud as well. 

- Integrations

With Grain, you can record meetings on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams automatically. Have a recorded meetings in Cloud or your desktop? Just upload to Grain and get them transcribed instantly.

- Edit and download transcripts

Edit the transcript right after the meeting and download the same in a preferred format. Grain lets you export the meeting transcript in Pdf, Srt, Vtt, and Docx. You can automatically remove the filler words as well. 

- Automations

You can automatically send meeting highlights and AI-summaries to tools like Slack, HubSpot, and more.

- Highlights

Select an important passage from the transcript to automatically convert it into a bite-sized video clip. You can share Grain highlights with your team or client, or categorize and organize them for later use. 

Grain is designed to help teams pull out the most actionable and important points of Zoom calls so they can be acted upon. Because you are only sharing the best parts of your calls, your team or clients will watch the clips instead of struggling through a full 30-minute-or-more call. This makes Grain one of the most preferred zoom transcription apps today.

Grain review

Thousands of teams from companies like Zapier, ClickUp, Wistia, AngelList, and Sequoia Capital, use Grain to transcribe, clip and share the key moments from video meetings. 

“My team and I spend over 60+ hours on Zoom and there are so many use cases that allow Grain to turn intellectual capital into intellectual property.

We use highlights across the customer journey to educate, inspire, acquire and retain. Sharing highlights are huge b/c I can use that to close a deal with other decision-makers, update clients on what the team is doing, share inspirational stories from members, and snippet video for social and organic content.”

- Juliana M (G2 Crowd). 

G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars. 

‍ProductHunt rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

2. Zoom Business

Zoom offers a transcription service, but it comes with two caveats:

• You must have a Business, Education, or Enterprise license with cloud recording enabled.
• You must be the account owner or have admin privileges.

If you meet these two caveats, you can go ahead and enable Zoom transcription. Log into your Zoom account > going to Settings > Recordings > check “create audio transcript”. Now all you have to do is record your meeting to the cloud and review the transcript afterward.

Key features

Zoom’s native transcription detects various speakers in the call automatically but splits the transcript into smaller sections based on timestamps, rather than by speakers. 

While Zoom’s native transcription is accurate, it has its drawbacks.

It isn’t to read, use, and share. You can’t create bite-sized video clips as easily as you could on Grain. Zoom has limited language support and doesn’t allow you to download the transcript in multiple formats (only VTT is supported). 

The price of the Business, Education, or Enterprise license could also be a non-starter for some companies, as could the limitations on cloud storage. We’ve compared Grain and Zoom transcription in detail here. 

Zoom transcription review

As Zoom is primarily a video conferencing software, not a transcription service, it’s quite tricky to assess the tool using the overall reviews on platforms like G2 Crowd. Feel free to search through the reviews to understand how effective Zoom’s automatic transcription is for your use cases. 

Here’s an example review from one of the enterprise users:

“Quality of video and audio is good, and recording and auto transcription functions work well. The transcription function has some issues and does require editing for sense and follow, but provides a decent starting point for transcription. It shouldn’t be viewed as foolproof though!”  

- User in higher education (G2 Crowd).

Zoom G2 Crowd rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars with nearly 41k+ reviews

Zoom Capterra rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 12k+ reviews

3. Rev

Rev is a dedicated transcription service provider, offering both human and AI-based transcription for your meetings. They also offer a Zoom-specific service, Automatic Live Captions for Zoom. It automatically adds real-time captions to Zoom meetings and webinars, though they note that accuracy is only “80%+.” Captions are also only for the call itself and are not presented in a document once the meeting is done. 

Live Captions for Zoom is priced at $20 per host per month, while human-powered transcriptions and video captions are $1.25 per minute. Rev’s human-powered transcriptions are claimed to be 99% accurate and are well-reviewed by users on G2 and Capterra. 

Transcripts are delivered inside of Rev where you can edit if you need to. The transcript includes speakers' names and timestamps and syncs up with the video you have uploaded. See Rev’s demo here.

Rev Review

“Love using Rev and plan to continue using it for as long as I'm working as a writer. I spend a lot of my time watching press conferences and other events. Rev's automated transcripts allow me to record and easily pull quotes with little editing required. I wish there was a way for automated transcripts to better identify different speakers.” 

- Steve B (Capterra). 

Rev G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars with 166 reviews

Rev Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars with 40 reviews

4. Fireflies

Much like Grain, Fireflies uses Fred, an AI bot, to transcribe and capture key moments from Zoom meetings. It connects with your calendar, and when you have a meeting, Fred scans the invite for the meeting URL and joins as your AI assistant. 

Key features

Fred transcribes the meeting in real-time and also pulls out items that appear to be actions, such as “Can you confirm that price for me?”

But the live transcript isn’t relatively easier to read and use as it lacks key information such as speaker labels, time stamps, etc. You can see a demo of Fireflies.ai's real-time transcription here.

Fireflies can transcribe audio files that you upload but do not have the ability to transcribe video files. This greatly limits its use case. However, with its Zapier integration, video transcription flows can be set up manually. 

Fireflies review

If the accuracy of the transcripts isn’t a big problem for you, then Fireflies can work. Fireflies users love the product for its ability to automatically record calls, pull action items, and integrate with other collaboration platforms like Slack. When it comes to transcription, Fireflies has mixed reviews. 

Here’s one of the recent reviews:

“Their transcription needs a lot of work. I would rate it anywhere between 30 - 50% accuracy. And they need to add a ton of dialects.”

- User in computer software (G2 Crowd)

Fireflies G2 rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars with 19 reviews

Fireflies Capterra rating: 4 out of 5 stars with a review.

5. Descript

Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor that works like a doc. It is widely used by podcasters and other creatives who create a lot of video content. It also offers transcription along with a handful of other features including screen recording, publishing, and full multitrack editing.

Key features

Descript offers both human and AI-powered services. 

If you’d like to have 99% accuracy, then you can pay $2.00 per minute for human-powered transcription. Its AI transcription service lets you transcribe any audio or video files but it doesn’t have any direct integration with video conferencing platforms like Zoom. 

So, you have to record your meetings to your local computer and manually upload them to Descript to get the transcript.

You can edit and export the transcript or combine multiple recordings to create a longer transcript. It also has automatic speaker label detection if you have multiple speakers in the call. Here’s a quick demo. 

Descript is relatively more expensive than other AI tools and it doesn’t offer live transcription. 

Descript review

Descript is a top-rated tool for creators and it offers several features to help you create, collaborate, and publish bite-sized video content. If you’re looking to widely share your video meeting across social media, then Descript is the right tool for you. 

“Transcription is not perfect, but then no automated service ever will be. I've compared it to some of the other services out there and the level of accuracy and the price point made this the choice for me….Assigning speakers to paragraphs is a little clunky and time-consuming. I'm probably missing something to make it easier, but so far, that's my only major issue with Descript.”

- Christopher d (G2 Crowd).

Descript G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with 315 reviews.

‍Descript Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars with 136 reviews.

6. Trint

Trint is a classic transcription service: upload a file, get a transcript, and edit and export the transcript. 

Key features

With Trint, you can upload both audio and video files, but the video will be stripped away from your video files—leaving you with a text document with corresponding audio. 

The Vocab Builder acts as a library for brand and industry terms, names, and titles, some of the most common misspellings in AI-based transcripts. This feature allows Trint’s AI to recognize and add these to transcripts automatically, minimizing mistakes and increasing accuracy. See Trint’s transcription service in action here.

Trint review

Trint transcription is fairly accurate as long as you’re transcribing your calls to English. It’s worth noting that Trint is one of the most expensive transcription tools in the market. If you’re someone who’s looking to transcribe often, then it costs $75/month, which is substantially higher than other tools like Grain. 

“Pros: - I was amazed at the program's ability to record in text form an entire audio record dictation - It's like your own typing assistant - Allows you to edit the text to fix errors - Automatically saves your progress every few seconds - Allows you to alter the speed to dictation and audio.

Cons: - Expensive - Sometimes incorrectly records what a subject says - Doesn't implement correct grammar and punctuation - Doesn't work well with slow internet speed or older computer”

- Enterprise user (Capterra). 

Trint G2 rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars with 14 reviews

Trint Capterra rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars with 14 reviews

7. Happy Scribe 

Happy Scribe is a transcription service provider that offers both human-powered and AI transcription. Similar to Trint, it’s strictly a transcription service that’s focused on transcribing files—whether it is audio or video. 

Key features

You can upload files of any size or length, there’s no limit. At the same time, you can decide when to start transcribing by providing a ‘starting timestamp’. It offers automatic speaker detection, supports several languages, and allows you to add custom vocabulary. 

Noticeably, Happy Scribe can help you export your transcript in dozens of formats with ease. But the problem is that it doesn’t integrate with your Calendar or any video conferencing software. This means, you can’t get live transcription and there’s a substantial wait time depending on your video/audio duration. 

Happy Scribe is relatively expensive as you’d pay $0.21 per minute for AI transcription and $1.82 per minute for human-powered transcription. 

Happy Scribe Review

Like any other AI transcription tool, Happy Scribe isn’t 100% accurate. But it does the job well. If you aren’t looking to transcribe video meetings, then Happy Scribe can help. 

“Sometimes there are a few errors (I guess things can’t be perfect!) You do have the option to correct a few errors manually so that’s always good. Also, it’s a little pricey but it does do the job well!”

- Shade O, Marketing Strategist (G2 Crowd). 

Happy Scribe G2 rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars with 14 reviews

Happy Scribe Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars with 19 reviews

What’s Next

The fastest-growing companies are already leveraging Zoom transcription services to document their discussions, share key parts of the calls, and make meetings more accessible to their distributed workforce. If you’re looking to join them, then you’re heading in the right direction. 

The ideal Zoom transcription app should offer more than just plain-old transcription. It should help you extract the moments that matter to deliver powerful, actionable insights to your team or clients. It should allow you to collaborate with your team and export the transcripts. More importantly, it should be affordable for your entire team to use the service. 

If you’re looking to transcribe your zoom calls and document your discussions and insights from the conversions, then Grain is the best tool for the job. If you’re looking to use transcripts for legal reasons, we’d recommend going with human-powered transcription from services like Rev, Trint, and Happy Scribe. If you’re creating transcripts to share content on social media, Descript would be ideal. 

Make your pick based on your use cases and goals. Happy transcribing!