AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Harku
Hi HN! I'm the founder of Harku (https://harku.io ), a video/audio transcription tool I've been working on for the past few months. The backstory: I was frustrated with existing transcription services - they either required expensive subscriptions upfront, had poor accuracy for non-English content, or forced you to create accounts just to try them. As someone who frequently works with meeting recordings and content in multiple languages, I needed something better. Technical approach: - Built on OpenAI's Whisper V3 (latest model) for 98.5% accuracy - GPU-optimized processing…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Free AI transcription: convert video and audio to text, translate into 120 languages, download SRT, VTT, ASS or TXT, or export the video with subtitles on it.
2022 · freesubtitles.ai · its alternatives →
- 2
Pinch▲535Hey HN! I’m Christian, daily lurker and some might remember our original launch post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42935355). Today we're launching Pinch for Mac, which we believe is a step-change improvement in real-time AI translation. Our vision is to make cross-lingual conversations feel as natural as regular conversations. TL:DR During an online meeting, the app instantly transcribes and translates all audio you hear, and allows you to decide when you translate your voice and when you don't. It's invisible to others (like Granola), and works everywhere without any…
2025 · startpinch.com · its alternatives →
- 301
Hey HN! I've been working on a side project to create an audio transcription API based on the OpenAI whisper model. Sign up link: https://whisperapi.com I tried to make the API really easy to use and get setup with. Also, because the Whisper model is so good, turns out I can offer the service for about 75% cheaper than what seems like the industry average. I'm always looking to make improvements, so would appreciate any feedback anyone has!
2022 · whisperapi.com · its alternatives →
- 4
A few years ago, right after high school, I decided to try to make a simultaneous translation app for Android as a side project, it took longer than expected (about 2 years) and I had to make a lot of compromises (I had to use Google's API and therefore make users use a developer key because at the time there were no free solutions for speech recognition and translation that had good quality). At the end of university, I decided to pick it up again and finally, using OpenAi's Whisper for speech recognition and Meta's NLLB for translation (with both running locally on the phone), I managed to…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
WhisperAPI▲77$0.15/hr audio transcription API powered by OpenAI Whisper
2022 · whisperapi.com · its alternatives →
- 6
Echosnap Ai▲62Hi everyone, I’m a solo developer and I’ve been working on a small tool called Echosnap AI. I built it because I often get ideas while I’m walking or doing something else, and speaking always felt like the fastest way to capture them. Echosnap lets you record a note and instantly get a clean transcript. It can also translate your recordings and help you stay organized with tags and folders. I tried to keep the app as simple and minimal as possible. This is my first time sharing something on HN, so any feedback or suggestions would mean a lot. Thanks for taking a moment to check it out.
Nov 2025 · useechosnap.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Hey HN! I built a free tool that generates transcripts from YouTube videos with timestamps. Key features: - 100% free, no signup required - 99% accuracy with Whisper V3 - Multiple export formats (TXT, SRT, VTT) - 60+ languages auto-detection - Includes timestamps for navigation I noticed many existing tools either require signup, have paywalls, or produce low-quality transcripts. This tool aims to solve that. Try it: https://harku.io/tools/youtube-to-text Feedback welcome!
Aug 2026 · harku.io · its alternatives →
- 8
Hey HN, I've been working on this side project for the past month. It generates a step-by-step tutorial guide for YouTube videos that you can follow along without watching long videos. Best suited for tutorial videos but can work for other videos aswell. No BS. Just straight to the point. The guides are generated from pure transcript so you don't have to worry about it being AI. It's my first project as a total beginner. Something I had to do inorder to get out of tutorial hell. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or if you face any problems or bugs. I would try to fix them to the…
2024 · stepify.tech · its alternatives →
- 9IU
Hi Hacker News, This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online. So please watch the video and tell me what you think https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me. I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
- 10IB
Hey HN! I built Transcrib.ee to help me generate transcripts for lectures on YouTube with no captions, especially multilingual lectures. I was constantly frustrated with videos that had no transcripts or inaccurate ones, so I built a tool and decided to share it with everyone. This tool uses Groq (an AI inference engine that's different from Grok and offers very fast processing) and OpenAI's Whisper model (really accurate in multilingual) to quickly transcribe any YouTube video, regardless of the language. It's been a game-changer for my studies! To make it even faster, I created a Chrome…
2024 · transcrib.ee · its alternatives →
- 11
VideoToBe▲15A personal journey of building VideoToBe.com, a home-based transcription service using OpenAI Whisper, running on a single GPU machine.
2025 · videotobe.com · its alternatives →
- 12
TurboScribe▲105Convert audio and video to accurate text in seconds with AI
2024 · turboscribe.ai · its alternatives →
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- 14
Hi HN! Since the launch of JigsawStack.com, we've been trying to dive deeper into fully managed AI APIs built and fine tuned for specific use cases. Audio/video transcription was one of the more basic things and we wanted the best open source model at this point it is OpenAI's whisper large v3 model based on the number of languages it supports and its accuracy. The thing is, the model is huge and requires tons of GPU power for it to run efficiently at scale. Even OpenAI doesn't provide an API for their best transcription model while only providing whisper v2 at a pretty high price. I…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
I was laid off recently and, instead of looking for another job right away, I decided to build something I always wanted: a transcription tool that respects user privacy. Existing transcription tools often require internet connectivity, send your private audio to cloud servers, or lock you into monthly subscriptions. I wanted something different—so I built WhisperBuddy, a privacy-first AI transcription app that runs entirely on your machine. WhisperBuddy uses OpenAI’s Whisper model (see: https://github.com/openai/whisper). While the model may not always deliver the…
2025 · whisperbuddy.com · its alternatives →
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- 17
I built Whispering because I believe transcription is too fundamental a tool to be locked behind paywalls. It's a cross-platform desktop and web transcription app that turns speech into text with a keyboard shortcut, among other things. The app lets you bring your own API key (OpenAI, Groq, etc.) and make direct calls. If you want complete privacy, it also supports local transcription. Either way, your audio never goes through any middleman servers. It's super lightweight (~22MB), built with Svelte 5 and Tauri, and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. I've been using it daily for the past few…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Fast, accurate, free audio & video-to-text converter
2024 · accuratescribe.ai · its alternatives →
- 19IB
I originally added this to my site to speed up my video editing process. Last year I started a youtube channel and for some of my longer videos it's annoying to rely on youtube or capcut to transcribe when Whisper is open source. Capcut also recently updated their T&Cs to say they own your content if you use their app, so I cancelled my subscription. Another use-case I have is recording my claude prompts as audio, transcribing them, and then pasting them into my terminal. I mostly work on the CLI (claude, ffmpeg, whisper), but I wanted to make a browser version. Not reinventing the wheel…
2025 · meetcosmos.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Hello all, I made a small transcription app for your Mac based on OpenAI’s Whisper. Would love some feedback. My plan is to make it easy to load weights from any fine-tuned whisper model to enable specialized dictation for any subfield. It’s still early in development. Thanks!
2023 · twitter.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Hey HN! I created Hanasu.ai after my 9-5 job as a side project. Previously I'd used Duolingo to learn Japanese, but failed spectacularly when I actually spoke with my roommate from Tokyo. Now, after OpenAI improved their Realtime audio model in December and reduced pricing, I spent my entire winter break building. So how does it work? Just choose a daily topic and converse with the AI model: (1) Didn't catch a phrase? Double tap to reveal a transcript. (2) Couldn't understand? Double tap for translations powered by Google. (3) Can't recall that intricate Chinese/Japanese character? Just…
2025 · hanasu.ai · its alternatives →
- 22
Greetings HN! I built Voice Isolate to be the simplest way to enhance any speech recording. After hearing so many videos/podcasts with great content but poor audio I realized not everyone can or wants to invest in a pro mic / studio / editing software but figured something simple should be possible now using AI. There are products that do this like Descript or ElevenLabs but I find they’re overcomplicated for many use cases (full blown app designed for professional podcasters, use a convoluted credit system, etc.). As a solo dev I wasn’t sure this was possible to do well but I…
2025 · voiceisolate.com · its alternatives →
- 23V
Hello HN! I’m a bachelors student pursuing Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Signal processing and during the year I had the goal to build my first AI Tool and launch it. I got inspired by how capable Whisper is, and combined the Whisper CPP Bindings along with FFMPEG.Wasm to create a tool that is capable of transcribing and captioning video files that contain one or more video tracks. Along with that, I’ve also added the support for transcribing audio files with the option to export those outputs as .SRT, .WebVTT or simply a text file. All done privately on a user’s web browser with…
2023 · its alternatives →
- 24RT
Hi HN -- voice chat with AI is very popular these days, especially with YC startups (https://twitter.com/k7agar/status/1769078697661804795). The current approaches all do a cascaded approach, with audio -> transcription -> language model -> text synthesis. This approach is easy to get started with, but requires lots of complexity and has a few glaring limitations. Most notably, transcription is slow, is lossy and any error propagates to the rest of the system, cannot capture emotional affect, is often not robust to code-switching/accents, and more. Instead, what…
2024 · demo.tincans.ai · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →