Horch vs Transgate

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Horch Audio	Transgate Audio
Tagline	Privacy-first, on-device meeting assistant for macOS	Pay-as-you-go AI transcription and translation with summaries, highlights, and chat over your audio.
Category	Audio	Audio
Pricing	Paid· One-time purchase: €49 once	Freemium· PAY AS YOU GO: $2 · PREMIUM: $40 · BUSINESS: $60
Model	Whisper (local) for transcription; optional Ollama / MLX local LLMs for summarization	Multi-model speech-to-text
Editorial score	—	6.9 / 10
Use cases	Confidential client meeting transcriptionAutomatic action-item extractionPer-contact relationship historyPre-meeting briefings from prior callsLocal Whisper transcription without cloud uploadFeeding meeting context into Claude or Cursor via MCPPersonal second-brain in MarkdownLegal, medical, or NDA-bound conversation notes	transcriptiontranslationmeeting-notesinterview-analysissummarization
Pros	Fully on-device by default — audio and transcripts never leave the Mac unless the user opts in One-time €49 purchase instead of a recurring per-seat SaaS bill Records at OS level so no bot appears in the meeting and any app (Zoom, Meet, Teams, in-person) works Notes stored as plain Markdown in ~/Meetings — portable, greppable, Obsidian-friendly Auto-generates action items, topic summaries, and per-person profiles from spoken content MCP server exposes meeting history to Claude, Cursor, and other agent clients Local Whisper transcription plus optional Ollama/MLX means you pick the summarizer	Pay-as-you-go credits with no auto-renewal subscription Covers 50+ languages for both transcription and translation Built-in summaries, highlights, and chat-over-transcript GDPR-compliant with encryption at rest for regulated workflows
Cons	macOS only — no Windows, Linux, iOS, or web client Local Whisper and summarization need a reasonably modern Apple Silicon Mac to feel fast No cloud sync or team workspace, so sharing across a team requires bring-your-own storage Small independent product without the integrations catalog of Fireflies, Otter, or Fathom OS-level capture depends on macOS screen/audio permissions, which some corporate MDM setups block	No public API or integrations advertised Accuracy claim of 98%+ is unverified vs. domain-specific audio Pay-per-hour pricing gets expensive for high-volume users Limited differentiation versus Otter, Fireflies, or Descript
Website	horch.app	transgate.ai

Pick Horch if

✅ Fully on-device by default — audio and transcripts never leave the Mac unless the user opts in
✅ One-time €49 purchase instead of a recurring per-seat SaaS bill
✅ Records at OS level so no bot appears in the meeting and any app (Zoom, Meet, Teams, in-person) works
✅ Notes stored as plain Markdown in ~/Meetings — portable, greppable, Obsidian-friendly

Pick Transgate if

✅ Pay-as-you-go credits with no auto-renewal subscription
✅ Covers 50+ languages for both transcription and translation
✅ Built-in summaries, highlights, and chat-over-transcript
✅ GDPR-compliant with encryption at rest for regulated workflows

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