Horch vs Whisper

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

	Horch Audio	Whisper Audio
Tagline	Privacy-first, on-device meeting assistant for macOS	OpenAI's open-source speech-to-text — the de-facto baseline.
Category	Audio	Audio
Pricing	Paid· One-time purchase: €49 once	Free· Free open weights; $0.006/min via OpenAI API
Model	Whisper (local) for transcription; optional Ollama / MLX local LLMs for summarization	Whisper large-v3
Editorial score	—	8.6 / 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	transcriptionself-hostedmultilingual
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	Free, open weights Multilingual (99 languages) Strong baseline accuracy Available via API or self-host
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 diarisation built in Hallucinations on silent segments
Website	horch.app	openai.com

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 Whisper if

✅ Free, open weights
✅ Multilingual (99 languages)
✅ Strong baseline accuracy
✅ Available via API or self-host

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