Getting speech into text: formats, accuracy, privacy, and what your laptop can run. Prices dated, facts sourced, tool claims measured. How they are written.
What an hour of transcription costs on Otter, Rev, Descript, the speech APIs, and a model running on your own laptop. Every price checked 15 September 2026.
Read the articleWhich audio and video formats a browser can transcribe, what each carries inside, what is discarded before the speech model hears it, and when converting is worth it.
Legal transcription software gives you a searchable draft of a deposition or hearing, not a certified transcript. Here is where the line sits.
Interview transcription after you promise a source confidentiality: map every copy of the recording, keep companies out of the chain, be honest about the rest.
Audio transcription without uploading is a claim you can check. What a deletion promise covers, how to verify it in the network panel, and what stays yours.
Therapy session transcription usually involves special category health data. What Article 28 asks before you send audio out, and what changes if you don't.
What HHS says about PHI, business associates and the Security Rule, and why HIPAA compliant transcription looks different when the audio stays on your device.
Plain-words GDPR transcription guide for people who record meetings: which parts of a transcript are personal data, what to tell attendees, how long to keep it.
Secure transcription checklist for consultants, lawyers and therapists: eight questions to ask before uploading a client call, and a local alternative.
Whisper model sizes from tiny to large and turbo: what parameters mean, the VRAM and speed figures from OpenAI's own table, and what each costs in a browser.
WebGPU lets web pages use your graphics card for maths, not just drawing. Which browsers have it, what can block it, and why it matters for speech recognition.