HappyScribe review, pricing and verdict
AI notetaker and transcription platform that records Zoom, Meet and Teams calls and turns audio or video into text in 150+ languages.
- Best for
- Journalist
- Not for
- Sales manager who wants call scoring
Should you use HappyScribe?
Pick HappyScribe if your calls and interviews happen in more than one language or you also need subtitles from recordings. It replaces a separate notetaker plus a transcription service. Skip it for sales coaching. Its notetaker page reports 6M+ users across 41,000+ teams, and meeting data stays in EU data centres.
Meeting notes and file transcription, subtitles and translation in one archive, across 150+ languages.
Years of file transcription and subtitle customers give it language coverage and a content archive that pure meeting bots lack, but meeting notes themselves are easy to switch between vendors.
Also for
- Market researcher
- Project manager
Show 4 more
- Journalists and editors in multilingual newsrooms
- Market researchers running interviews and focus groups
- Operations and project teams at European companies
- Video and content producers who need subtitles
Main trade-off
Upload minutes are tight on the cheaper plans, and it has no sales call coaching.
HappyScribe pricing
| Plan | Monthly price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Unlimited recordings with the notetaker, mobile app and web recorder, Up to 45 minutes per recording, 30-day recording history, 10 free minutes for uploaded files, AI Chat on 3 files a month, Watermarked MP4 export |
| Basic | $17/mo | Save 50% with annual billing, Up to 90 minutes per recording, 120 minutes a month for uploaded files, AI Chat on 10 files a month, 1 user seat, No watermark on video exports |
| Pro | $29/mo | Save 34% with annual billing, No length limit per recording, 600 minutes a month for uploaded files, Unlimited AI Chat, 3 user seats, Branded notetaker and custom summary templates |
| Business | $89/mo | Save 34% with annual billing, 6,000 minutes a month for uploaded files, 5 user seats, Workspace roles and permissions, Unlimited style guides and glossaries |
Free plan: unlimited recordings up to 45 minutes each, 30-day history and 10 free minutes for uploaded files. Basic $17 a month, or $8.50 a month billed annually. Pro $29 a month, or $19 a month billed annually, with 3 seats. Business $89 a month, or $59 a month billed annually, with 5 seats. Extra upload minutes cost $0.20 each; human transcription starts at $2.00 a minute.
Before you commit
- Extra upload minutes at $0.20 each once a plan's monthly minutes run out
- Human transcription billed separately from $2.00 a minute
What HappyScribe does
HappyScribe is an AI meeting assistant and transcription platform from Barcelona. Its notetaker attends the Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings on your calendar, detects the language and transcribes in more than 150 languages. The same account turns uploaded audio and video into transcripts, subtitles and translations, so meetings and recordings share one searchable archive.
Calendar notetaker for Zoom, Meet and Teams
Connects to Google or Outlook Calendar and joins scheduled calls up to 3 minutes early, then records, transcribes and summarises them.
150+ languages with automatic detection
Recognises the spoken language without setup and transcribes in more than 150 languages and dialects, including mixed-language calls.
Speaker labels and custom glossary
Labels each speaker in the transcript and lets a team add product names and acronyms so they are spelled correctly.
Uploaded files, subtitles and translation
Turns uploaded audio or video into transcripts, subtitles and translations, with export to SRT, VTT, DOCX and more on paid plans.
Show all 8 features
In-person and browser recording
The iOS and Android app records conversations in a room, and the web recorder captures a call or talk in a browser tab with no meeting link.
AI Chat over recordings
Asks questions across transcripts to pull decisions, quotes and action items, limited to 3 files a month on Free and unlimited on Pro.
Branded notetaker and summary templates
Pro adds a notetaker bot and summary emails carrying a team's own logo and colours, plus summary templates the team can set as default.
Human proofreading
Sends a file to human transcribers for a checked transcript, priced from $2.00 a minute on the professional services page.
Works with
- Zoom
- Google Meet
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Calendar
- Microsoft Outlook
- Zapier
- YouTube
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Vimeo
Capabilities
- Meeting notes
- Transcription
- Speech to text
- Subtitles
- Multilingual
- Speaker diarization
Strengths and limits
Strengths
- Detects the spoken language on its own and copes with calls that switch language midway, which suits a team taking calls in several countries.
- One account covers meetings, uploaded files and subtitles, so an interview recorded on a phone and a Zoom call land in the same searchable archive.
- Meeting data is stored in EU data centres and the company states it is SOC 2 Type II certified, which helps European buyers with data-residency rules.
- Pro at $19 a month billed annually includes 3 seats, so a small team shares one plan without paying per person.
Limits
- The Free plan cuts each recording at 45 minutes and keeps it for 30 days, so anyone with hour-long calls needs at least Basic.
- Uploaded files are capped tightly on lower plans: 10 free minutes in total on Free and 120 minutes a month on Basic, which a podcaster or researcher uses up fast.
- HappyScribe's own accuracy figures differ: its notetaker page claims 98%, while the overview it wrote for its G2 listing (read 15 November 2026) says 85 to 95% for AI transcripts.
- There is no call scoring or deal tracking, so sales teams that want coaching from their calls will outgrow it.
HappyScribe alternatives
| Tool | Price from | Free plan | Runs on | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HappyScribe This page | $17/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android | 3.5 |
 Otter.aiPick HappyScribe if your calls run in several languages; pick Otter.ai if your team works in English and already uses its live notes. | $8.33/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 4.4 |
 FathomPick HappyScribe if you also transcribe uploaded files and subtitles; pick Fathom if you only need free notes on English video calls. | $15/mo | Yes | Web · Mac · Windows | -- |
 Fireflies.aiPick HappyScribe for multilingual transcripts kept in the EU; pick Fireflies.ai if notes must flow into a CRM and sales tools. | $10/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 3.9 |
Also compared
DescriptPick HappyScribe for transcripts and subtitles at volume; pick Descript if you edit the audio or video itself by editing its text.
HappyScribe facts
- Training-data policy
- The notetaker page says meeting data is never used to train AI models; the G2 overview says content is not used for training unless the user opts in.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type II · GDPR
- Works offline
- No
- Price band
- Budget
- Total funding
- Self-described as 100% bootstrapped (HappyScribe newsroom, read 15 November 2026)
Data and privacy
Proprietary
Questions about HappyScribe
How much does HappyScribe cost per month?
Paying monthly, Basic is $17, Pro $29 and Business $89. Annual billing brings those down to $8.50, $19 and $59 a month. Pro covers 3 people and Business 5, so per person a small team pays less than the headline price. Once a plan runs out of upload minutes, each extra minute is $0.20, and checked human transcripts start at $2.00 a minute.
Is HappyScribe free to use?
Yes. The Free plan records an unlimited number of meetings through the notetaker, mobile app or web recorder, but each recording stops at 45 minutes and is kept for 30 days. Uploaded files get only 10 free minutes in total, and AI Chat works on 3 files a month.
Does HappyScribe use my meetings to train its AI?
No, according to HappyScribe. Its notetaker page rules out training on meeting content, and the overview on its G2 listing adds that content is only used if a user opts in. Recordings are encrypted in transit and at rest and kept in EU data centres.
How accurate is HappyScribe transcription?
HappyScribe's notetaker page claims up to 98% accuracy, while the overview it wrote for G2 gives 85 to 95% for AI transcripts and up to 99% with expert review. A custom glossary helps with names and acronyms. Test it on your own recordings and accents before you commit to a paid plan.
Can HappyScribe record a meeting without a bot joining?
Yes, for conversations you capture yourself. Open the phone app to record an in-person meeting, or start the web recorder for a call or talk you are listening to in the browser. Scheduled Zoom, Meet and Teams calls are different: there the notetaker shows up as a visible participant.
About HappyScribe
HappyScribe started as a transcription service for audio and video files and has grown into an AI meeting notetaker. Co-founded by André Bastié and Marc Assens, it describes itself as a 100% bootstrapped company based in Barcelona, and its notetaker page says 6M+ users and 41,000+ teams use it. It sits with the other AI meeting assistants on Hokai, but it still sells the file transcription, subtitle and human proofreading work it was built on.
Read the full background
The notetaker connects to a Google or Outlook calendar and joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls up to 3 minutes before they start. It detects the spoken language by itself, labels each speaker and emails a summary with decisions and action items after the call. The same account takes uploaded files, records in person through the iOS and Android app, and records in a browser tab without a meeting link. A custom glossary teaches it product names and acronyms.
It fits teams whose calls are not all in English: newsrooms, market research firms running interviews in several countries, and European companies that want meeting data kept in the EU. It also suits anyone who needs the transcript to become something else afterwards, such as subtitles, a translated file or a quote pulled for a report.
It is the wrong pick for a sales team that wants call scoring and deep CRM automation, where Fireflies.ai and Gong go further. A person who only takes English calls and wants the most generous free meeting notes should look at Fathom first, and someone who wants notes with no bot in the call at all is closer to Granola. For heavy video editing on top of the transcript, Descript is built for that job. Otter.ai and tl;dv are the other notetakers most buyers compare it with, and the AI meeting assistants guide sets them side by side.
Sources and guides
Official sources
- HappyScribe official site Vendor
- HappyScribe pricing Docs
- AI Notetaker overview Docs
- Supported languages Docs
Product facts on this page (pricing, plans, integrations, compliance) are read from HappyScribe's own pages and documentation. The verdict is Hokai's reading of them, not the vendor's claim.
Hokai guides covering HappyScribe
Lists that include HappyScribe
More AI Tools on Hokai
PlaudAI voice recorders (Note, Note Pro, NotePin) that sync to an app for transcripts, summaries and action items, with a free Starter plan.tl;dvAI meeting notetaker turning every meeting into insights across your entire company
MurmurCastMurmurCast auto-transcribes YouTube channels, podcasts, and newsletters into one daily email digest. Free tier covers 5 sources and 20 episodes/month.
TimelessAgentic meeting platform (formerly timeOS) that turns spoken commitments into automated tasks, capturing video calls, WhatsApp, phone and in-person conversations, with an MCP server for Claude and Cursor.
GranolaBot-free AI notepad that merges your typed notes with a device-audio transcript, with apps for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android and a free plan.
AliceStudy app that turns uploaded slides, notes and readings into a source-cited chat, podcasts, quizzes, flashcards and mock oral exams, in six languages.