HumlaCompare
Humla vs Read.ai
Read.ai can skip the bot now, but every meeting still lands in its cloud. Humla joins nothing and can keep every meeting on your Mac.
- Free, no account
- Open source, MIT
- Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later
In short
Which should you pick?
- Pick Humla for privacy, on-device processing, and price.
- Pick Read.ai for meeting analytics and integrations.
Side by side
How they compare
An honest look. Humla wins on privacy, price, and openness; Read.ai leads on meeting analytics and integrations.
| Humla | Read.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | Optional (botless) | |
| Runs fully on your device | — | |
| Open source (auditable) | — | |
| Bring your own AI key / model | — | |
| Speaker labels (who said what) | ||
| AI summaries & action items | ||
| App integrations (Slack, CRM…) | — | |
| Mobile app | — | |
| Price | Free | Free / $20–40/user/mo |
Reflects each product's standard plans as of 2026. Check their sites for the latest.
Why Humla
What you get instead
- No bot, and nothing uploaded. Read.ai's desktop app records without a bot, but recordings and reports still go to its cloud. Humla records your Mac directly and can keep everything on-device.
- On-device, not cloud. Read.ai processes and stores meetings in its cloud; Humla can run transcription and summaries entirely on your Mac — nothing leaves.
- Nothing to train on. Your meetings never reach Humla — it only talks to the AI providers you choose, with your own key.
- Free and open source. Read.ai runs $20–40/user/month beyond a 5-meeting free tier; Humla is free forever and MIT-licensed, with optional team sync at $5/user/month.
- Speaks your language. Around 99 languages via Whisper — on-device or with your own key — plus a dedicated Norwegian model and per-language routing.
See it work
One meeting, from agenda to recap
Write the agenda, record the call, press Summarize. Your note stays on the left while the transcript and the recap fill in on the right.
Humla
PersonalAdd team
Search notes⌘K
HomeAll notes5ChatImport audio
Folders
Brightleaf2Fjordline1Internal1
TrashSettings
Brightleaf kickoff
Agenda
Six pages, maybe a new CMS?
Keep the brand palette
Who signs off the budget?
Notes
Hanna approves budget, wants qu
Version history
SummaryTranscriptChat
English3 speakers
Recordingmic 14s · sys 14s · 6 chunks0:01
So the scope is six pages, and we move you off the old CMS while we're in there.
That works. Can we keep the current palette? People know the colours.
We'd only tighten the type. Budget sign off sits with Hanna.
Speakers are identified when you stop.
Being fair
When to pick Read.ai instead
Humla isn't for everyone. Choose Read.ai if:
- You want meeting analytics and engagement insights, plus a notetaker for calls you don't personally attend.
- You need deep CRM/workflow integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion) and native mobile apps.
Learn the terms
Related reading
- What is Meeting bot?A meeting bot is an automated participant that joins a video call to record and transcribe it, appearing in the attendee list like another guest.
- What is On-device transcription?On-device transcription converts speech to text entirely on your own computer, with no audio sent to a cloud service.
- What is Speaker diarization?Speaker diarization is the process of splitting an audio recording into segments by who is speaking, so a transcript can show “who said what.”
- What is AI notetaker vs AI notepad?An AI notetaker records and transcribes a meeting for you; an AI notepad is one you write in yourself while the AI augments your notes with the transcript.
Keep your meetings on your Mac.
Free and open source. Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later.