Reviewed by Jamie Sutherland, CEO Last updated September 2026

Meeting transcription software

Record the meeting. Upload the file.
Read every word.

Sonix turns any meeting recording into an accurate, searchable transcript with speaker labels and timestamps, in minutes.

No bot joins your call and nothing touches your calendar. Just 99% accurate AI meeting transcription in 54+ languages, from any platform that can produce a recording.

30 minutes free. No credit card required.See pricing

Works with 11 platforms

54+ languages

99% accuracy

SOC 2 Type II

How it works

How to transcribe a meeting
in three steps

Record your meeting

Sonix is meeting recording and transcription software that works after the meeting, not during it. Use the recorder built into Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Webex, or any other platform. A screen recorder or a phone in the middle of a conference table works too. Sonix accepts MP3, WAV, M4A, and FLAC audio, plus MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, and more video formats.

Upload the file to Sonix

Drag the recording into your Sonix dashboard. Our engine transcribes it with 99% accuracy, automatically labels each speaker, and timestamps every line. A polished transcript comes back in about 5 to 6 minutes for a one-hour file.

Polish, search, and share

Open the transcript in the browser-based Sonix editor, where the text stays synced to the audio. Fix a name, tighten a phrase, then export it, translate it, or share it with your team using multi-user permissions and read-only links.

That is the entire process. No bot to invite, no calendar integration to configure, no IT ticket to file.

Platform guides

Pick your meeting platform

Every platform buries its recordings somewhere slightly different. The guides below cover the two things that actually trip people up: where your recording lives, and how to get it into Sonix. Each one ends the same way, with an accurate meeting transcript you can edit and share.

Zoom meeting transcription

Recording lives in The Zoom web portal for cloud recordings on paid plans, or your own computer for local recordings on every plan
You download The MP4, or the audio-only M4A
Sonix returns A searchable transcript with speaker labels, minutes later

Zoom's own transcription only covers cloud recordings on paid plans. Sonix transcribes any Zoom recording, including local files from free accounts and old recordings sitting in your downloads folder. Download the file, upload it to Sonix, and you have a searchable Zoom meeting transcript with speaker labels in minutes.

How to transcribe a Zoom meeting

Teams meeting transcription

Recording lives in OneDrive or SharePoint, by meeting type
You download The MP4, from the meeting chat or your Recordings folder
Sonix returns A full transcript, whoever organized the call

This route sidesteps the usual Teams headaches. Built-in Teams transcription depends on your Microsoft 365 license and on an admin having switched it on, and only the organizer can start it. Sonix needs none of that. If anyone recorded the meeting, or you captured it with a screen recorder, you can transcribe it, whoever organized the call.

How to transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting

Google Meet transcription

Recording lives in The organizer's Google Drive, in a Meet Recordings folder
You download The MP4, usually within a few hours of the call
Sonix returns Speaker labels and timestamps, from Drive or a screen recording

Download that file from Drive and upload it to Sonix for a transcript with speaker labels and timestamps. On a personal Google account with no recording button? Capture the meeting with a screen recorder instead. Sonix does not care where the file came from, only whether it contains the audio.

How to transcribe a Google Meet recording

Webex transcription

Recording lives in The Recordings section of your Webex site, or your own computer, depending on your plan
You download An MP4 the host can play, share, or download
Sonix returns An accurate transcript with timestamps, webinars included

Download the recording, upload it to Sonix, and the transcript comes back the same way it does for every other platform: accurate, timestamped, and labeled by speaker. It works for webinars and training sessions recorded in Webex, too.

How to transcribe a Webex meeting

All 11 platforms

Every other meeting platform

Loom, Skype, RingCentral, GoToMeeting, UberConference, Join.me, BlueJeans: Sonix works with recordings from all 11 platforms we publish guides for, and from any tool we have never heard of. The platform is irrelevant once the meeting is a file. If it plays, Sonix transcribes it.

No bot joins your meeting. Ever.

Most AI meeting transcription tools send a bot into your call. Sonix transcribes the recording you upload afterward, so nothing joins, listens to, or appears in your meeting.

How bot-based notetakers work

Most AI meeting transcription tools, including Otter, Fireflies, and Fathom, are built around a bot. Their notetaker joins your call as a visible participant, listens live, and produces notes as the meeting happens. For internal standups, that can be genuinely convenient, and if live in-meeting notes are what you need, a bot-based notetaker is a reasonable choice.

The real cost of a bot in the room

But the bot model has real costs. A bot appears in the participant list, and clients, candidates, and patients notice. It needs calendar access or an invite to every meeting, so a meeting it never joined is a meeting it never captured. It only works on the platforms it supports. And in sensitive conversations, legal, medical, HR, or deal negotiations, a third-party service sitting silently on the call is exactly what many teams are not allowed to have.

Sonix takes the opposite approach. Nothing joins your call, nothing appears in your participant list, and nothing needs access to your calendar. You record the meeting with whatever tool you already use, then upload the file after the call.

What that one difference means

Any platform, any format. Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, a phone on the table, a screen recorder. If it produced a file, it works.
Meetings from last year, not just next week. A bot cannot attend a meeting that already happened. Sonix transcribes your entire recording backlog.
No awkward "what is that bot?" moment. Your meetings look exactly like meetings, because that is what they are.
You choose what gets transcribed. Upload the meetings you need. Nothing is captured by default.

Full transparency: because Sonix works from recordings, it does not produce live notes during the call. That is the trade. If you want the most accurate transcript of record after the meeting, with no bot in the room, that trade favors Sonix.

See the best meeting transcription software

Bot or upload?

Bot-based notetaker vs
uploading a recording

The two models solve different problems. Here is where each one wins, so you can pick the right tool for the meeting in front of you.

What matters	Sonix: upload the recording	Bot-based notetaker
Joins live calls	Never. Nothing from Sonix enters the meeting	Yes, as a visible attendee
Requires calendar or meeting access	No. You upload the file after the call	Yes, every meeting needs an invite or calendar integration
Meeting platforms	Any platform or recorder that produces a file	Only the platforms the bot supports
Meetings already held	Yes, your entire recording backlog	No, only meetings the bot attended
Live notes during the call	No, the transcript arrives afterward	Yes
Transcript of record, after the call	Full verbatim transcript with speaker labels, timestamps, and a synced editor	Summary first; transcript depth varies by tool
Sensitive meetings	No third party in the room	A third-party service sits on the call
Which meetings get captured	Only the recordings you upload	Every meeting the bot is invited to

Meeting notes or the full transcript? Get both.

AI meeting notes tell you what to do next. The transcript proves what was actually said. Sonix gives you both from the same upload.

Notes you can act on

AI meeting notes and a verbatim transcript solve different problems, and most tools make you choose. Every Sonix transcript comes with AI Analysis: automatic summaries you can drop into a follow-up email, chapter breakdowns for long sessions, key statements and action items, and sentiment analysis across speakers and topics. Need to transcribe meeting minutes for a board or a city council? Start from the verbatim record and condense, instead of reconstructing from memory.

The transcript underneath

The full transcript underneath is what bots and note-only apps do not prioritize. Every word, timestamped and attributed to a named speaker, searchable across your whole library. You can ask questions across entire folders of transcripts and surface patterns no single meeting reveals. When a client disputes what was agreed, a summary is an opinion. A timestamped transcript is a record.

Everything runs on the same automated transcription engine Sonix has been refining since 2017, and it all lives in the browser. No exports required just to read your own meetings.

Explore Sonix AI Analysis

How the automated transcription engine works

What teams turn into transcripts

The meetings worth transcribing are rarely the daily standup. They are the conversations where the exact words matter, and they look different on every team.

Sales, research, and hiring

Sales teams upload discovery and demo calls, then search across months of them for the objection that keeps coming up. Researchers transcribe user interviews and focus groups so quotes land in the report verbatim, attributed to the right participant. Recruiters transcribe panel interviews to compare candidates on what was actually said rather than what interviewers remember.

Boards, legal teams, and consultants

The pattern extends anywhere accuracy beats convenience. Boards and city councils turn recordings into minutes with a verbatim record behind them. Legal teams transcribe depositions and client meetings where a bot in the participant list would be a problem, not a feature. Consultants and agencies transcribe client workshops, then send the summary while the transcript stays on file.

One thing these have in common: many of them are meetings where inviting a third-party notetaker is awkward, against policy, or simply impossible. A recording, uploaded afterward, works for all of them.

Transcribe meetings in 54+ languages and dialects

Sonix transcribes in 54+ languages and dialects with native-level accuracy, and translates finished transcripts between them.

Record in one language, read in another

Meetings do not all happen in English, and meeting transcription should not either. Record a customer call in Spanish, read it in English, and send the summary back in Spanish.

That coverage is why teams outside the US use Sonix for their Zoom calls specifically. We publish dedicated guides for transcribing Zoom meetings in these languages, among dozens of others:

Security

Built for sensitive meetings

Meeting recordings are some of the most sensitive files a company produces. Sonix treats them that way.

Encrypted in transit and at rest

Your files are encrypted with TLS in transit and AES-256 at rest, stored in enterprise-grade AWS data centers in the USA.

SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA

Sonix is SOC 2 Type II certified, with controls independently audited every year. GDPR compliance is standard, and healthcare organizations can get HIPAA compliance, including a signed BAA, via Medical Sonix.

Never used to train AI

Sonix never uses your audio or transcripts to train AI models, and Sonix employees cannot access your content unless you give express written consent to investigate an issue.

You control who hears what

Two-factor authentication, role-based team permissions, and password-protected sharing decide exactly who hears what was said in the room. Export or permanently delete your data at any time.

By the numbers

Sonix meeting transcription,
by the numbers

Turnaround: Sonix returns a polished transcript of a one-hour meeting about 5 to 6 minutes after you upload it.
Accuracy: Sonix transcribes meeting recordings with 99% accuracy, with automatic speaker labels and line-by-line timestamps.
Languages: Sonix transcribes meetings in 54+ languages and dialects and translates finished transcripts between them.
Platforms: Sonix never sends a bot to join a meeting. It transcribes recordings uploaded after the call, from any of the 11 meeting platforms it publishes guides for, or any other source of audio or video.
Track record: More than 6.2 million users at 21K+ companies have used Sonix to transcribe 14.2M+ hours since 2017.
Security: Sonix is SOC 2 Type II certified, encrypts recordings with AES-256 at rest, and does not train AI models on customer audio or transcripts.

Common questions

Meeting transcription FAQs

Can you transcribe a meeting after it was recorded?

Yes. Recordings are exactly what Sonix is built for. Upload the audio or video file from any platform, any time after the meeting, and Sonix returns an accurate transcript with speaker labels and timestamps, about 5 to 6 minutes for a one-hour recording. This works for meetings recorded yesterday or years ago, so your entire backlog can be transcribed, not just future calls.

Does Zoom transcribe meeting recordings on its own?

Zoom only generates transcripts for cloud recordings, which require a paid plan, and the results are basic. Local recordings, the kind free accounts make, get no transcript from Zoom at all. Sonix transcribes any Zoom recording, cloud or local, on any Zoom plan. Download the MP4 or M4A file, upload it to Sonix, and you get a transcript that is 99% accurate.

How do I get a Teams transcript without recording in Teams?

Built-in Teams transcription requires the right Microsoft 365 license, admin approval, and the organizer to switch it on. If any of those are missing, capture the meeting another way, with a screen recorder or a Teams recording someone else made, then upload the file to Sonix. You get a full transcript regardless of your license or role in the meeting.

How do I turn a Google Meet recording into a transcript?

If your Workspace edition supports recording, record the meeting and Google saves the file to the organizer's Drive in a Meet Recordings folder. Download it and upload it to Sonix for a transcript with speaker labels. On a personal account without recording, use a screen recorder during the call and upload that file instead. Either way, the transcript arrives in minutes.

Does a Sonix bot join my meetings?

No. Nothing from Sonix ever joins, appears in, or listens to your live meeting. Sonix transcribes the recording you upload after the call ends. That means no bot in your participant list, no calendar access, and no third-party presence in sensitive conversations. It also means Sonix works with any meeting platform, because it only needs the file.

How do I separate the speakers in a meeting transcript?

Sonix does this automatically. Its speaker diarization detects when the voice changes and splits the transcript by speaker, with a timestamp on every exchange. You can rename each speaker once, in the browser editor, and the label applies through the whole transcript. Clean speaker separation is what makes a meeting transcript readable and quotable instead of a wall of text.

What file formats can I upload?

Sonix accepts the formats meeting platforms actually produce: MP3, WAV, M4A, and FLAC audio, plus MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, and more video formats. Zoom's MP4 and M4A files, Teams and Webex MP4s, and Google Meet's Drive files all upload directly, no conversion needed. If a file plays on your computer, it is almost certainly supported.

Is meeting transcription free to try?

Yes. Sonix includes 30 minutes of free transcription when you sign up, with no credit card required. That is enough to run a real meeting recording through the full workflow: upload, automatic transcript, speaker labels, and the browser editor. After the trial, pay-as-you-go and subscription pricing are on the pricing page. You can cancel anytime.

Get started

Every meeting, word for word

Upload your first meeting recording and see the transcript in minutes. 30 minutes free, no credit card, no bot in your meeting.

The Platform

Intelligence built on accurate data

Popular Industries

Explore

Save hours. Reduce costs. Scale easily.

Learn

Company

Built for professionals who value accuracy