QuickSpeak vs. Tactiq: same capture, different cloud

Of every tool in this category, Tactiq is the one built like QuickSpeak: a Chrome extension that transcribes your meeting tab live, with no bot joining the call. The capture is nearly identical. What happens next is the whole comparison — Tactiq saves the transcript to your cloud account, and QuickSpeak saves it to your disk. If you've been weighing the two, you're really choosing between those two destinations.

The capture is a tie, so look at storage

Tactiq's mechanism and QuickSpeak's are the same idea executed twice: the extension listens to the audio already playing in your meeting tab, so Meet, Zoom web, and Teams all work with nothing joining the participant list. Tactiq also ships a native Mac app for Zoom, Teams, and Slack Huddles desktop calls; QuickSpeak covers the same cases with its Desktop and Microphone audio sources. Call that one even.

The fork comes right after. Tactiq's model is an account: transcripts sync to it, search lives in it, and the AI — summaries, custom prompts, workflow automations that push action items into Slack, Linear, or HubSpot — runs on OpenAI's API. To Tactiq's credit, they're specific about this: they don't record or store the audio at all, and OpenAI's enterprise terms bar training on that data. It's a legible, conventional cloud deal.

QuickSpeak's model is a folder. The transcript and the audio land on your disk, transcription ran in WebAssembly on your own CPU, and the AI briefs and transcript chat run on a local language model. There's no account to sign into because there's no server to sign into. The practical differences that fall out of this: QuickSpeak keeps the recording so you can play back the moment behind any line and re-run speaker detection; Tactiq's transcripts have no audio behind them at all. And a QuickSpeak library works on a plane; a Tactiq account by definition doesn't.

The free tiers measure differently

Tactiq's free plan gives you ten transcripts a month and five AI credits; past that, transcription continues but AI features pause until the reset, per tactiq.io/pricing. If your meeting load is light, that's a genuine free option. If you have a heavy week — a project kickoff, a conference, courted clients — ten doesn't reach.

QuickSpeak's free tier has no transcript counter, because there's no per-transcript cost to pass on: your machine does the work. Recording, transcription, full history, .txt export, and audio export are free without limit. Pro ($12/month or $99/year, 14-day trial, no card) adds live captions during calls, cross-meeting search, persistent speaker profiles, the local AI briefs, and Markdown/JSON/WAV export.

What Tactiq does better

• AI workflows and integrations. Custom AI prompts, meeting summaries routed to Slack, Linear, HubSpot. QuickSpeak deliberately has no integrations — every integration is a place your data goes.
• Live captions on the free tier. Tactiq's live transcription is the free product; QuickSpeak's live captions are a Pro feature (recording and transcription are the free part).
• Language breadth on paper. Tactiq claims 60+ languages to QuickSpeak's 36. Worth testing against your real calls — claims and accuracy are different measurements.
• Lower list price. Roughly US$8/user/month billed annually, region-dependent, undercuts QuickSpeak's $12 — if the transcript cap and cloud account don't bother you.

Who should pick which

Tactiq fits when the transcript's destination is a team workflow — you want meetings pushed into tools the team already uses, and the account model is a feature there, not a cost.

QuickSpeak fits when the transcript's destination is you: client calls you can't upload, interviews you need audio behind, a transcript library that outlives any subscription because it's files on your disk. Same capture, opposite endings.