Comparing the best automated transcription services for qualitative research in 2026

In the last few years, several qualitative analysis software providers have added extra add-ons for automatic transcription of qualitative data. But are they worth the extra money, and how do they compare with more mainstream options? And what about free alternatives?

We did a test of three different transcription services from CAQDAS providers: NVivo, MAXQDA and our own, Quirkos. We also tested the same interview transcript on otter.ai, one of the most popular general transcription services.

Now, I have to admit, the audio file we used for the testing is the most awful recording I have in more than 10 years of recording interviews for qualitative research.

It's in a really noisy cafe, with music in the background. I left my dictaphone at home, so it's recorded on my phone. The interviewee has a very soft voice, and a very thick Scottish accent. We were running late, so ended up having lunch – there's noise of eating and cutlery, and the server asking 'Do you want sauce with that?'. When I had this professionally transcribed many years ago, I had to pay double because the quality of the recording was so bad.

But those are all things that make it a good test – they are often realities about qualitative research: sometimes you need to do interviews in places that make the participant feel comfortable, and places where you can't always control the sound. And you shouldn't have to exclude people from research because they have accents!

So last week, I fed the same audio file to all the services (after trimming it – NVivo only gives you 15 minutes on the trial, and you'll soon see why...). I timed how long it took each service, compared the un-edited output, and also managed to find out what each service costs – something that NVivo especially makes hard to find! So let's look at the transcription results. I've literally just taken the first sentence of the interview, starting with the 'definitive' results from the professional (human) transcriber.

Transcription accuracy – comparison between services

Professional:
In the 70’s actually when I lived up in the highlands but kind of a bit lapsed since then. Once you have children, get married and have a family and whatever, other priorities take over a bit.

NVivo:
Actually, when I lived up in the Highlands, part of it was insane. Once you showed the bodies of Obama and the other color of just take over of it.

NVivo's transcription struggled the most with the noise and accents, and the output was nonsensical and read like a political conspiracy theory!

otter.AI:
Someone who's actually lived up in the highlands. Been a bit lost since then once you have children that know the love bombing, other priorities take over of it.

otter.AI fared a bit better, but still contained some bizarre nonsense about children who love bombing (or love-bombing?).

MAXQDA:
70s, actually, when I lived up in the Highlands, but kind of a bit lax. Since then, once you have children, married, never family and other priorities take over a bit.

This one isn't bad – it has 'never family' instead of 'have a family' and for some reason has missed the first few words (as the others did too). In fact, this is interesting, because if you trawl through the privacy conditions of the MAXQDA and NVivo services, you'll see they both send the data to the same third party provider, Speechmatics. So why would MAXQDA do so much better than NVivo? Well, in Speechmatics' own documentation you'll note that they have different levels of accuracy available, including 'Standard' and 'Enhanced'. The prices are different too, (at least for small customers) from $0.30/hr for 'lite' (where data is transcribed using the Standard model at a slower rate, and the data may be retained by Speechmatics to improve their services) to $1.04/hr for 'enhanced'. NVivo seems to be selling you one of the cheaper options, while MAXQDA isn't quite so stingy. However if this pricing is accurate, even MAXQDA's is passed to you at a whopping 9x markup compared to the 'enhanced accuracy' pricing.

Finally, let's look at Quirkos Transcribe:

Quirkos:
In the 70s actually, when I lived up in the Highlands, but kind of a bit lax, since then, once you have children, get married and have a family, where the other priorities take over a bit, actually.

Nearly perfect. The only differences are 'where the other priorities' instead of 'whatever priorities', and 'lax' for 'lapsed'. And it's also the only one that got the first few words of the interview for some reason.

So Quirkos Transcribe wins the accuracy benchmark on a noisy interview, but what about other aspects of the service? How does Quirkos compare for speed, cost and security?

Comparing automated transcription services on price, speed and security

	Quirkos	MAXQDA	NVivo	otter.ai
No data shared with 3rd parties
Free minutes	100	60	15	30
Cost per hour	$0.30	$10*	$30*	$3.40*
Time to transcribe one hour	12min	24min	30min	20min

Transcription security and privacy

First of all, Quirkos is the only provider that doesn't send the data anywhere else. We run our own server in-house, with open-source but offline transcription software. (If you are concerned about the environmental impact of AI, you might also like to know our server is solar-powered and is designed to run as efficiently as possible!) We don't use any of your data to train our transcription model, and we also encrypt your data end-to-end, using your own computer to encrypt the data before it's sent. As we have already discussed, both MAXQDA and NVivo use the third-party provider Speechmatics to process your data. Otter.ai states in their privacy policy that they will share your data with third parties, and use it (including "de-identified audio recordings") to train their transcription model.

Transcription speed

Quirkos Transcribe is also nearly half the turnaround speed of the next fastest (otter.ai) and nearly 3 times faster than the slowest and least accurate in this test (NVivo). It should be noted that since this initial test, with regular updates to our transcription service, we are now averaging around 8 minutes or less to transcribe one hour of audio, so you have even less time to wait.

Price of transcription

However, the cost may be the most significant difference, especially if you have many hours of interviews. We provide a quarterly subscription for $45, which gives 150 hours of transcription. $15 a month for 50 hours of transcription gives a cost of $0.30 an hour - and it's even less if you subscribe for a whole year. This is 11 times cheaper than the next nearest (otter.ai). That's why we've said that our service can change how you do qualitative research, as you don't have to worry about transcribing everything – including your own thoughts, and whole days of ethnography.

150 hours is the smallest amount of transcription you can order at one time from Quirkos, so our per-hour price comparison is based on the smallest possible order from each service. On the free plan, Otter.ai allows you to transcribe a maximum of 30 minutes per audio file, and you can import a maximum of 3 files before you have to pay. Past that point it's $16.99 for the monthly subscription, which provides only 5 hours per month, and a maximum of 10 file imports. The annual subscription is $99.99 upfront, around $1.66 per hour – still 5 times more expensive than Quirkos Transcribe for far fewer hours. Quirkos Transcribe also has no file limits: you can stretch your transcription allowance across as many files as you want, and there is also no maximum file length.

MAXQDA and NVivo are a lot more expensive, and require you to buy 'blocks' of transcription time. NVivo offers either a one-time fee of $30 for just a single hour of transcription, or $499 for 50 hours which expire after 1 year (around $10 per hour of transcription). For MAXQDA you would be paying a minimum of $20 for 2 hours of transcription, which scales up to $150 for 20 hours ($7.50 per hour). By comparison, 50 hours is what you get every month with Quirkos Transcribe. Quirkos Transcibe has a minimum 3 month subscription, so the least you can pay is $45 (€41), but that gives you 150 hours of transcription!

Additionally, Quirkos Transcribe now includes automatic speaker identification at no extra cost. In all the languages we currently support (English, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese) we have had great feedback on the quality of the model.

Quirkos also gives away the most transcription time for free: 100 minutes before you need to pay anything. We chose that number because most qualitative interviews are just over an hour, so this makes sure you can test with a full interview.

So what are you waiting for? Don't just take our word for it, give it a try today for free! You'll need a Quirkos Cloud account, so if you don't have one you can sign up for the free 14 day trial. Even on the trial, you have 100 minutes of free transcription time before you have to pay for anything!

Test originally performed in November 2023. Prices and features for other services were checked on 17 March 2026, and may have changed since then.