Head to head · Video · updated Oct 27, 2026
Whisper vs Captions
Whisper scores 85 to Captions's 64 on public evidence for subtitles & captions, and they rank #1 and #3 there. Both are free to start. Numbers below are the same public signals the ranking uses, recomputed nightly — nothing here is sponsored.
Whisper
OpenAI's open-source speech-recognition model that transcribes and translates audio in dozens of languages, locally or via API.
+ Free, runs fully offline, and remains the accuracy benchmark that most commercial transcription services are measured against.
− No speaker diarization out of the box, it hallucinates text during silence, and large models are slow without a GPU.
Captions
Creator video app with AI captions, eye-contact correction, dubbing with lip sync and AI avatars (Mirage).
+ Eye-contact correction and lip-synced dubbing work well on phone-shot talking-head video.
− The subscription is expensive relative to CapCut and many effects feel gimmicky.
Side by side
public evidence| Whisper | Captions | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence score / 100 | 85 | 64 |
| GitHub stars | 111,399 | closed source |
| Hacker News stories, 30d | 14 | 7 |
| Release-feed mentions, 30d | 5 | 8 |
| Last activity | 0 days ago | 2 days ago |
| Pricing | Open source · Free (MIT); hosted API $0.006/min | Free tier |
| Platforms | cli, api, mac, windows, linux | ios, android, web, mac |
| Maker | OpenAI | Captions |
Which one?
Pick Whisper if
- you want the stronger public evidence (85 vs 64)
- you want open source — self-host it, read it, fork it
- you need it on api, cli, linux
- a bigger GitHub community matters (111,399 vs 0 stars)
Best for free local transcription.
Pick Captions if
- you need it on android, ios, web
Best for solo creators polishing talking-head clips.