HappyScribe vs. Sonix.ai: a full AI transcription comparison

Choosing the right AI transcription tool isn’t just about speed: it’s about how well it fits into your workflow.

Businesses and professionals producing global content at a fast pace will also need features for collaboration, multilingual workflows, and subtitle styling to achieve the best results.

If you’re debating between HappyScribe and Sonix, here’s what you should know before deciding.

What is HappyScribe?

HappyScribe offers AI-powered language services tools for professional and global content production. HappyScribe can help with audio-to-text transcription, translation, and subtitling with features that create a consistent workflow and collaboration across large-scale teams.

Key features of HappyScribe include:

• 95% accuracy on AI-only outputs and 99% accuracy with expert proofreading
• Transcription, translation, and subtitling in 120+ supported languages
• Localization features, including meeting standards for Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (SDH)
• The ability to collaborate and share files with your team and across departments
• An interactive editor that creates a smooth workflow to review outputs
• Subtitle styling to customize captions based on your branding and video’s theme
• Full GDPR compliance to meet professional security needs

Each of these features and more makes HappyScribe a top choice for professional use, such as within media teams, while producing marketing materials, or for e-learning materials.

What is Sonix?

Sonix is another AI-powered transcription, translation, and subtitling tool. It offers basic features to help users generate automatic outputs across 54+ supported languages.

The key features of Sonix include:

• Automatic transcription, translation, and subtitling
• AI analysis
• Automated summaries
• Admin tools to manage files

While Sonix offers basic features, it’s limited in several aspects when compared to HappyScribe. For example, its options for subtitle styling and multilingual workflows have notable shortcomings while producing global content at a larger scale. We’ll dive into the details of those aspects in the rest of this article to show you the pros and cons.

Essential differences between HappyScribe and Sonix

1. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: user experience

HappyScribe: user experience

Several advanced features contribute to an organized and accessible user experience while using HappyScribe. Those include:

• Interactive editor: You can play back the audio or video file while reviewing transcripts for a smooth editing process. It works like making changes in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, where you can edit text and have your changes automatically saved.
• Ask AI anything: At the top of the editor, you’ll find the option to “Ask AI Anything,” where you can click on one of several simple prompts or input your own custom prompt. For example, you can use it to automatically pull important quotes or create a summary of your transcript.
• Fast results: HappyScribe AI-only transcription, translation, and subtitling features generate outputs in minutes with 95% accuracy.
• Advanced settings: You’ll find several advanced settings that improve the quality of your outputs, such as automatic speaker labeling, subtitle customization, glossaries, and style guides.
• Proofreading helper: Highlights where the AI may have struggled with accuracy for a more efficient proofreading process.
• Integrations: HappyScribe supports 45+ file formats and integrates with commonly used platforms, such as YouTube, Google Drive, and Vimeo, to fit in with your team’s workflow.

You’ll find each of these features within an organized workflow on the platform. When you log in, you’ll clearly see where to go to create transcripts, upload files, and customize the outputs based on your needs.

Sonix: user experience

Sonix provides a simple and accessible interface to generate transcripts, translations, and subtitles. However, you’ll find that some of the features are more basic when comparing it to HappyScribe.

Essential elements that contribute to the user experience on Sonix are:

• Clean interface: When you log in to Sonix, you’re greeted by a clean interface that makes it clear where you can upload files and adjust transcription settings. That said, the settings are more limited. For instance, Sonix doesn’t offer the option for style guides like HappyScribe does to provide more consistent outputs.
• Simple editing: Upon generating a transcript, the editor on Sonix is easy to use, allowing you to quickly make changes while playing the video file back.
• Accuracy analysis: After generating transcripts, Sonix will tell you how confident it was in the output’s accuracy. However, it won’t clearly label the sections it wasn’t confident in, like HappyScribe’s proofreading helper will, so the review process isn’t as efficient.

While the interface on Sonix is simple and clean, it feels more basic compared to what you get with HappyScribe. Professional teams creating content may find that adjusting settings feels clunky, proofreading takes longer, and you don’t get all the AI prompting options like you do with HappyScribe for a faster workflow.

2. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: accuracy

HappyScribe: accuracy

HappyScribe generates AI-only outputs with 95% accuracy and offers an expert proofreading option that boosts accuracy up to 99%. AI-only outputs are generated in minutes, and you’ll receive expert proofreading within 24 hours with the option to add rush orders for expert proofreading when you’re approaching a deadline.

HappyScribe is a trusted and accurate choice for professional content creation because it’s continuously tested and optimized to improve its capabilities. It’s trained and tested daily on 12,000+ hours of content each year.

Additionally, HappyScribe’s Glossaries feature will improve accuracy. When you have words that commonly get misspelled, such as names or company-specific terminology, you can add them to your glossary to ensure the outputs include the correct spelling.

Sonix: accuracy

Sonix has unverified accuracy rates, so it’s hard to tell how precise its automatic outputs are. The best Sonix does is estimate its accuracy after you generate a transcript or translate text, but those numbers are inconsistent.

Sonix also doesn’t offer an expert proofreading option to take that task off your hands, so someone from your team will have to manually review and edit outputs each time.

The one area where Sonix does compare to HappyScribe is that it offers a Custom Dictionary feature that operates similarly to HappyScribe’s Glossaries. You can add commonly misspelled words to the Sonix dictionary from the settings menu or right within the editor.

However, while comparing everything that contributes to accurate outputs, Sonix still has several inconsistencies that make its accuracy fall short during professional use.

3. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: Language Support

HappyScribe: Language Support

HappyScribe can transcribe and subtitle in 120+ languages, and translate in 65+ languages with AI-only outputs. You can also get expert human subtitle translations in 85+ languages with 99% accuracy.

Several advanced features contribute to an accurate and organized experience while creating global content in multiple languages:

• Using glossaries for consistency: You can use HappyScribe’s Glossaries feature to prevent common misspellings during translation, such as names or company terminology you don’t want changed.
• Efficient editing: Compare translated outputs with the original text side by side for easy review.
• Translated subtitle syncing: AI-powered video syncing lines up shot changes with subtitles for a better viewer experience. You can also adjust subtitle timing manually as needed.
• Ensure compliance: HappyScribe’s localization features are built to help you meet compliance and accessibility standards, such as Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (SDH).

These features work together to help teams produce content on a global scale while providing a consistent and localized output.

Sonix: language support

Sonix offers transcription and translation in 54+ languages. Again, it has unverified accuracy rates and doesn’t have human translation features to help with review and improve accuracy.

The lack of human proofreading means you’ll need to find fluent or native speakers in different languages to help proofread outputs to ensure they’re accurate before publication, which is often a constraint for many organizations.

Sonix also lacks language support in several major languages across the world. For example, Sonix doesn’t transcribe or translate in:

• Afrikaans: Spoken as a primary language by 7.2 million people in the world, primarily in Southern Africa.
• Albanian: The primary language in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, spoken by 7.6 million people worldwide.
• Javanese: The most spoken regional language in Indonesia, used by an estimated 70+ million people worldwide.
• Nepali: The official language of Nepal, spoken by an estimated 17 million people in the world.
• Swiss German: The primary dialect in Switzerland, used by over 4 million people.

It’s important to check the language capabilities of any transcription and translation tools you’re considering to ensure they cover the audiences you plan to create content for.

4. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: workflows

HappyScribe: workflow

HappyScribe’s workflow is designed to facilitate collaboration among team members while producing content at a fast pace. Several advanced features contribute to making that possible:

• Multi-user collaboration: Share project access with your team.
• Organization: Clearly label files and organize them in folders to manage all the projects your team is working on.
• Custom subtitle styling: HappyScribe offers many subtitle styling options to ensure captions fit your branding and video’s theme. You can adjust the font, size, weight, appearance, and color of subtitles to ensure they fit in with the content you’ve already created.
• Add speaker tags and timestamps: You can add automatic speaker labels with timestamps when they begin talking to make transcripts easy to review and edit.

Sonix: workflow

Sonix offers basic features to share project access with your team, organize files into folders, and automatically add speaker labels.

The platform generally provides an organized system. However, there are some instances where the workflow doesn’t feel as smooth.

For example, some important settings can feel hidden within the menus, such as the option to remove speaker labels. When you generate a transcript with Sonix, it will add speaker labels by default. Then, if you want to remove them, you have to go through a couple of menus to change the setting. Cases like that can add unnecessary complexity.

The other main drawback is that the subtitle editing options feel more limited in Sonix. You can adjust the font, size, and color of subtitles and add them right into your video file. However, the final output tends to look more blocky compared to the natural feel that you can create with HappyScribe.

Sonix also doesn’t offer automatic subtitle syncing, so you’ll have to adjust their timing manually, which will add extra steps to your workflow.

5. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: security

HappyScribe: security

HappyScribe makes security a priority for businesses and professionals who want to ensure their information is protected while using a transcription tool.

As a European-based company, HappyScribe is fully GDPR compliant. All data on the platform is stored, processed, and managed with high privacy standards.

Additionally, HappyScribe is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and offers secure single sign-on (SSO) login.

Sonix: security

Sonix also takes its security seriously to protect user data and information.

Sonix is GDPR and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, and offers SSO login with its enterprise plan.

6. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: pricing

HappyScribe: pricing

HappyScribe offers both a pay as you go option and monthly subscriptions at different tiers. They go as follows:

• Pay as you go: $12 per 60 minutes
• Lite plan: $9 per month
• Pro plan: $29 per month
• Business plan: $89 per month

You can also get a 33-34% discount when you sign up for an annual Lite, Pro, or Business plan.

Additionally, you can start with a free trial to test HappyScribe before paying.

Sonix: pricing

Sonix offers a standard pay as you go option at $10 per 60 minutes or a Premium monthly subscription at $22 per month. You can also get a 25% discount on the Premium subscription with an annual plan.

Additionally, you can get an Enterprise plan with Sonix at a custom price based on the number of users you plan to add and what your expected transcription and translation needs will be each month.

7. HappyScribe vs. Sonix: use cases

HappyScribe: best use cases

HappyScribe is a top choice for businesses and professional content creation. It creates an organized system for collaboration across large teams, multi-language workflows with 120+ supported languages, and precise subtitle styling. It’s continuously tested and optimized to improve its capabilities and ensure high-quality results.

Best use cases with HappyScribe include:

• Quickly transcribing speech-heavy content, such as interviews and podcasts. (Read how Tamedia used it to save 3-4 hours per interview)
• Translating content to make it more accessible to global audiences. (See how Growth Tribe used it to add translated subtitles to 130+ hours of content)
• Automatically generating and adding custom subtitles to videos. (Learn how Welcome to the Jungle used it to cut editing time by 50%)
• Repurposing marketing and training materials
• Turning videos and podcasts into blogs, summaries, or other text-based content
• Scaling content creation across departments with full team support

Sonix: best use cases

Sonix is best for occasional smaller projects and personal use where collaboration, subtitle styling, and multi-language workflows aren’t as high of a priority. While Sonix offers a clean and simple interface, larger teams producing global content may find that its language capabilities and features feel too limited for professional use.

The verdict on HappyScribe vs. Sonix: which comes out on top?

HappyScribe is the AI transcription, translation, and subtitling option that comes out on top for professional business use. Some key features that make it stand out while comparing it to Sonix are:

• Verified accuracy rates of 95% with AI-only outputs and 99% with expert proofreading
• Multilingual support in 120+ languages
• A smooth collaboration process to easily share and organize project files
• Detailed custom subtitle styling options to make captions feel like a natural fit with your videos
• Create style guides for consistent outputs

Sonix offers an accessible platform for transcription and translation that’s overall easy to use, but it falls short in the categories above when you need a reliable and organized solution for professional use.