HappyScribe vs. Restream: which is best for your needs?

You need to create high-quality transcriptions and captions for livestreams, audio, and video content. Both HappyScribe and Restream offer those features, but they can differ quite a bit in key categories, such as collaboration, subtitle styling, language support, and editing options.

Which is best for your needs? Here’s what you should consider before you decide.

What is HappyScribe?

HappyScribe is a language services tool that helps with transcription, translation, and subtitling. It’s great for turning speech-heavy content, such as interviews, podcasts, and lectures, into a text-based format that you can use to create:

• Searchable blogs that expand your reach
• Summaries for long-form video and audio content
• Impactful quotes to use in content on your website or social platforms

You can also use it to translate text-based content or add translated subtitles to your videos to make them more accessible to global audiences.

HappyScribe is trusted by over 6M users and 40K+ media teams, marketers, journalists, and professional content creators who need solutions to produce content at a fast pace.

Key features that make HappyScribe stand out

Top features that make HappyScribe stand out include:

• AI-only outputs in minutes at 95% accuracy and options for expert proofreading at 99% accuracy
• Automatically add translated subtitles to videos with custom styling options to fit your branding and video’s theme
• Full GDPR and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance to meet professional security standards
• An interactive editor where you can play the video back while reviewing the transcript side-by-side
• Glossaries and style guides to ensure consistent outputs
• Collaboration features to scale production across large teams

Each of these features and more make HappyScribe a trusted and effective solution for professional content creation.

What is Restream?

Restream is a multistreaming service that allows content creators to livestream on multiple platforms at once. For instance, being able to broadcast on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook at the same time to reach multiple segments of your audience who prefer different platforms.

Restream offers great features for multistreaming, such as:

• Compatibility with 30+ social platforms
• A cross-platform chat so you can see messages from all platforms at once
• Engagement analytics that count your views, likes, and chats across platforms

Restream sometimes draws comparisons to HappyScribe because it also offers some basic video and livestream captioning and translation options and a simple transcription tool. However, those features aren’t the main focus of the platform and have several limitations for professional use that we’ll dive into in the rest of this article.

Essential differences between HappyScribe and Restream

1. HappyScribe vs. Restream: user experience

HappyScribe: user experience

Several advanced features make HappyScribe a great option for transcription, translation, and subtitling. Those include:

• Interactive editor: You can easily review and edit transcripts and translations in the editor while playing the video or audio file back at the same time. All edits are automatically saved, so you don’t have to worry about losing changes.
• Ask AI anything: At the top of the editor, you’ll see an option to “Ask AI anything.” You can use several established prompts or input your own to do things like create a summary, pull quotes, or create ideas for blog posts based on your transcript.
• Proofreading helper: HappyScribe’s proofreading helper will highlight any sections of text where accuracy may have been lower to make reviewing transcripts more efficient.
• Integrations: HappyScribe integrates with other top platforms, such as YouTube, Google Drive, and Vimeo, to fit in with your team’s workflow.
• Advanced options: Several advanced settings are available to improve the quality of your outputs, such as automatic speaker labeling, glossaries, style guides, and subtitle styling.

HappyScribe offers all of these features and more within an interface that’s easy to use and navigate. It clearly displays where to go to create transcripts, upload files, and adjust outputs based on your needs so you can get started without much of a learning curve.

Restream: user experience

Restream provides an accessible platform for multistreaming. Several features make it a great choice to monitor and manage your livestreams across social platforms, such as:

• Livestream scheduling
• Multichat
• Session recording
• Cross-platform analytics

There are some steps involved to get it set up, such as connecting your accounts from different social platforms and adjusting the settings based on your needs. That said, the process is still straightforward, and it’s one of the easier multistreaming solutions to handle those complexities.

Restream’s Limitations for Transcription and Captioning

In terms of transcription and captioning, the user experience is a bit different. You’ll find that those features are much more basic since they’re just add-ons to the primary multistreaming solutions.

For example, you’ll have very limited options to edit the style of your captions based on your branding and the content’s theme. Transcriptions are also outputted in a basic .txt file, and you don’t have the interactive editor, glossaries, or style guide features you get with HappyScribe to make editing easy and transcripts consistent. It leads to those elements feeling less professional and limits their usefulness.

2. HappyScribe vs. Restream: accuracy

HappyScribe: accuracy

HappyScribe is a trusted solution for professional use because of its accuracy. It offers 95% accuracy on AI-only outputs and 99% accuracy when you add expert proofreading.

You can receive AI-only transcriptions within minutes and expert proofreading within 24 hours. There’s also an option for rush orders on expert proofreading if you need to speed up the process while on a tight deadline.

HappyScribe provides consistent accuracy because it’s tested and trained daily on 12,000+ hours of content each year. Transcription, translation, and subtitling are HappyScribe’s focus to continuously provide great results and a professional solution users can trust.

Additionally, you can use HappyScribe’s Glossaries feature to improve accuracy further. When you notice certain words, such as company-specific terminology or people’s names that frequently get misspelled, all you have to do is add them to your glossary to ensure the correct spelling is used during transcription and translation.

Restream: accuracy

Restream has unverified accuracy rates for captions and transcriptions, so it’s difficult to determine how accurate outputs from the platform will be.

Since those features are just add-ons to the platform, it’s unlikely that Restream is placing as big of a focus on their performance, and they don’t mention how often they’re testing their transcription and captioning tools.

Restream also doesn’t offer the expert proofreading or glossary options that you get with HappyScribe, so you have fewer ways to improve accuracy rates for outputs on the platform.

3. HappyScribe vs. Restream: language Support

HappyScribe: language Support

HappyScribe offers AI-only transcription in 120+ languages and AI-only translation in 65+ languages. You can also get human-translated subtitles in 85+ languages with 99% accuracy.

HappyScribe places a big focus on its multilingual features to provide better solutions for global content production. The team behind it is continuously testing and optimizing to provide more support for languages worldwide.

Some key features that contribute to an effective translation and multilingual transcription system with HappyScribe include:

• Efficient editing system: You can easily review translations with the original text side-by-side in the interactive editor.
• Glossaries: The glossaries feature helps improve translation accuracy, especially when you have people’s names or company-specific terminology that you don’t want changed during translation.
• Localization and compliance: HappyScribe offers several localization features that meet accessibility standards, such as Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (SDH).
• Subtitle syncing: AI-powered video syncing will detect shot changes and line up subtitles accordingly for a better viewer experience. You can also adjust subtitle timing manually as needed.

Restream: language support

Restream offers much less language support on the platform. It’ll allow you to translate captions and messages in your chat in 5 languages:

• English
• Spanish
• German
• Portugese
• Russian

That leaves out many highly spoken languages, such as French, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, and Cantonese, all of which have millions or billions of speakers worldwide. The lack of language support does provide limitations for global content production while using Restream.

Restream also doesn’t offer features like glossaries, localization, or subtitle syncing that are necessary for professional multilingual support and a better viewer experience.

4. HappyScribe vs. Restream: workflows

HappyScribe: workflow

HappyScribe offers several advanced features that contribute to an efficient and organized workflow during professional use:

• Organize projects: You can create folders with clear labels to organize projects across your team.
• Multi-user collaboration: Share project access with team members to facilitate collaboration.
• Tag speakers and add timestamps: Use automatic speaker labeling with timestamps to organize transcripts for easy review while proofreading, pulling quotes, or writing summaries.
• Custom subtitle styling: Make subtitles fit your video’s style, branding, and theme. You can adjust font, color, position, weight, and appearance of subtitles to ensure they fit your needs.

Restream: workflow

Restream creates a good workflow to livestream on multiple platforms where you can quickly adjust settings, view all chat messages in one place, and track analytics for each platform. It also offers a simple post-production video editor where you can create stream highlights or prepare a recorded livestream to post on other platforms.

However, the workflow isn’t as efficient or in-depth for transcriptions and captions.

You can activate captioning for livestreams or recorded videos with the press of a few buttons, but you’ll run into several limitations. Those include:

• There isn’t an option to edit captions within the platform once they’re generated to correct any inaccuracies.
• You have minimal subtitle styling options with basic settings such as font and size.
• There are only a few options to adjust the positioning of captions so they can end up blocking key elements of your stream or video.

There also isn’t any option to edit transcriptions generated through Restream. All you get is a .txt file that automatically downloads when the transcript is complete. Then, you’ll have to find a different place to edit the text and share the transcript with your team.

Those limitations with transcription and captioning make Restream’s solution more basic and harder to add into your workflow for professional use.

5. HappyScribe vs. Restream: security

HappyScribe: security

HappyScribe is committed to providing a secure platform for professional business use.

HappyScribe is a European-based company that’s fully GDPR compliant, with high standards for data privacy, management, and processing.

Additionally, HappyScribe is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and offers single sign-on (SSO) login as an additional security measure for teams.

Restream: security

Restream is also fully GDPR compliant. However, its security standards are lacking in other essential categories.

Restream isn’t SOC 2 compliant and doesn’t offer SSO login as an option, so it’s worth considering those elements before going with this option.

6. HappyScribe vs. Restream: pricing

HappyScribe: pricing

HappyScribe offers pay-as-you-go options and a tiered monthly pricing system to offer different options for individual needs. The pricing options go as follows:

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

You can also get a 33-34% discount when you commit to an annual Lite, Pro, or Business plan. Plus, HappyScribe offers a limited free trial so you can test it before paying.

Restream: pricing

Restream offers a free starter account where you can multistream on 2 platforms at once and test the platform. Then, you can upgrade to 3 different monthly pricing tiers to stream on more than 2 platforms and add extra features. Those tiers go as follows:

• Standard: $19 per month
• Professional: $49 per month
• Business: $239 per month

You can also get a 15-20% discount on monthly memberships with an annual plan.

7. HappyScribe vs. Restream: use cases

HappyScribe: best use cases

HappyScribe is the best fit for professionals and businesses who need a high-quality transcription, translation, and subtitling solution. Those features are HappyScribe’s primary focus, allowing it to provide an efficient and organized system with a great editing interface, multilingual support, and options for collaboration.

Best use cases for HappyScribe include:

• Creating transcripts for speech-heavy interviews and unscripted content. (Read how Twofour used it to improve their workflow)
• Automatically adding translated subtitles to videos. (See how Logicomix increased viewership by 44% with it)
• Improving production efficiency with collaboration across large teams. (Read how 3Cat used it to improve efficiency for over 100 users across teams)
• Repurposing training and marketing materials.
• Making content more accessible in multiple languages and formats.
• Creating effective text-based summaries for long-form video or audio content.

Restream: best use cases

Restream works best as a dedicated multistreaming solution. It’s a great option for content creators who want to stream on multiple platforms at once, interact with the chat on each platform, and get great insights into their stream’s performance.

While Restream offers captioning and transcription features, they’re much more basic and have several limitations for professional use while producing content at scale.

Final verdict on HappyScribe vs. Restream: which comes out on top?

HappyScribe comes out on top as the best solution for transcription, translation, and subtitling. Those features are what HappyScribe is built for, and you’ll get tools that are continuously trained and tested, have verified accuracy rates, offer a great editing system, and are a top choice for collaboration with your team.

Restream is a great choice for multistreaming. It’s a solution that makes broadcasting live on multiple social platforms easier, so it’s a worthwhile option for that use case. However, its captioning and transcription options are much more limited and more of an add-on, so professionals will want to look elsewhere for those needs.