ZapVox vs Luzia — transcribe inside the chat or forward to a bot?

Luzia transcribes WhatsApp voice notes, and it does it for free. On September 24, 2026, its website listed transcription among its features and said it is available in its app and on WhatsApp. The way it works: you forward the voice note to Luzia's number and read the reply in your chat with the bot. ZapVox, a WhatsApp Web extension that transcribes, summarizes and translates voice notes, works the other way around: the text shows up under the voice note, inside the conversation itself, on your computer.

Which one fits depends on where you read your voice notes and how many arrive each day. This comparison was checked on September 24, 2026, and written by the creator of ZapVox. About Luzia, only what its website, its App Store listing and its privacy policy say makes it in, with dates. Where a source is silent, the text says so.

How Luzia transcribes a WhatsApp voice note

Luzia is an AI assistant that talks to you through a WhatsApp number and an app. When it took off in Brazil, the tech site Tecnoblog summed up the flow in one line: just forward a voice message. You press and hold the voice note in the original chat, tap forward, pick Luzia and wait for the text to come back.

For a one-off voice note, it works, and Luzia has real advantages. You don't need a computer. It costs nothing. And it does a lot more than transcription: its website mentions creating images, reading PDFs and, in a beta mode called LuziClaw, setting reminders, available in some countries. The user base is big. The website claims more than 85 million users worldwide, and the app is rated 4.85, with 11,988 reviews, on the Brazilian App Store.

The cost shows up with volume. Every voice note has to be forwarded, one at a time, and the transcript stays in your chat with the bot, away from the chat with the person who sent it. In a group it's the same: forward, read, go back to the group.

How ZapVox transcribes inside the conversation

1. Install the extension on Chrome, Edge or Firefox and open WhatsApp Web on your computer.
2. New voice notes that arrive in the open chat turn into text on their own, under each voice note.
3. For any other voice note, the ✍️ button transcribes it on the spot.
4. If you want, turn on the option to transcribe your own voice notes too. It is only for you to read: the text is not sent to the chat.
5. The ⚙️ in each chat adjusts how it behaves there, and groups have their own rule.
6. The text is searchable. You can summarize one voice note or the whole chat from the last 24 hours (Starter, Pro and trial) and translate what arrived in another language.

Nothing gets forwarded to another number. The limit is the opposite of Luzia's: ZapVox only works on the computer.

ZapVox and Luzia side by side

What about privacy? What Luzia's policy says

Privacy is the topic people have opinions on without reading. So here are passages from Luzia's privacy policy for Brazil, which says it was last updated in July 2024. We checked it on September 24, 2026. The policy is in Portuguese; the translations below are ours.

• Training: "Luzia is not trained on your conversations."
• What is collected: among other items, "any information you send through the App's chat feature."
• Providers: "currently, our service providers include Telegram, WhatsApp LLC, OpenAI and Stability AI, but they do not access the personal data in the App that we share with them."
• How long: "your data will be kept as long as you do not cancel your account with us."
• Advertising: "If you have given us your express consent for this purpose, we will share your data with third-party companies unrelated to LUZIA in order to show you advertising tailored to your consumption and browsing preferences."

The policy has a "4.3 Brazil" section on the LGPD, Brazil's data protection law, and says data is hosted on Amazon Web Services servers in the European Economic Area. In the version we checked, there is no passage specifically about voice messages. None of this is an accusation. It is what the policy says, and you decide whether it works for you.

With ZapVox, the audio also goes to the cloud: it is sent to a transcription service to become text. The difference is the path. With Luzia, you forward the voice note to another WhatsApp account, and it sits in a chat with the bot. With ZapVox, you forward nothing, and the text appears in the chat where the voice note arrived. How ZapVox handles data is explained in privacy and LGPD at ZapVox.

What each one costs

Luzia is free. On the Brazilian App Store, checked on September 24, 2026, the paid Luzia+ plan costs R$24.90 a month, R$9.90 a week or R$199.90 a year. The website lists twice the images, longer chats, no ads and an advanced reasoning mode among the Luzia+ perks. Neither the website nor the store says whether the paid plan changes anything about voice note transcription.

ZapVox has a Free plan with a daily transcription quota and paid plans with prices published in Brazilian reais on its plans page. Before paying, you can try it free for 7 days, no card. The whole-chat summary is part of Starter, Pro and the trial; exporting transcripts starts at Starter.

What changes for people who serve customers on WhatsApp

Picture a clinic's front desk at nine in the morning, with twelve voice notes from patients asking to reschedule. Forwarding each one to a bot on the phone, reading the reply and going back to the right chat is doable, but it is twelve round trips, and the text ends up outside the chat with the patient. With the extension open on the computer, voice notes arriving in the open chat already show up as text, and the receptionist replies while reading it.

An accountant who gets a client's voice note asking for this month's tax slip has a different problem: finding, a week later, what was asked. That is where search across transcripts and the per-contact note help, since she can write down that this client prefers the payment slip by email. A salesperson working a buying group decides in that group's ⚙️ whether automatic transcription stays on there, and schedules the catalog to go out at the time agreed with the customer.

A lawyer who reads a voice note now and then, in the car or waiting at the courthouse, is well served by the phone. WhatsApp's built-in transcription, generated on the device itself, or Luzia do the job without installing anything on a computer. And if the firm has a rule against running client conversations through third-party services without reviewing them first, that rule applies to every tool, ZapVox included.

Where this stops

• About Luzia: everything here comes from its website, its App Store listing and its privacy policy as checked on September 24, 2026, plus Tecnoblog's report on forwarding. The policy dates from July 2024; if it changes, this text changes. Transcription accuracy was not tested side by side.
• Luzia on WhatsApp depends on Meta's rules. Since March 11, 2026, Meta has charged US$0.0625 per message for general-purpose AI assistants on Brazilian numbers, according to its official developer pricing table. On September 24, 2026, Luzia's website still offered WhatsApp. Luzia does not say whether this changes anything in the free service.
• ZapVox is computer-only. It works with WhatsApp Web open in the browser; it does not work in the phone app.
• There is a quota. The Free plan has a daily transcription limit; the whole-chat summary is part of Starter, Pro and the free trial.
• The audio goes to the cloud. To become text, it is sent to a transcription service. ZapVox does not transcribe inside your computer.
• Automatic transcription covers new voice notes in the open chat. For everything else, there is the ✍️ button.
• WhatsApp Web changes from time to time. When the screen changes, the extension needs an update, and we publish the fix in the stores.