Subanana vs Wordly 2026: Live Caption & Translation Comparison

Wordly is the enterprise default for live AI translation and captioning at conferences, corporate events, and large webinars. Their public marketing reports passing 1 billion minutes of live translation, they sell into associations, corporates, churches, governments, and education, and they integrate deeply with Zoom, Teams, Meet, WebEx, and Cvent. If you're running a multi-day flagship event for 500+ attendees in 8 languages with managed onboarding and live event support, Wordly is purpose-built for that shape.

Subanana plays a different shape: published per-month pricing, no hour packages, no 12-month commitment, with a buyer profile centred on SMB events, university lectures, hybrid webinars, community and church events, and any scenario where the friction of "request a quote → annual hour commitment" is too heavy for the use case. If you're hosting a 90-minute event with 30 attendees across two languages, you don't want to negotiate an enterprise contract for it.

Disclosure: I run Subanana. This post compares each tool using its own published documentation — pricing pages, features pages, integration lists, support tiers — pulled in May 2026. No fabricated head-to-head accuracy benchmarks; if you want accuracy testing on your event's source audio, run a rehearsal session in each.

Roundup context: Subanana is one of seven tools profiled in Best AI Meeting Transcription Tools 2026. Wordly is the live-event specialist not in that roundup — different category — but the buyer profiles overlap for any team that runs multilingual events alongside multilingual meetings.

TL;DR

Pick Wordly if you run large multi-day enterprise events, need a published roster of 3,000+ language pairs, want a managed-service tier with live event support and premium onboarding, require pre-built deep integrations with Zoom / Teams / WebEx / Cvent, need MP3 voiceover dubbing of translated text, or your procurement process can accommodate annual hour packages and "contact for quote" pricing.
Pick Subanana if you run smaller or shorter events (single-session conferences, university lectures, hybrid webinars, church/community events), want published per-month pricing without an annual hour commitment, need Cantonese / Mandarin / mixed-language coverage with published per-language framing, or want a free tier to validate fit before committing.
Honest middle ground: for a 500+ attendee multi-day flagship event with serious accessibility compliance requirements and a procurement budget for enterprise tooling, Wordly is the safer choice today. For SMB-and-below event volume, Subanana's pricing model is straightforward and there's no annual commitment risk.

Pricing model

The pricing model difference is the single biggest split between these two tools.

Wordly's published model is hour-package + attendee-based, with annual terms. Packages start at 10 hours and scale up to 10,000+, sold across tiers (Starter, Pro, Pro+, Corporate, Corporate+, Enterprise). Smaller packages can be purchased online; larger packages and the Enterprise tier are "Contact Sales for a Quote." Hours can be used across multiple sessions for up to 12 months after purchase. Discounts: volume (10-30%+), multi-year (2-3 year commitments), and non-profit. Add-ons include voice transcripts (MP3 dubbing), summaries, live event support, and premium onboarding.

Subanana's published model is per-month subscription, with no hour packages, no annual commitment, and no per-session "package" structure. Pricing is on the subanana.com pricing page; the free tier exists for validation and small-scale use; paid tiers are workspace-based. There's no "Contact Sales for a Quote" gate for standard use cases — published pricing applies up to typical SMB event volume.

Practical implication: if you're running occasional events (one a quarter, a few a year), Wordly's 10-hour minimum + 12-month expiry can be wasteful — unused hours don't roll forward. Subanana's monthly subscription bills only the months you use. If you're running continuous high-volume events, Wordly's hour-package volume discounts can make per-hour cost very competitive.

Language coverage

Wordly publishes "dozens of languages" and "3,000+ language pairs." Their public marketing covers the major world languages plus many less-resourced ones — the language pair count (which is what matters for translation) is the broadest publicly cited in this category.

Subanana supports 80+ languages for transcription and translation, with per-language STT model routing across 80+ supported languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. The underlying STT layer continuously benchmarks multiple frontier models per source language and routes each transcription to the best-evaluated one — so accuracy on a given language tracks the best-performing model rather than being locked to a single vendor.

Honest concession to Wordly: if your event has audience members across 8+ languages — Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese, German, Italian — Wordly's language-pair breadth covers the spread more completely than Subanana's roster.

Honest concession to Subanana: if Cantonese / Mandarin / mixed-language is a primary requirement, Subanana documents how its STT layer routes per source language — Wordly's per-language model selection methodology isn't published.

How attendees experience the captions

Wordly's model: attendees join via the Wordly app or web link; integrations with Zoom / Teams / Meet / WebEx / Cvent embed translation into the meeting platform itself.

Subanana's model: the host runs the live session from a browser. The host configures the source language and the target translation language(s) before the event — Subanana supports 80+ languages, but only the ones the host pre-configures are active for that specific session. Attendees scan a QR code (or open a share link) and view live captions in their phone's browser; they choose to display source / translated / both side-by-side, picking among the languages the host configured. No app install required.

Trade-offs:

Wordly's deep platform integrations are more polished inside an existing Zoom/Teams meeting workflow.
Subanana's audience-facing browser caption is simpler for events where attendees aren't all on the same video platform (hybrid in-person + remote, walk-up conference attendance, community events with mixed devices).
Subanana attendees cannot add a language on the fly — if a Korean speaker shows up and Korean wasn't pre-configured by the host, they'd need to use a default fallback. Wordly's broader language pair coverage means more languages are likely already loaded.

Audio output & dubbing

Wordly Pro tier and above includes Voice Transcripts — translated text is converted to MP3 voiceovers in dozens of languages, usable as downloadable audio dubbing. This is a feature most live-caption tools don't have.

Subanana does not produce voice/audio dubbing. Subanana's output for live sessions is text captions in real time, plus a post-session SRT export — that's the full set for the live-session feature. If your event needs AI voice dubbing of speaker audio into another language, Wordly is the right choice.

This is a clear win for Wordly.

Post-event artefacts

Wordly's post-event outputs: session transcripts (translatable into all Wordly languages), summaries (translatable), voice transcripts (MP3 dubbing).

Subanana's post-event outputs from a live session: SRT export of the captions only. If you want the broader transcription artefact set — DOCX, XLSX, TXT, Markdown — you'd either convert the SRT downstream or re-process the recorded audio afterwards as a regular file-upload transcription (which does support the broader format set). Note that Subanana's meeting-bot recordings (for Google Meet / Zoom / Teams) are a separate feature from live captioning — they produce a recorded project after the meeting ends, not real-time captions during it.

Trade-off: Wordly's post-event package is more complete out of the box. Subanana's two-step (live SRT → file-upload re-process) gets you the broader format set but adds a step.

Integrations

Wordly's published integrations: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, WebEx, Cvent, plus others. Each is a deep platform integration with translation embedded inside the meeting platform.

Subanana's integrations for live captioning: the live session is browser-based, takes audio input from the host's mic, system audio, or a virtual cable, and produces the audience-facing share link / QR code. There's no per-platform deep integration with Zoom / Teams / Meet for the live-caption shape; instead, the workflow is to capture the speaker's audio (mic or system audio) and let the audience-facing captions handle the multilingual display layer.

Honest assessment: Wordly's deep platform integrations are more polished if your event is hosted entirely inside one of those platforms. Subanana's "browser + QR code + audio input" model is more flexible for hybrid or non-platform events but lighter on per-platform polish.

Support & onboarding

Wordly Enterprise tier includes premium onboarding (guided account setup, admin training, integration assistance, glossary creation, rehearsal testing, presenter coaching, and technical support — online and phone). Live event support is available as an optional add-on at multiple tiers.

Subanana ships standard product support (email / in-product chat) without managed-service onboarding. For a flagship multi-day enterprise event where you want a dedicated support engineer on standby during the event, Wordly's managed tier exists for that and Subanana's doesn't.

This is a clear win for Wordly at the high-touch enterprise end.

SSO, compliance, data storage

Wordly Enterprise includes SSO access and configurable data storage. The published tier table lists these as Enterprise-only.

Subanana does not currently advertise SSO or per-customer data storage configuration. Workspace-level access controls exist; enterprise-grade SSO and bespoke data-residency controls are not in the published feature set today.

If SSO or data residency is a procurement requirement, Wordly's Enterprise tier addresses it and Subanana doesn't.

Enterprise option: on-premises deployment

For enterprise buyers with strict compliance or data-residency requirements (financial services, healthcare, government contractors) who need transcription that doesn't leave their environment, Subanana also offers an on-premises laptop deployment — the system runs in the enterprise's own environment, not via cloud. Pricing is separate from the standard subscription tiers and is project-based; this is positioned for organisations with both the budget and the genuine compliance requirement, not a general option. Contact Subanana for scoping.

Wordly's equivalent at this tier is its Enterprise plan with SSO + configurable data storage. Both are real options for the regulated-industry buyer; both are quoted separately from published per-hour/per-month pricing.

When each one is the wrong fit

Wordly is the wrong fit if:

Your event is short / occasional and the 10-hour minimum + 12-month expiry creates dead-money risk
"Contact Sales for a Quote" gating is a procurement blocker
You want to validate the tool on a single small session before committing
Your buyer profile is SMB / education / community / church scale rather than corporate

Subanana is the wrong fit if:

You need AI voice dubbing (MP3 audio output of translated text)
You need 3,000+ language-pair breadth (less-resourced languages your host can't pre-configure)
You need enterprise SSO + bespoke data-residency configuration
You need managed live-event support engineers on-call during the event
Your event is a multi-day flagship enterprise conference where the procurement process can absorb annual hour commitments and managed-service add-ons

Frequently asked questions

Is Subanana cheaper than Wordly?

For small-volume use (a few sessions a year), Subanana's per-month subscription is typically cheaper because there's no 10-hour minimum and no 12-month expiry on unused capacity. For continuous high-volume use, Wordly's volume + multi-year discounts can drive per-hour cost very competitive. The right comparison depends on your actual annual hour count.

Can Wordly do Cantonese?

Wordly's published roster is "dozens of languages, 3,000+ language pairs." Cantonese specifically isn't broken out with a published accuracy figure on their public pricing page — for confirmation that Cantonese is in their roster and accuracy meets your bar, request a demo and run a rehearsal with your speaker audio. Subanana publishes per-language guidance for Cantonese specifically.

Does Subanana have voice dubbing like Wordly's Voice Transcripts?

No. Subanana's live-session output is text captions in real time, with SRT export after the session. AI voice dubbing of translated text into MP3 audio is not in Subanana's feature set. If your event requires translated audio playback alongside the speaker, Wordly's Voice Transcripts is the right tool.

Can I use Wordly inside Zoom / Teams without leaving the meeting?

Yes — Wordly publishes integrations with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, WebEx, and Cvent. Translation is embedded inside the meeting platform.

Does Subanana require attendees to install anything?

No. Attendees scan a QR code or open a share link in their phone's browser. There's no app to install. Attendees choose to display source / translated / both, picking among the languages the host pre-configured for the event.

Is Subanana's live captioning a meeting-bot like Otter or Fireflies?

No — these are separate features. Subanana does have a meeting-bot for Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams that records meetings and creates a project after the meeting ends, but that's not live captioning. Live captioning takes direct audio input (mic, system audio, or virtual cable) and produces real-time captions with the audience-facing share link — it's a different feature with a different shape.

Can I migrate from Wordly to Subanana mid-contract?

Your Wordly hours expire 12 months after purchase and aren't refundable, so the practical migration shape is: finish using your existing Wordly hours, then move new events to Subanana when the term expires. There's no technical lock-in on either side — both tools produce SRT exports and standard transcript artefacts that are portable.

Methodology note

All figures and capability claims above sourced from:

Wordly: wordly.ai/pricing and feature pages (May 2026)
Subanana: subanana.com pricing and features pages + verified shipped-feature set (May 2026)

No fabricated head-to-head accuracy benchmark numbers. For your specific event's source audio, the right way to settle accuracy claims is to run a rehearsal session in each tool's free trial / demo.

Subanana vs Wordly (2026): Documentation-Based Live Caption Comparison