The best dictation apps for Mac, including the ones we don't sell

Last updated 11 September 2026

Answer one question before you compare anything

Must your speech stay on your own machine? Not would you prefer it — must it, because of what you dictate or who you answer to.

• If yes: your list is VV, Superwhisper, VoiceInk, MacWhisper and Apple Dictation. Cloud products are out regardless of how good they are.
• If no: the whole list is open, and the cloud products are genuinely strong — bigger models, more languages, more platforms.

Almost every other criterion — price shape, offline behaviour, latency, whether an account is required — follows from that answer. Offline vs cloud dictation sets out why.

The shortlist

Apple Dictation — free, built in, start here

Already on your Mac. Apple's guidance says to check Keyboard settings to see whether your voice input is processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers, and that you can dictate text of any length without a timeout. It supports far more languages than anything else on this list and costs nothing.

Best for: occasional dictation, wide language support, Intel Macs. Limit: you cannot teach it your vocabulary, there is no history, and there are no snippets — which is exactly where daily users run out of road. Detail: VV vs Apple Dictation.

VV — on-device, Mac only, buy it once if you like

Ours. Standard recognition runs on your Apple Silicon Mac; the audio is not uploaded. Vocabulary learns how your names sound, Snippets expand a spoken trigger into a block of text, and a local history keeps the audio so you can replay a dictation that went wrong. Free is 1,000 words a week with no sign-in; Pro is £4.99 a month or £39.99 a year; Founder Lifetime is £29.99 for the first 5,000 customers.

Best for: confidential work, offline work, and people tired of correcting the same fifteen names. Limit: Mac only, Apple Silicon only, fewer languages than Apple's. Windows is in development with no date promised.

Wispr Flow — cloud, four platforms, the accuracy play

Wispr Flow states that transcription always happens in the cloud to provide the best speed and accuracy. It lists dictation for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android, and adds a meeting Notetaker. Free is $0 with 2,000 words a week on desktop; Pro is $15 per user per month, $12 billed annually.

Best for: people who dictate on several platforms including a phone, and who want meeting notes in the same tool. Limit: the audio leaves your machine by design, and it does not work with no connection. Detail: VV vs Wispr Flow.

Superwhisper — local-first and endlessly configurable

Says it works offline, so you can transcribe anytime, with the caveat in its own FAQ that offline models only run really well on Apple Silicon macs. Lists Mac, Windows and iOS. Free, Pro monthly or yearly, a one-off Lifetime licence, and a 30-day refund on all plans. Pro users can bring their own API keys.

Best for: people who want control — multiple models, custom modes, their own keys — and who need Windows or iOS too. Limit: more to configure, which is the price of the flexibility. Detail: VV vs Superwhisper.

VoiceInk — open source, one-off, auditable

Open source on GitHub, which is a meaningful privacy claim rather than a marketing one: you can read the code. Says it processes all voice transcription locally on your device and that your voice data never leaves your Mac, with optional cloud enhancement that handles the transcribed text rather than the audio. One-off pricing — $25 for one Mac, $39 for two, $49 for three — with lifetime updates and a 14-day money-back guarantee. Requires Apple Silicon on macOS 14.4 or later.

Best for: anyone who wants to verify the privacy claim themselves rather than believe it, and anyone who prefers a one-off purchase. Limit: Mac only, and you are choosing a smaller team's roadmap. Detail: VV vs VoiceInk.

MacWhisper — dictation and a proper transcription workbench

Covers both real-time dictation and file transcription — audio, video, meetings and podcasts. Uses local models to transcribe your files and processes sensitive content locally without data ever leaving your Mac, with optional cloud AI connections. Free tier, Pro at €64 as a one-off with lifetime updates.

Best for: people whose real job is transcribing recordings, with dictation as a bonus. Limit: if you only want to type by voice, you are buying a workbench to use a screwdriver. Detail: VV vs MacWhisper.

The table, with the caveat it deserves

Choosing in four questions

1. Must the audio stay on the machine? If yes, remove Wispr Flow. If no, keep everything.
2. Do you dictate on anything other than a Mac? A phone or a PC in daily use removes VV, VoiceInk and MacWhisper. That is the single most common reason not to buy us, and we would rather you learnt it here.
3. Do you correct the same words every day? If yes, you need custom vocabulary, which rules out Apple Dictation. If no, Apple Dictation is free and already installed — use it.
4. Do you want to stop paying at some point? If yes, look at the one-off licences: VV, VoiceInk, MacWhisper and Superwhisper's Lifetime tier all offer one. Subscriptions make sense when the vendor pays for inference; they make less sense when your own Mac does the work.

Apps deliberately left off

• Dragon. Nuance records Dragon Professional for Mac 6 as end of life effective 10/22/2018. Existing licences still work; there have been no Mac updates since. It cannot be recommended for a current Mac. See VV vs Dragon.
• Otter.ai. Excellent at meetings, which is a different job. Otter is built around transcribing Zoom, Teams and Google Meet calls. It is not a system-wide dictation tool. See VV vs Otter.ai.
• Browser dictation pages. They work, and they work only in the browser tab that is open. See why native dictation is different.
• Anything we could not verify. Several apps advertise on-device processing without documenting it. We are not listing a privacy claim we cannot check on the vendor's own pages.