In some ways, 2025 was when AI dictation apps really took off. Dictation apps have been around for years, but in the past they’ve proved slow and inaccurate — unless you speak with particular accents and enunciate clearly.
But advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have helped improve the systems that can decipher speech better while retaining the context to format the text. And developers have built in features to automatically format text, remove filler words, and ignore fumbles to output text that would need fewer edits.
But with the soaring popularity of everything AI, there’s dozens of such apps on the market. So we’ve collated our pick of the best and most useful dictation apps his year.
Wispr Flow
Wispr Flow is a well-funded AI dictation app that lets you add custom words and instructions for dictation. It has native apps for macOS, Windows, and iOS, and an Android version is in the works.
The app lets you customize how its system transcribes your notes by letting you choose from “formal,” “casual,” and “very casual” styles for different kinds of writing, such as personal messaging, work, and email. And if you use it with vibe-coding tools like Cursor, you can turn on a feature to automatically recognize variables or tag files in the chat.
The app lets you note up to 2,000 words per month for free on any of the desktop versions, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. Its subscription plans offer unlimited transcription and start at $15 per month.
Willow
Willow advertises itself as a big time-saver for those who don’t like to type. Alongside common features like automatic editing and formatting, the app has a feature that taps large language models to generate a full chunk of text from just a few dictated words.
Willow also takes a more privacy-focused stab at AI-assisted note-taking by storing all transcripts locally on your device, and lets you opt out of model training as well. It also lets you add custom vocabulary to the app to help it adapt to your industry’s parlance, or your local dialect.
Willow lets you dictate 2,000 words per month on its desktop app for free. Individual subscription plans start at $15 per month, giving you unlimited dictation and enabling the app to remember your writing style.
Monologue
If you are focused on privacy, Monologue lets you download its model so you can run it on your device for transcriptions and avoid sending data to the cloud. What’s more, the app lets you customize its tone of voice according to the apps you use it with.
Monologue lets you jot down 1,000 words per month for free, and its subscription costs $10 per month, or $100 per year. And if you end up becoming one of the app’s top users, the company will also send you this funky Monokey to use with the app.
Superwhisper
Superwhisper is primarily a dictation app, but it can also transcribe from audio or video files. The app gives you the freedom to choose and download AI models, including its own models that have different speeds and accuracy, along with Nvidia’s Parakeet speech-recognition models.
The app also lets you write custom prompts to steer the output. You can easily see both processed and unprocessed transcripts that are integrated with the system keyboard.
The basic voice-to-text feature is free to use, and you get 15 minutes to test out Pro features such as translation and transcription. The paid tier lets you use your own AI API keys and plug in cloud and local models without any caps.
The monthly plan costs $8.49 per month, the annual plan costs $84.99 per month, or you can pay $249.99 for a lifetime subscription.
VoiceTypr
The VoiceTypr app takes an offline-first, no-subscription approach, letting you use local models for transcription. There’s also a GitHub repository for those who want to host and run the open source version themselves. VoiceTypr supports over 99 languages and works on both Mac and Windows.
The app is available to try for three days for free, and after that it will allow you to buy a lifetime license. The app costs $35 for one device, $56 for two, and $98 for four devices.
Aqua
Aqua is another Y Combinator-backed voice-typing client for Windows and macOS that claims to be one of the fastest tools in the category in terms of latency.
Besides handling grammar and punctuation, Aqua also lets you autofill text by saying phrases — you can say “my address” and have Aqua type in your address, for example.
The app also offers its own speech-to-text API for other apps.
The free tier gets you 1,000 words per month. The paid plans start from $8 per month (annual billing) and unlock unlimited words and 800 custom dictionary values.
Handy
Handy is an open source and free transcription tool that can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The application is pretty basic and doesn’t offer a lot of customization, but if you are trying to get started with using your voice more and don’t want to pay, it is a good option.
The app has a basic settings menu that lets you toggle push-to-talk, and change the hotkey to activate the transcription.
Typeless
Typeless is another app in this category with a high free word count. The company claims that it doesn’t retain any data or use it to train models. Typeless also suggests a better version of the sentence if you might have fumbled a line.
The app lets you dictate up to 4,000 words per week (roughly 16,000 words per month) on its free tier. You can pay $12 per month (billed annually) to unlock unlimited words and get access to new features. Typeless is available for Windows and macOS only.
