In some ways, 2025 was when AI dictation apps really took off. started Dictation apps have been around for years, but in the past they’ve proven to be slow and inaccurate — unless you speak with a special accent and visibly shake.
But advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have helped improve systems that can better understand speech while preserving context for formatting text. And developers built in features to automatically format text, remove filler words, and ignore fumbles on output text that would require fewer edits.
But with the growing popularity of all things AI, there are dozens of such apps on the market. So we’ve rounded up our best and most useful dictation apps of the 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 allows you to customize how its system transcribes your notes by letting you choose from “formal”, “casual” and “very casual” styles for different types of texts, such as personal messaging, work and email. And if you use it with Vibcoding tools like Cursor, you can turn on a feature to automatically recognize variables or tag files in chat.
The app lets you annotate up to 2,000 words per month for free on any desktop version, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. Its subscription plans offer unlimited replication and start at $15 per month.
Willow
Willow Advertises itself as a huge time saver for people who don’t like to type. Along with the usual features like automatic editing and formatting, the app has a feature that taps into large language models to generate an entire piece of text from just a few words.
Willow takes a more privacy-oriented stab at AI-assisted note-taking by storing all transcripts locally on your device, and even lets you opt out of model training. This allows you to add custom words to the app to help adapt it to your industry parlance, or your local dialect.
Willow lets you send up to 2,000 words per month for free on its desktop app. Individual subscription plans start at $15 per month, which gives you unlimited dictation and enables the app to remember your writing style.
Unity
If you are focused on privacy, Unity Lets you download its model so you can run it on your device for replication and avoid sending data to the cloud. What’s more, the app lets you customize its sound according to the apps you use it with.
Ecologo lets you reduce 1,000 words per month for free, and a subscription costs $10 per month, or $100 per year. And if you become one of the top users of the app, the company will also send you this funky monoki to use with the app.
Super Whisper
Super Whisper 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 with varying speed and accuracy, as well as NVIDIA’s Parakeet speech recognition models.
The app allows you to write a custom prompt to run the output. You can easily view both processed and unprocessed transcripts integrated with the system keyboard.
The basic voice-to-text feature is free to use, and you get 15 minutes to test out features like translation and transcription. The paid tier lets you use your AI API keys and plug-in cloud and native 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 membership.
Voicetypr
Voicetypr The app takes an offline-first, no-subscription approach, letting you use local models for replication. There is also one GitHub repository For those who want to host and run the open source version themselves. VoiceTiPR supports more than 99 languages and works on both Mac and Windows.
The app is available to try for free for three days, and after that it will allow you to purchase a lifetime license. The app costs $35 for one device, $56 for two, and $98 for four devices.
Aqua
Aqua Another Y combinator-supported voice type client for Windows and macOS that claims to be one of the fastest tools in the category in terms of latency.
In addition to handling grammar and punctuation, Aqua also allows you to autocomplete text by saying phrases – you can say “my address” and type Aqua in your address, for example.
The app also offers its own speech-to-text API for other apps.
In the free tier you get 1,000 words per month. Paid plans start at $8 per month (annual billing) and unlock unlimited words and 800 custom dictionary values.
easy
easy is an open source and free transcription tool that can run on Mac, Windows and Linux. The application is very basic and doesn’t offer a lot of customization, but if you’re trying to get started with using your voice more and don’t want to pay, it’s a good option.
The app has a basic settings menu that lets you toggle push-to-talk and change the hotkey to activate transcription.
limitless
limitless Another app in this category has a high free word count. The company claims that it does not retain any data or use it to train models. Typeless also suggests a better version of the sentence if you wrap a line.
The app limits you to 4,000 words per week (about 16,000 words per month) on its free tier. You can pay $12 per month (billed annually) to unlock unlimited words and access new features. Typeless is only available for Windows and macOS.