BetterWisprDictate into Mac apps with local speech recognition and saved transcription history.
Free and open source. Local models use your Mac; no account or API key needed. Optional cloud services may cost extra.
Voice & transcription
Willow
Free option
Dictate messages, emails and documents directly into the apps where you type.
What you can use it for
Dictate messages, emails and documents directly into the apps where you type.
- Dictate directly into other apps without a basic dictation word cap.
- No credit card needed for the free Basic plan.
Workflow coverage and comparison notes
Everyday voice-to-text dictation into apps. Willow Basic offers unlimited Frontier Mini dictation instead of Wispr Flow’s word-limited free route. Advanced rewriting, personalisation and transcription quality differ; full paid-plan parity is not claimed.
Before you switch
Proprietary software; not open source. Free Basic uses the less capable Frontier Mini model and limited personalisation. Frontier Pro, priority transcription, increased dictation length and unlimited Scribe require a paid plan. No claim of equal accuracy or feature parity with Wispr Flow; not hands-on tested by us.
Alternatives to these paid apps
Each comparison covers the workflow described above, rather than every paid feature.
More for the same workflow
See alternatives →BetterWispr
whisper.cppTranscribe recorded audio into text on your own computer.
Free software. Your hardware + a downloaded model.
Dictate text into your apps using local speech models.
Unlimited dictation with free Nano, Fast and Standard models.