The best AI-powered dictation apps of 2025

In some ways, 2025 was the year AI dictation apps really took off. Dictation apps have been around for years, but in the past they have proven to be slow and inaccurate unless you speak with certain accents and enunciate clearly.

But advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have helped improve the systems that can better decipher speech while preserving the context to format the text. And developers have built in features to automatically format text, remove filler words, and ignore clumsy attempts to output text that requires fewer edits.

But with the rising popularity of all things AI, there are dozens of such apps on the market. That’s why we’ve rounded up our picks of this year’s best and most useful dictation apps.

Wispr current

Wispr current 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 the system transcribes your notes by letting you choose from ‘formal’, ‘casual’ and ‘very informal’ styles for different types of writing, such as personal messages, work and email. And if you use it with vibe coding tools like Cursor, you can enable a feature to automatically recognize variables or tag files in chat.

The app lets you write up to 2,000 words per month for free on all desktop versions, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. The subscription plans offer unlimited transcription and start at $15 per month.

Willow

Willow advertises itself as a great time saver for those who don’t like typing. In addition to general features like automatic editing and formatting, the app has a feature that uses large language models to generate a full chunk of text from just a few dictated words.

Willow also makes a more privacy-focused effort at AI-powered note-taking by saving all transcriptions locally on your device, and you can also opt out of model training. You can also add custom vocabulary to the app so it can adapt to the language used in your industry or your local dialect.

Willow lets you dictate 2,000 words per month for free via the desktop app. Individual plans start at $15 per month, giving you unlimited dictation and the app remembering your writing style.

Monologue

If you focus on privacy, Monologue This allows you to download the model so you can run it on your device for transcriptions and prevent data from being sent to the cloud. Additionally, the app allows you to adjust the tone to suit the apps you use it with.

Monologue lets you record 1,000 words per month for free, and the 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.

Super whispering

Super whispering is primarily a dictation app, but can also transcribe audio or video files. The app gives you the freedom to choose and download AI models, including proprietary models with different speeds and accuracy, along with Nvidia’s Parakeet speech recognition models.

The app also allows you to write custom prompts to direct the output. You can easily see both processed and unprocessed transcripts integrated with the system keyboard.

The basic speech-to-text feature is free to use, and you get 15 minutes to try out Pro features like translation and transcription. The paid tier allows you to use your own AI API keys and connect cloud and on-premise models without any limits.

The monthly subscription costs $8.49 per month, the annual subscription costs $84.99 per month, or you can pay $249.99 for a lifetime subscription.

VoiceTypr

The VoiceTypr app takes an offline, subscription-free approach, allowing you to use local models for transcription. There is also one GitHub repository for those who want to host and run the open source version themselves. VoiceTypr supports more than 99 languages ​​and works on both Mac and Windows.

You can try the app for free for three days, after which you can purchase a lifetime license. The app costs $35 for one device, $56 for two and $98 for four devices.

Aqua

Aqua is another Y Combinator-supported voice typing client for Windows and macOS that claims to be one of the fastest tools in the category in terms of latency.

In addition to dealing with grammar and punctuation, Aqua also lets you auto-complete text by speaking sentences. For example, you can say “my address” and have Aqua type in your address.

The app also provides its own speech-to-text API for other apps.

With the free tier you get 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 quite simple and doesn’t offer much customization, but if you want to get started with more voice usage and don’t want to pay, this is a good option.

The app has a basic settings menu that allows you to toggle push-to-talk and change the keyboard shortcut to activate transcription.

Typeless

Typeless is another app in this category with a high free word count. The company claims that it does not store any data or use it to train models. Typeless also suggests a better version of the sentence if you may have found a line.

The app allows you to dictate up to 4,000 words per week (about 16,000 words per month) on the 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.