Questions
What Mac dictation costs, and why the prices differ so much
Free to roughly £180 a year for the same apparent job. The spread is not arbitrary — it tracks exactly one thing: who pays for the computation.
Last updated
Why the prices split the way they do
Every second of speech sent to a server costs the vendor money. A cloud dictation app has a real, recurring cost per customer per dictation, so a subscription is not greed — it is the only structure that works.
When the model runs on hardware you already own, that cost disappears. The vendor's expense is development, not inference. Which is why one-off licences exist in the local half of the market and nowhere in the cloud half.
Knowing that turns the price into information: a dictation app's pricing model tells you where its processing happens, often before the marketing does.
What things actually cost
| Price | Model | |
|---|---|---|
| macOS dictation | Free | Built in |
| Vaitly Voice Free | Free | 1,000 words a week, permanent, no account |
| Vaitly Voice Pro | $5.99/month or $49/year | Subscription |
| Vaitly Voice Founder Lifetime | $39 once | First 5,000 customers |
| Vaitly Voice Pro Lifetime | $99 once | One payment |
| VoiceInk | $25 / $39 / $49 once | By number of Macs, lifetime updates |
| MacWhisper Pro | €64 once | Lifetime updates |
| Superwhisper | Free tier; Pro monthly or yearly; a Lifetime tier | Both models |
| Wispr Flow | Free tier; $15/user/month, $12 billed annually | Subscription only |
| Otter.ai | Free; $8.33/user/month annually; $19.99 Business | Meeting transcription — a different job |
Every figure read on the vendor's own site on 11 September 2026 and listed with its source at the foot of this page. Prices change; tell us if you find one out of date.
The three-year comparison
The number people should look at, because dictation is a tool you keep rather than a thing you try.
| Year 1 | Year 3 total | |
|---|---|---|
| macOS dictation | £0 | £0 |
| A one-off local licence at ~£50 | ~£50 | ~£50 |
| Vaitly Voice Founder Lifetime | $39 | $39 |
| Vaitly Voice Pro annual | $49 | 3 × $49 |
| A cloud app at $12/user/month annually | ~$144 | ~$432 |
Illustrative and excluding tax and currency movement. The point is the shape, not the exact figures.
Over three years a one-off local licence is roughly a tenth of a cloud subscription. That is a real difference and it is worth being clear about what the extra money buys: peak accuracy on difficult audio, more languages, and the app running on your phone as well.
What you are actually paying for
Not the recognition. Whisper's weights are published openly and Parakeet is available to anyone — the model is close to a commodity. What differs between a good dictation app and a bad one is everything around it:
- Getting text into other applications reliably. Harder than it sounds and where most dictation tools actually fail.
- Custom vocabulary. The thing that removes most of your corrections. The model cannot do this.
- Snippets. Spoken triggers that expand into blocks.
- Memory management. Keeping a model fast without holding a gigabyte resident all day.
- Recovery. A history you can replay when something goes wrong.
- Not losing your clipboard. Unglamorous, and you will notice when an app gets it wrong.
Hidden costs to check
Before buying anything
- Is the price per user or per device? Cloud apps are usually per user.
- Is the annual price billed annually, or a monthly-equivalent figure you cannot actually pay monthly?
- Is tax included? Most published figures exclude it.
- How many devices does one licence cover? Vaitly Voice Pro covers 2.
- Does "lifetime" mean lifetime updates, or lifetime of the current version?
- What is the refund window? Vaitly Voice is 14 days; VoiceInk publishes 14; Superwhisper publishes 30.
- Is the free tier permanent or a trial? This is the difference people most often miss.
Where these facts came from
Anything stated about another product was read on that product's own site or documentation on the date shown, and is re-checked at least quarterly. If something below has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
- Wispr Flow publishes a Free plan at $0 with 2,000 words a week on desktop and 1,000 a week on iPhone, Pro at $15 per user per month ($12 billed annually), Growth at $23 ($18 annually) and custom Enterprise pricing. source, checked .
- Wispr Flow states that "Transcription always happens in the cloud to provide the best speed and accuracy." source, checked .
- VoiceInk is a one-off purchase: Solo $25 for one Mac, Personal $39 for two and Extended $49 for three, each with lifetime updates and a 14-day money-back guarantee. source, checked .
- MacWhisper publishes a free tier and a Pro licence at €64 as a one-off purchase with lifetime updates. source, checked .
- Superwhisper publishes a Free tier, a Pro plan billed monthly or yearly, a one-off Lifetime licence and custom Enterprise pricing, with a 30-day refund on all plans and a student discount. source, checked .
- Otter.ai publishes a free Basic plan, Pro at $8.33 per user per month billed annually ($16.99 monthly), Business at $19.99 per user per month billed annually, and custom Enterprise pricing. source, checked .
Questions
What is the cheapest way to dictate on a Mac?
macOS's built-in dictation, which is free and already installed. Among third-party apps, VV's permanent free tier is 1,000 words a week with no account.
Why are cloud dictation apps more expensive?
Because every dictation costs them server compute. A subscription is the only structure that covers a recurring cost. Local apps have no per-dictation cost, which is why one-off licences exist there.
Is a lifetime licence worth it?
If you expect to use the app for more than about eighteen months, the arithmetic is straightforward. VV's Founder Lifetime at $39 pays for itself against the annual price well within the second year.
Do prices include tax?
Generally not, including ours. US customers are charged in US dollars; sales tax is added at checkout where it applies. Elsewhere the card is charged in pounds sterling at the equivalent published price.
Can I get a refund?
With VV, any purchase or renewal is refundable in full within 14 days, no questions asked. Other vendors publish their own windows — VoiceInk 14 days, Superwhisper 30 — and it is worth checking before buying.