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In some ways, 2025 was the year that AI dictation apps 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 pronounce clearly.
But advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have helped improve systems that can better decode speech while preserving context for text formatting. Developers have built in features to automatically format text, remove filler words, and ignore errors to output text that may need fewer edits.
But with the growing popularity of all things AI, there are dozens of such applications on the market. So we’ve put together our pick of the best and most useful dictation apps of the year.
Wispr Flow is a well-funded AI dictation app that lets you add custom words and instructions to 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,” “Informal,” and “Very Casual” styles for different types of writing, such as personal letters, work, and email. And if you use it with dynamic programming tools like Cursor, you can turn on 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 any of the desktop versions, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. Its subscription plans offer unlimited copying, and start at $15 per month.
Willow advertises itself as a great time saver for those who don’t like to write. Besides common features like automatic editing and formatting, the app has a feature that leverages large language models to create an entire piece of text from just a few dictated words.
Willow also takes a more privacy-focused approach to AI-assisted note-taking by storing all texts locally on your device, and lets you opt out of typical coaching as well. It also allows you to add custom vocabulary to the app to help it adapt to the language of your industry or 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.
If you’re privacy-focused, Monologue lets you download its template so you can run it on your device to copy and avoid sending data to the cloud. Moreover, the app allows you to customize the audio tone depending on the apps you use it with.
Monologue lets you blog 1,000 words a month for free, and costs $10 a month to subscribe, or $100 a 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 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 with different speeds and accuracy, along with speech recognition models from NVIDIA’s Parakeet.
The application also allows you to write custom prompts for the pipe. You can easily see processed, unprocessed and merged texts with the system keyboard.
The basic audio-to-text feature is free to use, and you get 15 minutes to test out Pro features like translation and transcription. The paid tier allows you to use your own AI API keys and connect cloud and on-premises 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.
This app takes an offline-first, no-subscription approach, allowing you to use local templates for transcription. There is 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.
VoiceTypr is available to try for three days for free, after which you will be allowed to purchase a lifetime license. The app costs $35 for one device, $56 for two devices, and $98 for four devices.
Aqua is another voice typing client powered by Y-Combinator for Windows and MacOS that claims to be one of the fastest tools in this category in terms of latency.
Besides handling grammar and punctuation, Aqua also lets you autofill text by speaking 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 gives you 1,000 words per month. Paid plans start at $8 per month (annual billing), and unlock unlimited words and 800 custom dictionary values.
Handy is a free and open source transcription tool that can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The app is pretty basic and doesn’t offer a lot of customization, but if you’re trying to start 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.
Typeless is another app in this category that has a large number of free words. 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’ve made a mistake on a line.
The app lets you dictate up 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 available for Windows and MacOS only.