Five Alternatives to Wispr Flow for Voice Dictation in 2026

Wispr Flow has become the default recommendation for AI voice dictation. It's well-funded ($81 million raised), accurate (97%+ out of the box), and works across Mac, Windows, and iOS. At £15/month on a monthly plan, it's not cheap - but it's earned the market lead. The question is whether you actually need it, or whether something else fits better.

I spent a few weeks testing alternatives. Some are free. Some are Mac-only. Most are built on OpenAI's Whisper model underneath. Here are the five worth knowing about, depending on what you care about most.

1. Superwhisper - best for Mac users who want control

Superwhisper is a Mac-native dictation app that runs entirely on your device. No audio leaves your machine. You can choose between different Whisper model sizes - smaller ones for speed, larger ones for accuracy - and customise vocabulary for domain-specific terms. It costs $8.49/month or $249 for a lifetime licence.

The appeal is the level of control. You pick your model, set your hotkeys, configure prompts for how text gets formatted. The downside is that this flexibility means more setup than something like Wispr Flow, which works well the moment you install it. If you're comfortable tweaking settings, Superwhisper rewards it. If you want something that just works, it might feel fiddly.

2. Voibe - built for developers using AI coding tools

Voibe is a newer Mac app with a specific angle: it's designed for people who spend their day in Cursor, Windsurf, or VS Code. Speak a filename and it resolves it from your workspace. Dictate a prompt for Claude or ChatGPT and it captures the full context you'd normally compress when typing. Everything runs locally on Apple Silicon. $99 for lifetime access, or $44.10/year.

It's Mac-only and relatively new, so the community is small. But the developer workflow integration is genuinely different from anything else on this list. If you're already voice-coding, it's worth a trial.

3. Willow Voice - the closest direct competitor to Wispr Flow

Willow Voice is a YC-backed startup that supports Mac, Windows, and iOS. It adapts to your writing style per app, handles custom vocabulary, and claims SOC 2 compliance with zero data retention. Pricing sits at $12–15/month - essentially the same as Wispr Flow.

The pitch is similar to Wispr's but with a smaller footprint. Early adopters report it's snappy and accurate, and the cross-platform support makes it one of the few options that works properly on Windows without feeling like an afterthought. Worth watching, though the user base is still small compared to Wispr's.

4. Typeless - broadest platform support with a usable free tier

Typeless covers macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and web - the widest platform spread of any tool here. The free plan gives you 4,000 words per week (roughly 16,000/month), and Pro costs $12/month annually. It claims zero data retention on cloud servers, with dictation history stored locally only.

Its standout feature is intelligent editing. Rather than transcribing your exact words, it captures intent - collapsing repetitions, resolving mid-sentence corrections, and auto-formatting lists. For someone who thinks out loud and wants clean output without a second editing pass, that's useful. The accuracy isn't quite at Wispr's level, but the free tier is generous enough to find out whether it works for your style.

5. VoiceInk - free, open-source, and completely offline

VoiceInk is a GPL-licensed Mac app that processes everything locally using Whisper models. No accounts, no subscriptions, no telemetry. It supports 100+ languages and works in any app. The catch is that it requires some setup - downloading models, configuring permissions - and it's Mac-only with no plans for Windows.

For someone who won't send audio to anyone's cloud under any circumstances, VoiceInk is the purest option. It won't match the polish of Wispr or Willow, but it costs nothing and you can audit the source code yourself.

A note on LazyTyper

LazyTyper deserves a mention as the only free option with genuine Windows and Linux support. It offers 12 speech models including five local ones. But there are concerns: it's closed-source from a solo developer, all releases are tagged as nightly builds, the English-language user community is virtually non-existent. The sustainability model is unclear - there's no visible way the project makes money. It works, and the local models keep your data on-device, but you're placing trust in an unknown binary with no community to fall back on.

The gap that still exists

The uncomfortable pattern across this list is platform coverage. The best privacy-first tools - Superwhisper, Voibe, VoiceInk are all Mac-only. Windows users who care about local processing are left with LazyTyper or Windows 11's built-in voice typing, which has improved with Fluid Dictation but requires a Copilot+ PC with NPU hardware to work properly. Standard Windows machines still get the older cloud-dependent version.

If you're on Mac, you have excellent choices at every price point. If you're on Windows and privacy matters, the honest answer is that the market hasn't caught up yet. Wispr Flow or Willow Voice with their data controls enabled is probably the most practical option, and Typeless with its zero-retention policy is a reasonable middle ground.