The best Alter alternatives for Mac

Alter is a Mac AI assistant that lives in the notch. Its pitch is that the fastest way to use your Mac is not to touch the keyboard: you talk or dictate, it uses what's on your screen and in your apps, and it runs one of more than 80 built-in actions, or your own, and puts the answer back where you were working. It records meetings with speaker names and summaries, connects to Calendar, Maps and, on Pro, more than 2,000 services, and picks among 50+ AI models for each task.

Its big draw is choice. Every feature is free if you bring your own API keys or run local models through Ollama or LM Studio. Its site says chats stay encrypted and local and that it doesn't train on your data. It's a universal app for Apple silicon and Intel; its site lists macOS 14 in one place and Ventura 13 in another.

This page is about Alter at alterhq.com. We make Koi, the first pick below, so read it with that in mind. Prices and features for every app come from their own sites, checked October 21, 2026, in USD.

• Free: every feature, with your own AI keys or local models. No card.
• Local+: $29 a year for better local speech models, Whisper Pro and Parakeet V3, on up to 3 devices.
• Pro: $240 a year for Alter's own access to 50+ cloud models, unlimited meeting recordings with speaker names, and 2,000+ connected tools.
• Lifetime: $720 once, everything in Pro.
• Every new account starts with 7 days of unlimited cloud models, with no card.

Read the pricing page's small print. Pro and Lifetime run on a monthly fair-use budget, and past it requests go to cheaper models. Every plan allows only one active device at a time, and heavy agent use, like coding agents, isn't allowed. On Free, meeting recording with local Whisper is marked as very slow.

• Free means setup. To use it free you sign up with AI providers, paste keys and pay them, or run local models on your Mac.
• Pro is $240 a year, with a fair-use budget that switches you to cheaper models once you pass it.
• One active device at a time, on every plan.
• You wanted something that shows you on the screen. Alter answers and acts; its site doesn't mention pointing at buttons or drawing over the screen.
• So many models and actions is more than you want to manage.

With Apple's Writing Tools, on a Mac with Apple Intelligence:

1. Select the text.
2. Control-click it and choose Writing Tools, then Show Writing Tools.
3. Click Rewrite, Proofread or a tone, or describe the change you want.
4. Check the result and keep it.

With Koi, on any Mac from macOS 14:

1. Select the text in any app: Mail, Slack, a browser, Notes.
2. Tap Fn + ⌘ once.
3. Say what you want: “make it friendlier”, “shorter”, “fix the grammar”.
4. Koi replaces it in place and highlights the changed words.
5. Not right? Press ⌘Z to get the original back, or ask again.

Koi's Lifetime, $59 for the first 25 buyers, rising to $199, includes Koi credit worth 20% of the price that never expires; dictation and recording stay unlimited either way.

With Alter on local models, nothing has to leave your Mac for the AI. On your own keys, your prompts go to the provider you chose, and on Pro to the models Alter routes you to.

Koi's dictation, call recording and transcription run on your Mac and send nothing. Talking to Koi is online: your voice goes to the AI provider, and a picture of the screen goes with each question unless you change that. When Koi rewrites text, the selected text goes along with the question. Our server keeps what each call cost, not what was said or shown. See the trust page.

• Want to talk and have it fix, point and click, with no keys to manage? Koi.
• Want many models in a launcher? Raycast AI.
• Want to pay once and bring your own keys? BoltAI.
• Want screen help out loud, free to start? HeyClicky.
• Want dictation and an agent on Mac and Windows? VoiceOS.
• Only need to fix text now and then? Try Writing Tools first.

More: the best AI assistants for Mac, what Mac AI apps cost, and Elephas alternatives for writing help.