Apple Dictation vs Wispr Flow: which should you use on a Mac?

• Dictating short messages in one language on a recent Mac? Apple Dictation is free and good enough.
• Writing long emails and docs all day, on a Mac, a PC or your phone, and want them cleaned up as you talk? Wispr Flow is worth paying for.
• Want unlimited dictation that never leaves your Mac, and an assistant on top? That's Koi, the third option at the end.

We make Koi, so read the last part with that in mind. Everything about Apple Dictation comes from Apple's support and privacy pages, and everything about Wispr Flow from Wispr's own site and docs, checked on October 7, 2026.

The two take opposite routes. Apple's runs inside macOS and keeps your words on the Mac when it can. Wispr Flow sends every dictation to its servers and uses that to do more with it.

With Apple Dictation, it depends. Apple's Dictation guide says Keyboard settings show whether your dictation is processed on your Mac and not sent to Apple's servers. Its macOS Sonoma guide is more specific: on Apple silicon, supported languages run on the Mac; on an Intel Mac, or in a language without on-device support, what you dictate is sent to Apple. Dictating into a search box may send the text to the search provider.

When dictation does go to Apple, Apple's privacy page says it isn't stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation. If you click Share Audio Recordings when you turn Dictation on, Apple keeps audio from your Mac and may review a sample. You can change that later in Privacy & Security, under Analytics & Improvements.

With Wispr Flow, your voice always goes to Wispr. Its privacy page says audio is sent to its servers over TLS, transcribed, and deleted once transcribed. The exception is Dictation cloud storage: turn it on and Wispr keeps your transcripts, audio and history on its servers so they sync. A separate switch, Improve the model for everyone, decides whether your audio, transcripts and edits can be used to train Wispr's models. Wispr says the AI companies it works with can't train on your data either way.

Flow also reads a little of what's around your cursor. Its data controls page says it always uses the app's name and the text box's content to format and punctuate, and with Context Awareness on, it reads relevant text from the active window. It may count things like how many words you dictate, whatever your settings. For teams there's a signed BAA for HIPAA on any plan, plus SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits.

Neither is careless. The difference is that Apple can keep your words on the Mac when your Mac and language allow it, and Wispr Flow never does.

Wispr's prices are per user, from its pricing page at the time of writing. Pro takes away the word cap and adds a longer Notetaker history and team features. Growth, with SSO and admin controls, costs more.

Koi's paid plans don't change dictation, which is unlimited on Free. They buy more time with Koi, the assistant: Pro is $20 a month or $192 a year, and Lifetime is $99 once. Details are on our pricing page.

More often than people think. It's good enough when:

• You dictate short replies, notes and messages, not long documents.
• You're on an Apple silicon Mac and your language runs on device, so it's private and works offline.
• You're on macOS 27 with an M3 Mac or later, 12GB of memory or more, and you write in English. Apple says dictation there handles capitalization, punctuation and formatting as you talk.
• You don't want another account, another subscription or another app with Accessibility access.

Where Apple Dictation wins: it costs nothing, there's no account, it's part of the system, and on the right Mac it never sends your voice anywhere. Voice Control is right next to it if you need hands-free editing or a custom word list of up to 1,000 terms.

It stops being enough when a name comes out wrong every time, since Dictation has no word list. Or when you write in Polish, Greek or Hindi, which aren't on Apple's on-device list. Or when you're on an Intel Mac and don't want your words sent to Apple. If it isn't working at all, see how to fix Mac dictation first.

If you dictate a lot of finished writing, it can be. Here's where Wispr Flow wins:

• Cleanup. It removes filler words, notices when you change your mind mid-sentence, formats your writing and sets a style per app.
• Your words. It learns names and jargon, or you add them, and snippets turn a spoken shortcut into a full block of text.
• Every device. Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, synced.
• Languages. More than 100, detected automatically, so you can switch as you go.
• Teams. Shared dictionaries, SSO, admin controls and HIPAA with a signed BAA.

It's not worth it if you mostly send short replies, since the free 2,000 words a week may cover you. Or if you need to dictate offline, or sending every word to the cloud is a deal breaker. One more thing from Wispr's own docs: on desktop, Flow types the finished text after you stop, not word by word as you speak.

Weighing other paid apps too? See our Wispr Flow alternatives.

This is where we come in. Koi is a Mac app we make, and its dictation sits between the two. Like Apple Dictation, it's free: unlimited on every plan. Unlike Apple's, it always turns speech into text on your Mac, on Apple silicon and Intel, in all 57 languages it detects. Unlike Wispr Flow, nothing you dictate goes to a server, and it works offline.

Press Fn + ⌥ in any app and talk. Words appear while you speak and tidy themselves up as you go. Speech becomes text with Whisper: Small is built in, and Base and Large v3 Turbo are a download away. Music, a video or a loud room don't get typed.

The other half of Koi is the second key. Hold Fn + ⌘ and talk to Koi, the assistant: it can see your screen when you allow it, circle the button you need, rewrite selected text in any app (⌘Z undoes it) and click around for you. That part uses cloud AI models while the call lasts. Koi also records calls on your Mac, 2 a month on Free.

Where Koi loses: it's Mac only, it needs an account (just an email), and it has no custom vocabulary, so it can't learn your jargon the way Wispr Flow does. Its dictation doesn't rewrite your words with AI either. For more options, see the best dictation apps for Mac or our Apple Dictation alternatives.