VoiceInk vs VoiceDict (and Spokenly): Which Dictation App for Mac?
VoiceInk, Spokenly and VoiceDict all run speech recognition locally on your Mac without an app subscription. The difference is how much of the pipeline you configure.
If you’ve decided two things — you want to dictate on your Mac, and you refuse to rent that ability by the month — your shortlist gets small quickly. The names on it are usually VoiceInk, Spokenly and VoiceDict. All three run speech recognition on-device. They’re still very different products — and the difference comes down to who does the configuring.
The short version
VoiceInk is a power tool. It’s open source (GPL), costs $25 for one Mac (as of mid-2026; $39 for two, $49 for three), and hands you the whole engine room: a catalog of local Whisper-family models to download, optional cloud providers to plug in, “power modes” per app, custom prompts, and a settings surface to match. If tinkering with models sounds like fun, it’s an excellent app.
VoiceDict is an appliance. It costs €9.99 for one Mac, and there is exactly one pipeline: NVIDIA’s Parakeet v3 for local speech recognition and optional Luna cleanup through your own OpenAI API key. We picked the models and tuned the prompt. You press one shortcut, talk, and clean text appears at your cursor.
Side by side
| VoiceInk | VoiceDict | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $25 one-time (1 Mac) | €9.99 one-time (1 Mac) |
| Model choice | You pick from many local models, plus optional cloud providers | Chosen and tuned for you — no model menu |
| Cloud option | Optional (e.g. cloud transcription providers) | Speech stays local; optional OpenAI text formatting |
| Configuration | Power modes, custom prompts, per-app behavior | One mode, works everywhere |
| Text cleanup | Configurable AI enhancement | Built-in: fillers removed, punctuation fixed, 25 languages |
| Open source | Yes (GPL) — you can build it yourself | No |
| Requirements | Apple Silicon, macOS 14.4+ | Apple Silicon, macOS 15+ |
| Trial | 7 days | 7 days, no credit card |
The real difference: who does the configuring?
Local dictation involves genuine engineering decisions. Which speech model is accurate for your language but fast enough to feel instant? How much should cleanup rewrite — enough to kill “um, so, basically”, not so much that it paraphrases you? Which parts must stay on-device?
VoiceInk’s answer: expose the knobs, let you decide. That’s a legitimate philosophy, and for developers who enjoy comparing Whisper variants, it’s the right one. It also means the quality you get depends on the choices you make — pick a small model and accuracy suffers, pick a big one and you wait.
VoiceDict’s answer: we already made those decisions, the same way we’d make them for ourselves. Parakeet v3 handles speech locally across 25 European languages on Apple Silicon. Optional Luna formatting uses a fixed prompt and the lowest reasoning setting to fix punctuation and drop fillers without paraphrasing you. You provide one OpenAI API key; there is still no model menu.
You can’t change any of that. That’s the point.
What about Spokenly?
Spokenly is the third name that comes up in this conversation, and it takes the engine-room philosophy even further than VoiceInk. Its free tier gives you on-device Whisper and Parakeet models with no word caps, and you can plug in your own API keys from OpenAI, Deepgram, Groq, ElevenLabs and others. A Pro tier at $9.99 per month adds managed cloud models — which quietly brings the subscription back for the most polished path.
Free and configurable is a genuinely good deal if configuring is something you enjoy. But notice what the free tier actually hands you: a model catalog to evaluate, API keys to create and paste, provider pricing pages to compare, and a decision about which company’s cloud gets to process your text cleanup. That’s not a lower price — it’s a different job. You’ve become the systems integrator.
The omakase counter-argument is the same as with VoiceInk, just sharper: the best dictation setup is the one you rarely think about. VoiceDict asks for one OpenAI key only if you want formatting, exposes no provider or model list, and has no Pro tier.
Who should pick which
Pick VoiceInk if you want to experiment with models, need custom prompts or per-app modes, want the option of cloud providers, or you value open source and want to audit (or compile) the code yourself.
Pick Spokenly if you want to pay nothing, already have API keys lying around, and enjoy assembling your own pipeline from providers — accepting that the polished managed path costs $9.99 a month.
Pick VoiceDict if you want one fixed speech-and-formatting pipeline instead of a model laboratory. Audio and speech recognition stay local; if you enable formatting, transcript text goes to OpenAI under your own API account.
Honestly: both are better deals than any dictation subscription. The average subscription app costs more per year than either of these apps costs forever.
Try the appliance first
A 7-day trial costs you nothing and doesn’t ask for a card. Start your VoiceDict trial, press your shortcut in any app, and talk. If you catch yourself wishing for a model dropdown, VoiceInk will be waiting — and if you never think about models again, that was the feature.
Also read: Wispr Flow alternatives without the subscription · How offline dictation on a Mac actually works