The best Spanish speech-to-text apps (2026)

Sayburst puts dictation on a key. Click where you want the text, hold fn, speak, let go, and finished text lands at your cursor in Mail, Word, WhatsApp, Slack, a browser, anywhere you can type.

Its default speech model, Parakeet v3, covers English plus 24 European languages, Spanish included, and runs on your Mac's Neural Engine. If you'd rather use Whisper, Whisper Large v3 Turbo covers 99 languages. Either way, your audio is never uploaded: after the one-time model download, recognition and cleanup work with Wi-Fi off.

Here's a voice note to a colleague, said the way people actually talk:

"Hola Marta, te confirmo que la la reunión con el cliente de Monterrey es el jueves a las once. Ya mandé la propuesta, solo falta que Ximena revise los números."

What Sayburst types:

Hola Marta, te confirmo que la reunión con el cliente de Monterrey es el jueves a las once. Ya mandé la propuesta, solo falta que Ximena revise los números.

The stutter is gone, the punctuation and capitals are in, and the accents are where they belong. Add names like "Ximena" or your company's product names to the vocabulary, and Sayburst spells them your way.

Why it's first: it handles Spanish on your own machine, works in every app, and costs one payment instead of a subscription.

Trade-offs: Mac only, and it needs Apple silicon (M1 or later) with macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Text arrives when you finish speaking rather than streaming into the document word by word, though the overlay shows your words live as you talk.

Built into macOS and iOS. Apple lists Spanish for Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain and the United States, and its feature-availability page marks all five for on-device dictation once the speech model is downloaded. Turn it on in System Settings, then Keyboard, then Dictation, and pick your Spanish variant from the language menu.

It's a good place to start. The limits show up when you dictate a lot: no filler cleanup, no custom vocabulary, no history if something goes wrong, and Apple's help page says it stops after 30 seconds without speech. If it keeps writing English when you speak Spanish, see Mac dictation in the wrong language. For a side-by-side, read Sayburst vs Apple Dictation.

Word's Dictate button lists Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Mexico) among its fully supported languages, and it works in Word for Microsoft 365 on the Mac (⌥F1 starts it). Microsoft says you need a Microsoft 365 subscription and a reliable internet connection.

If your Spanish writing lives in Word and you already pay for 365, it costs nothing extra. It only works inside Office apps, though, so your email client and chat apps still need something else.

Tools, then Voice typing, then choose "Español" from the language list. Google supports several regional variants, including Spain, Mexico and the US, and it works in the latest Chrome, Edge and Safari.

One catch for Spanish speakers: Google's help page says voice commands are available only in English. You can dictate Spanish text, but spoken commands for punctuation and editing won't work, so expect to add commas and periods by hand. It also only works inside Docs.

Wispr Flow advertises 100+ languages and runs on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. The free plan has a weekly word limit; Pro removes it. Its own data-controls page says transcription always happens in the cloud, so it needs internet and an account.

Choose it if you switch between a Mac, a PC and your phone and want one tool everywhere. If you're Mac-only and care where your voice goes, compare it in Sayburst vs Wispr Flow.

Otter is a meeting transcriber rather than a dictation tool. Its pricing page lists AI transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, on the free Basic plan too. Basic gives you 300 minutes a month, with each conversation capped at 30 minutes.

Use it when the job is a recording of other people talking. For writing your own messages, a dictation app is faster.

Drop in an interview, a podcast episode or a voice memo and MacWhisper transcribes it with local models, in 100 languages, and exports subtitles or text. The free version is free forever; Pro is a one-time €64.

It also offers system-wide dictation, but files are where it shines. (Sayburst can transcribe a dropped audio file too, but it's built for dictation first.)

Press WinH in any text field on Windows 11. Microsoft lists Spanish (Mexico) and Spanish (Spain). It uses online speech recognition, so it needs internet. Sayburst is Mac-only, so on a PC this is the place to start.