Spokenly vs Wispr Flow: free local models or a cloud plan?

Pick Spokenly if you want dictation that runs on your own machine and costs nothing: its local Whisper and Parakeet models are free, unlimited and need no account. Pick Wispr Flow if you want polished cloud dictation with zero setup, an Android app, or a plan your company's IT team will sign off on, and you're fine with every word going to a server.

Both apps put text wherever your cursor is, so the choice comes down to where your speech is processed and what you pay for. Facts below are from spokenly.app, Spokenly's pricing and download pages, and Wispr Flow's pricing, data controls and free-tier help article, all checked October 31, 2026. This is desk research from the vendors' own pages, not a hands-on test.

#At a glance

#Privacy and offline

Wispr Flow is cloud-only. Its data-controls page says "transcription always occurs on the cloud." It also uses the name of the app you're in and the text around your cursor to format each dictation, and an optional Context Awareness setting can send relevant text from the active window. If your connection drops, dictation stops. Our Wispr Flow privacy breakdown goes through each setting.

Spokenly lets you decide per setup. Download a Whisper or Parakeet model and dictation runs on your machine, with a Local Only Mode that can restrict network access. Want a bigger model? Plug in your own key for OpenAI, Deepgram or Groq, and that provider bills you. Or pay for Pro and use Spokenly's managed cloud models. The flexibility is real, but it's also more to set up than Wispr's sign-in-and-talk.

If the difference between these two approaches is new to you, local vs cloud dictation explains what each one means for latency, privacy and cost.

#Price

Spokenly has four ways in:

• Local: $0, unlimited, no account.
• Your API keys: $0 to Spokenly; your provider bills usage.
• Local+: $29 once. Adds settings sync, the Notch and Capsule recording styles on macOS, and priority support. No managed cloud models or hosted text processing.
• Pro: $15 month to month, or $12 a month billed yearly ($144). Managed cloud models and hosted AI text processing. Students get 50% off; Pro bought on the site has a 14-day refund.

Wispr Flow has a free tier and paid plans:

• Free: desktop shows a limit warning after 2,000 words a week and blocks new dictations above 5,000. On iPhone, dictation slows after 550 words and stops at 750; on Android it slows after 2,500 and caps at 3,000.
• Pro: $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly. Students and educators get 50% off.
• Growth and Enterprise: for organisations, adding SSO, HIPAA enforcement with a signed BAA, SCIM, audit logs and more.

Over three years on yearly billing, both Pro plans come to $432. The difference is that Spokenly's free local tier is a real daily driver, while Wispr Flow's free tier is a weekly allowance.

For the full breakdown, see Wispr Flow pricing.

#Features and feel

Wispr Flow is built around automatic polish: filler words removed, punctuation added, formatting done for you, plus per-app styles (messages, work chat, email) and snippets you trigger by voice. A dictionary learns names on its own. Notetaker records meetings on Mac and Windows with speaker names and summaries.

Spokenly is the tinkerer's app. AI text processing with modes and your own AI Instructions, a custom dictionary, word replacements, Whisper prompting for accuracy, punctuation commands, file transcription with speaker labels and subtitle export, meeting recording on Mac, and Agentic Actions for controlling macOS by voice. Its sideloaded Mac build can even take spoken answers from Claude Code, Codex and Cursor over MCP.

#On a Mac specifically

Spokenly's Mac app is a universal build for macOS 13.3 or later, downloaded straight from spokenly.app rather than the Mac App Store. Wispr Flow also runs on Mac and Windows. Both type into any app.

#Which should you pick?

• Spokenly if you want free, local, offline dictation, you're on Linux, or you like bringing your own API keys and choosing models.
• Wispr Flow if you want the least setup, you also dictate on Android, or your company needs SSO, a BAA and SOC 2 paperwork.
• Either if you just need Mac and Windows dictation with 100+ languages; then it's local-and-free versus cloud-and-polished.

#A third option: Sayburst

We make Sayburst, a Mac-only dictation app, so here's where it sits next to these two.

Like Spokenly's local mode, Sayburst transcribes on your Mac (Parakeet v3 by default, on the Neural Engine) and works offline after a one-time model download. Unlike Spokenly's free and Local+ tiers, the AI cleanup doesn't need a key or a Pro plan: Sayburst Writer is an optional 2.5 GB model that runs on your Mac's GPU and turns rambling speech into finished text, with no account and no internet. It's $29 once for one Mac or $49 for three, after a 7-day free trial.

Here's what that looks like in a code editor. You say:

"Okay so refactor the, um, fetchUser function so it returns null instead of throwing, actually no, make it return undefined, and add a comment explaining why."

Sayburst types:

Refactor the fetchUser function so it returns undefined instead of throwing, and add a comment explaining why.

Add fetchUser and your other identifiers to Sayburst's vocabulary so they come out spelled your way. Writing modes switch automatically per app (Message for Slack, Email for Mail), and Sayburst can press Return for you in chat apps so a message sends itself. Our Cursor guide shows the setup for AI coding tools.

Sayburst isn't for everyone here. It's Mac-only, with no Windows, Linux, iPhone or Android version, and it needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later. It has no team plan and no meeting recorder. If you need any of those, stay with Spokenly or Wispr Flow.

Compare it directly: Sayburst vs Wispr Flow, or browse every matchup on the compare page.

Our take

Spokenly wins on price, privacy and choice: free local dictation, your own keys, and a $29 one-time tier. Wispr Flow wins on zero-setup cloud polish, Android, and team compliance. If you're on a Mac and want local transcription with AI cleanup that also stays on the Mac, Sayburst does it for $29 once.

Questions people ask

Is Spokenly available for Mac?

Yes. Spokenly's download page lists a universal Mac build for macOS 13.3 or later, downloaded directly from spokenly.app. It also has apps for Windows, Linux and iPhone, and a Chrome extension.

Is Spokenly free?

Its local Whisper and Parakeet models are free and unlimited with no account, and you can bring your own API keys at no charge from Spokenly. Local+ is $29 once; Pro, with managed cloud models and hosted text processing, is $15 a month or $144 a year.

Does Wispr Flow work offline?

No. Wispr Flow's data-controls page says transcription always happens in the cloud, so every dictation needs a connection.

Which is cheaper, Spokenly or Wispr Flow?

Spokenly, unless you need its Pro plan. Local dictation costs nothing. Pro is priced the same as Wispr Flow Pro: $15 month to month or $12 a month billed yearly.

Which is better for teams?

Wispr Flow. It has team plans with shared dictionaries, SSO and HIPAA enforcement with a signed BAA on Growth, and says SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 apply on every plan. Spokenly offers 30% off multiple seats.