Wispr Flow vs Willow Voice: which cloud dictation app fits you?

Pick Wispr Flow if you need Android, want a meeting notetaker in the same app, or your company wants the most mature admin and compliance options. Pick Willow if you want a free plan you can dictate on all day without a weekly word count, or you like the idea of describing a message and having it written for you.

Underneath, these two are close cousins. Both put text wherever your cursor is, both process your speech in the cloud, and both charge the same for Pro: $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly. The differences are in the free tiers, the platforms, and what each app does beyond plain dictation.

Facts below come from Wispr Flow's pricing, data controls, free-tier limits and system requirements pages, and Willow's pricing, security, dictation feature and help center pages, all checked October 31, 2026. This is desk research from each vendor's own site, not a hands-on test.

#At a glance

#Price and free plans

At the Pro level there's nothing to choose between them on price. Both are $15 a month, or $12 a month on yearly billing, which works out to $144 a year. Students get a break on both: Wispr Flow lists 50% off Pro for students and educators, and Willow's help center lists 30% off for students, educators, non-profits and military.

The free plans are where they really differ.

Wispr Flow Free gives you the full product with a weekly allowance. On Mac and Windows you see a warning after 2,000 words in a week and new dictations are blocked above 5,000. On iPhone dictation slows after 550 words and stops at 750; on Android the cap is 3,000. New accounts start with a 14-day Pro trial. Our Wispr Flow pricing breakdown covers every plan in detail.

Willow Basic has no weekly word count. Instead it limits quality and extras: you get unlimited dictation on Frontier Mini, which Willow's own pricing page calls its "weaker" model, plus limited personalization and 20 Scribe uses a week. Willow's help center also lists a 5-minute limit per dictation on free and 8 minutes on paid plans.

So if you dictate a lot and won't pay, Willow's free plan goes further. If you want to judge the full-strength product before paying, Wispr's two-week trial shows you more.

#Privacy and offline

Both are cloud services, and both say so.

Wispr Flow's data-controls page puts it plainly: transcription always occurs in the cloud. It uses the name of the app you're in and the text in the box you're typing into to format each dictation, and an optional Context Awareness setting can use text from the active window. Wispr says it has zero data retention agreements with its third-party AI providers. There is no offline mode, so a dropped connection means no dictation. More in is Wispr Flow private?

Willow's help center says it "uses cloud-based AI models," and its security page says it runs on cloud infrastructure in the United States. Private Mode is on by default, and Willow says no audio is stored after transcription. Context Awareness is optional; when it's off, Willow says it doesn't read on-screen text. Willow also advertises an offline mode "powered entirely by your device." Its pages don't say which platforms support it, and the help center's plan overview lists offline dictation under Pro rather than Free.

If you're weighing cloud against local in general, local vs cloud dictation walks through what each means for latency, privacy and cost.

#Features beyond dictation

Both apps clean up as they go: filler words removed, punctuation added, formatting adjusted to the app you're in. Both have a dictionary that picks up names and jargon, and both let you save text you type often and drop it in with a short spoken cue (Wispr calls them snippets, Willow calls them shortcuts). Both support 100+ languages.

The extras point in different directions.

Willow Scribe is about writing from intent. You press the Scribe hotkey and say what you want, such as "reply saying I can do Thursday but not Friday," and Willow drafts the message in your style. It can also read the conversation on screen to draft a reply, or rewrite highlighted text in place. Free accounts get 20 uses a week; Pro removes the cap.

Wispr Flow Command Mode lets you hold a shortcut and give an instruction to edit text, draft a reply or search. It's off by default under Settings, Experimental, and only works on Pro, trials and enterprise plans. Wispr also has Notetaker, which records meetings on Mac and Windows and gives you transcripts with speaker names and summaries. Willow doesn't list a meeting recorder.

#Platforms

Wispr Flow runs on Mac (macOS 12 or later, Apple silicon or Intel), Windows 10 and 11 on x64, iPhone (iOS 18.3 or later) and Android 13 or later. Windows on ARM isn't supported.

Willow runs on Mac, Windows and iPhone, where it works as a keyboard. Android is listed as coming soon. Willow's site doesn't publish system requirements. On a Mac, both default to the fn key for dictation.

#Teams and compliance

Wispr Flow's Growth plan ($23 a month, or $18 billed yearly, per user) adds SSO, HIPAA enforcement with a signed BAA and admin control over model training; Enterprise adds SCIM, audit logs and MDM. Its data-controls page says Wispr is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant.

Willow's Business plan ($35 a month, or $28 billed yearly; the page doesn't say whether that's per user) adds enforced privacy mode with zero data retention, SOC 2 Type II and enforced HIPAA. SSO and SAML are on Enterprise. If compliance is the deciding factor, take it up with each vendor's sales team rather than a comparison page.

#Which should you pick?

• Wispr Flow if you use an Android phone, want meetings recorded in the same app, need SSO and a BAA without jumping to an enterprise contract, or use an older Intel Mac (Wispr lists support for it).
• Willow if you want a free plan with no weekly word count, you like dictating intent and letting Scribe write the message, or Android doesn't matter to you.
• Either if you want cloud dictation on Mac, Windows and iPhone at $12 to $15 a month. Then try both free plans for a week and keep the one whose output you edit less.

#A third option: Sayburst

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

The main difference is where your voice goes. Sayburst transcribes on your Mac, using Parakeet v3 on the Neural Engine by default, and audio is never uploaded by Sayburst. After a one-time model download, dictation and cleanup work with no internet. There's no account. Hold fn, talk, let go, and the cleaned-up text lands at your cursor in any app.

For AI rewriting, Sayburst Writer is an optional 2.5 GB model that runs on your Mac's GPU, with no key and no connection. Set Mail to Email mode and you can dictate a reply the way you'd say it out loud:

"Hi Jonas, um, thanks for sending the contract over. I read it last night and I'm, uh, happy with everything except the cancellation clause, which still has the old address on Baker Street, sorry, Barker Street. Can you fix that and I'll sign it today. Best, Lea"

What lands in the email:

Hi Jonas,

Thanks for sending the contract over. I read it last night and I'm happy with everything except the cancellation clause, which still has the old address on Barker Street.

Can you fix that? I'll sign it today.

Best, Lea

Fillers gone, the street name corrected, greeting and sign-off on their own lines. Add client names to the vocabulary and they come out spelled right every time.

The price model is different too: $29 once for one Mac or $49 for up to three, after a free 7-day trial, with every 1.x update included. Wispr Flow Pro or Willow Pro on yearly billing costs $144 a year each.

Sayburst won't replace either app for everyone. It's Mac-only, with no Windows, iPhone or Android version, and it needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later. There's no team plan, no meeting recorder and nothing like Scribe that drafts a message from a one-line instruction; Writer cleans up what you said rather than adding content. If you need any of those, stay with Wispr Flow or Willow.

For the head-to-head, read Sayburst vs Wispr Flow, or see every matchup on the compare page.

Our take

Wispr Flow and Willow cost the same for Pro, so choose on the edges. Wispr Flow wins on Android, meeting notes and team compliance at a lower tier. Willow wins on a free plan with no weekly word cap and on Scribe for writing from a quick instruction. If you're on a Mac and would rather your voice never leave it, Sayburst does the daily dictation job locally for $29 once.

Questions people ask

What's the difference between Wispr Flow and Willow Voice?

Both are cloud dictation apps that type into any app for $15 a month or $12 a month billed yearly. Wispr Flow adds Android, a meeting Notetaker and a word-capped free tier; Willow's free tier has no word cap but uses a smaller model, and it has no Android app yet.

Is Willow Voice free?

Willow's Basic plan is free with unlimited dictation on its lighter Frontier Mini model and 20 Scribe uses a week. Pro, at $15 a month or $12 billed yearly, switches you to the Frontier Pro model and removes the Scribe cap.

Is Willow Voice any good? What do reviews and Reddit say?

We haven't tested Willow hands-on and don't summarise forum threads. Going by its own pages, it covers the same ground as Wispr Flow on Mac, Windows and iPhone, and its free plan has no word cap, so trying it costs nothing.

Do Wispr Flow and Willow Voice work offline?

Wispr Flow doesn't: its data-controls page says transcription always happens in the cloud. Willow runs on cloud models by default and advertises an offline mode powered by your device, which its help center lists as a paid feature.

Which is better for a team that handles health data?

Both sell HIPAA options on higher plans: Wispr Flow on Growth with a signed BAA, Willow on Business and above. Your organisation's compliance team should make that call with each vendor directly.