TypeAloud vs Wispr Flow
A free Wispr Flow alternative
that runs on your Mac.
Wispr Flow's free plan stops at 2,000 words a week on desktop. TypeAloud transcribes on your own Mac instead, so there is no word cap to hit, no account to create and nothing to subscribe to.
TypeAloud and Wispr Flow compared
| TypeAloud | Wispr Flow | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free plan; Pro at $15/month, or $12/month billed annually |
| Word limit | None with a local model | Free plan: 2,000 words a week on desktop, 1,000 on mobile |
| Where speech is transcribed | On your Mac, in local mode | On Wispr's servers |
| Works offline | Yes, after a one-time model download | Needs an internet connection |
| Account | Not needed | Required |
| AI rewriting and formatting | No. It writes what you said | Yes |
| Platforms | macOS; Windows and Linux builds are experimental | Mac, Windows, iOS and Android |
Competitor details checked on 13 Oct 2026 against wisprflow.ai/pricing. Prices and limits change; the official pages are authoritative.
Why the word cap disappears
Wispr Flow sends each recording to its servers, and every dictated word costs it compute. That is what the weekly cap and the Pro plan pay for.
TypeAloud downloads a speech model once (Qwen3-ASR 0.6B, about 1 GB) and runs it on your Mac. After that, dictating 200 words or 20,000 words in a week costs nobody anything, so there is no quota to enforce.
The same hold, speak, release habit
Hold Ctrl+Shift in whatever app you are writing in, speak, and release. The text lands at your cursor: in your editor, your terminal, Slack, a browser field. Escape cancels a recording.
Finished transcripts are kept in History on your device. If a transcription fails and the audio was saved, you can retry it.
Where Wispr Flow is the better choice
Wispr Flow rewrites what you say: it drops filler words, fixes self-corrections and adjusts tone to the app you are in. TypeAloud gives you an accurate transcript of what you said and leaves the wording to you.
Wispr Flow also has iPhone and Android apps and team plans. TypeAloud is a desktop app, tested mainly on macOS. If you dictate on your phone or need shared team dictionaries, Wispr Flow fits better.
Common questions
- Is TypeAloud really free?
- Yes. Local transcription needs no account, API key or subscription, and there is no word limit. Cloud transcription is optional and uses your own Groq or OpenAI key, which those providers may charge for.
- Does my audio leave my Mac?
- Not in local mode. The model runs on your device and transcripts are saved there. Audio is only uploaded if you choose a cloud engine with your own API key.
- Which Macs can run it?
- Apple Silicon is recommended for local dictation. The recommended model is a one-time download of about 1 GB.
- Is there a Windows version?
- There are Windows and Linux builds, but they are experimental. macOS is the platform TypeAloud is tested on.
Local transcription. No account. No subscription.
Download for Mac