Wispr Flow vs Superwhisper: where your voice goes, what it costs, who wins
Both let you talk instead of type, in any app. They disagree on the one thing that matters most: whether your voice leaves your computer. Every fact below comes from each company's own pages, read in October 2026.
Short answer: Wispr Flow sends your audio to its servers to transcribe it and cleans the text up for you, while Superwhisper can transcribe on your own device with local Whisper models. If you want the polish and work across many devices, pick Wispr Flow; if you want your voice to stay on your machine, pick Superwhisper, or try MightyMouse, which transcribes on your Mac for free.
Search for this comparison and most results are written by one of the two companies, or by a third tool selling itself as option three. This one reads each product's own pricing, privacy and documentation pages, dates every number, and links the page it came from. Where a page does not say something, this article says the page does not say it, instead of guessing.
The short version
- Where your voice goes. Wispr Flow: its servers, always. Superwhisper: your device if you pick a local model, a cloud model if you pick that.
- Free tier. Wispr Flow: 2,000 words a week on desktop. Superwhisper: unlimited use of Whisper models.
- Paid price. Wispr Flow Pro: $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly. Superwhisper Pro: $8.49 a month on its monthly view, with yearly and lifetime options.
- Platforms. Both list Mac, Windows, iOS and Android on their own pages.
- Best at. Wispr Flow: text that comes out already cleaned up. Superwhisper: choosing your own model and keeping audio local.
Where the audio is processed
This is the real fork in the road, so it comes first. Wispr Flow's privacy page says audio is "sent to our servers over TLS 1.2+" and that "transcription always happens in the cloud to provide the best speed and accuracy." The page describes no offline mode. Audio "is deleted as soon as it's transcribed, unless you've turned on Dictation cloud storage," and anything stored is protected with AES-256.
Superwhisper's privacy policy says it "transcribes all audio data locally on your device" and that "we do not collect any audio recordings, transcriptions." Its modes documentation adds the nuance: every mode has a Voice Model dropdown where you "pick a cloud or local model per mode." A local model keeps your speech on the device. A cloud model, by definition, does not. So with Superwhisper the answer to "where does my voice go" is whichever model you chose for the mode you are in.
The same docs say AI formatting after transcription mostly needs an internet connection. The only offline formatting they describe needs the local S1-mini model in Message or Mail mode. Plain offline transcription works with local voice models.
Pricing and the free tier, as of October 2026
Wispr Flow's pricing page lists a Free plan with "2,000/week on desktop" and "1,000/week on mobile." Pro is $15 per user per month, or $12 per user per month billed annually. Growth and Enterprise sit above that for teams, with single sign-on, a signed HIPAA agreement and admin controls.
Superwhisper's homepage pricing lists a Free plan with voice to text in any app, 100+ languages, Meetings on Mac, "unlimited use of Whisper models" and custom prompt control. Pro, shown at $8.49 a month on the monthly view, adds your own AI API keys, unlimited cloud and local AI models, translation to English and audio and video file transcription. Yearly ("2 months free") and lifetime options exist, students get 40% off, and every plan has a 30 day refund. New users can try Pro features for 3,000 words.
Read those two free tiers side by side. Wispr Flow's free plan stops at a word count, which a heavy typist burns through in a couple of days. Superwhisper's free plan has no word cap, but it is built around Whisper models, and the extras (cloud models, your own keys, file transcription) are the paid part. Superwhisper's own homepage says unlimited Whisper models are in Free, so check the app when you install it.
Platforms
Wispr Flow's pricing page lists dictation on "Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android," with its Notetaker on Mac and Windows only. Superwhisper's homepage says "Available on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android." Confirm in the App Store or Play Store before you pay.
One hardware note from Superwhisper's FAQ is worth knowing if you are on an older Mac: "Intel Macs work best with Cloud models. Offline models only run really well on Apple Silicon macs." That quietly changes the privacy answer for Intel owners.
Custom words, modes and cleanup
Wispr Flow's homepage says it "uses your personal dictionary and context to nail names, acronyms, and jargon," and describes the output as text that is "ready to send" instead of "a wall of text." Its pricing page lists a dictionary and snippets on the Free plan, shared across a team on Pro. Cleanup is the headline feature: you talk the way you talk and it removes the false starts.
Superwhisper leans on modes. Its docs describe built-in modes for plain transcription or formatted text, and custom modes with "your own AI instructions," including a mode that drafts text from a rough outline. Its homepage lists custom vocabulary for names and specialized terms. The modes page does not say which models run locally, so read the model library inside the app before you rely on it offline.
Latency: what the vendors actually say
Neither company's pricing, privacy or docs pages publishes a latency figure in milliseconds. Wispr Flow says cloud transcription is "for the best speed and accuracy." Superwhisper's homepage calls the app "insanely fast" in a customer quote. Those are claims, not measurements. Physically, a cloud tool pays for a round trip to a server on every phrase, so a slow connection slows it down, while a local tool pays for your own chip, so an old Mac slows it down. The only honest test is to dictate the same paragraph in each on your own machine and Wi-Fi.
Who should pick which
- Pick Wispr Flow if you want text that arrives polished, you use dictation on several devices including a phone or a Windows PC, you work in a team that will share a dictionary, and sending audio to a vendor's servers is fine with you or your employer.
- Pick Superwhisper if you want to choose the model yourself, want an option that keeps audio on your device, need meeting or file transcription, or like paying less per month than Wispr Flow charges.
- Pick neither yet if you mostly want plain, private, unlimited transcription into any app and are not planning to pay. That is the gap the next section is about.
The third option: free transcription on your Mac
MightyMouse transcribes your voice on your own Mac, free, with no word cap. The audio is turned into text on your computer, by whisper.cpp or, for the languages it supports, NVIDIA's Parakeet model, and the text is pasted where your cursor is, in whatever app you are in. Press the listen shortcut, talk, and the words land in Slack, a terminal, a document or a browser box. English uses a fast model by default, and picking a language Parakeet does not cover switches to a larger multilingual Whisper model.
Two things are different from both tools above. First, your iPhone can be the microphone. You pair it once, open the page on your phone, tap the mic, and the recording goes to your Mac, gets transcribed there, and is pasted at your Mac's cursor. The phone only listens for when you are speaking. The transcription itself still runs on your Mac. Second, the same phone is also a trackpad and keyboard for the computer, which neither Wispr Flow nor Superwhisper does. If you want the long version of the setup, how to run Whisper locally on a Mac walks through it, and dictating anywhere on your Mac covers the everyday use.
What each one beats MightyMouse at
Honesty cuts both ways. Wispr Flow is stronger where its own pages say it is: it works across Mac, Windows, iOS and Android as a dictation tool, it learns a shared team dictionary, and its homepage lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance, which MightyMouse does not publish. Its automatic rewrite of your text into something ready to send is not what MightyMouse's dictation is built around. MightyMouse pastes what you said, word for word, and only hands it to your AI for a rewrite when you choose to.
Superwhisper is stronger on model choice per mode, on transcribing audio and video files, on meeting features, and on a mobile app of its own. MightyMouse is a Mac app first, with a Windows version in beta.
What this costs you and where it falls short
- MightyMouse dictation needs a Mac. The phone works as a mic, trackpad and keyboard through Safari, but the transcription happens on the Mac, so it must be awake and reachable. It cannot reach a sleeping Mac.
- Local transcription uses your own chip. It downloads a model once (the large multilingual one is about 1.6 GB), and an older Mac will be slower than a cloud service.
- The phone as a mic is free and unlimited on your own Wi-Fi. Away from home it runs over a relay with a free monthly allowance (15 minutes a day, 45 a week, 90 a month on the free plan), and a paid plan removes that limit.
- The iPhone side is a web page that talks to your Mac, not a standalone dictation app, so it needs your Mac on.
- Expect transcription first. A rewrite is a step you choose, not something done to every phrase. If you want every sentence polished automatically, Wispr Flow is built for that.
How to decide in ten minutes
- Decide whether audio leaving your computer is acceptable. If no, cross out Wispr Flow.
- Dictate a normal workday paragraph into each free plan. Wispr Flow gives you 2,000 words a week, which is enough to test and not enough to live on.
- Check the cleanup. If you hate editing filler words, Wispr Flow's output is the draw.
- If you want unlimited and private for free, try MightyMouse or compare it with other Mac apps in the best dictation apps for Mac.
- Read each vendor's refund page. Superwhisper lists 30 days on all plans.
For a head-to-head against each one separately, see how MightyMouse compares with Wispr Flow and how MightyMouse compares with Superwhisper. Another local Mac option worth a look is VoiceInk.
Free dictation that runs on your own Mac, with your iPhone as the mic.
No word cap. No card to try it.
Common questions
Is Wispr Flow better than Superwhisper?
Neither wins on everything. Wispr Flow cleans up your text automatically and is built around a cloud service, while Superwhisper lets you choose cloud or local models per mode and costs less per month. Pick by whether you want polish or on-device audio.
Does Wispr Flow work offline?
Its privacy page says transcription always happens in the cloud and describes no offline mode, so you should expect it to need an internet connection.
Does Superwhisper work offline?
Yes, with local voice models. Superwhisper's docs say local voice models transcribe without an internet connection, though AI formatting after transcription mostly needs the internet.
Is Superwhisper free?
It has a free plan with unlimited use of Whisper models. Pro, shown at $8.49 a month in October 2026, adds cloud models, your own API keys and file transcription.
How many words does Wispr Flow give you for free?
Its pricing page lists 2,000 words a week on desktop and 1,000 a week on mobile for the Free plan, as of October 2026.
What is a free alternative to Wispr Flow and Superwhisper?
MightyMouse transcribes on your own Mac for free, with no word limit, and can use your iPhone as the microphone.
If you want free, unlimited dictation that never leaves your computer, MightyMouse turns your iPhone into a mic, trackpad and keyboard for your Mac and transcribes with Whisper on the Mac itself.