Dictato vs FluidVoice
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Dictato
Offline dictation for Apple Silicon Macs with on-device cleanup
Free trial · from €19.99 one-time
Where they differ
- Dictato starts at €19.99 one-time, VAT included, for one Mac at a time. FluidVoice is free.
- FluidVoice has a free plan. Dictato does not, though it has a free trial.
- Dictato can be bought with a one-time purchase.
- FluidVoice is open source, according to its own site.
- Dictato also covers menu bar app.
In commonmacOSWorks offlineLocal-firstAI featuresDictation
At a glance
| Dictato | FluidVoice | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free |
| Starts at | €19.99 one-time, VAT included, for one Mac at a time | Free |
| Free plan | None | Completely free and open source under the GPLv3, with no paid tiers. The optional Fluid Intelligence runtime is also free but is not open source. |
| Free trial | 7-day free trial of the full app with no credit card; purchases have a 14-day refund. | None listed |
| macOS | ||
| Made by | Obsidian IT Consulting SRL | Altic |
| Price read from | dicta.to | altic.dev |
| Checked | Oct 6, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Dictato
- Mac users who want dictation that never leaves the device
- Buyers who prefer a low one-time price to a subscription
- People who switch language or tone between apps and websites
FluidVoice
- Mac users who want free dictation that stays on the device
- AI text cleanup without a cloud account or API key
- Developers dictating prompts into terminals and code editors
Worth knowing
Dictato
- It runs only on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later; Intel Macs are not supported and there are no Windows or mobile apps.
- It is live dictation only and does not transcribe existing audio files.
- A license covers one Mac at a time, with up to 3 moves per 30 days, and the price is listed in euros only.
- Auto-translate needs macOS 26, and tone rewrites need a one-time 3.4 GB model download.
FluidVoice
- Mac only for now: iPhone and Windows versions are listed as coming soon, with a waitlist.
- It requires macOS 15.0 or later, and Intel Macs are limited to the Whisper and Apple Speech models.
- Fluid Intelligence is a separate, privately maintained runtime and is not part of the open-source code.
- Choosing OpenAI, Groq or another cloud provider for enhancement sends text off the Mac.
Key features
Dictato
- Hold-to-talk dictation at the cursor
- Hold a hotkey, or tap to toggle, and the finished text is pasted wherever the cursor is in any app that accepts a paste. Recording continues until the key is released, with no time limit.
- On-device proofreading
- Punctuation, capitals, paragraph breaks and filler words are handled before the text is pasted, and dates, times and amounts are formatted, so a spoken amount comes out as 25 €.
- Four speech engines
- Parakeet covers 24 mostly European languages, Whisper covers 99 and Qwen3 covers 26, while Apple SpeechAnalyzer is used on macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence. Dictato picks a default for the Mac.
- Profiles per app and website
- Rules set the tone, language and engine for each app, and for individual websites in Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi and Opera. Nine tones are built in, and custom ones can be written.
- Tone rewrites, translation and vocabulary
- Tones rewrite a dictation as an email, note or list using a Gemma model stored on the Mac. Auto-translate uses Apple's Translation framework, and a vocabulary plus voice commands fix names and jargon.
- Local history with audio
- Each dictation is kept on the Mac with its audio, the raw transcript and the cleaned text, and can be searched in full or replayed. History is never synced and can be switched off.
FluidVoice
- System-wide dictation
- Hold one global hotkey and speak, and the text is typed into any text field through macOS accessibility APIs. A live preview overlay shows words as they are recognized.
- On-device speech models
- Nemotron Speech 3.5, Parakeet, Cohere Transcribe, Apple Speech and Whisper models run locally. Language coverage depends on the model, from English only up to 99 languages with Whisper.
- Fluid Intelligence
- An optional local AI runtime, about a 3.5 GB download, runs the Fluid-1 model to strip filler, fix capitalization and format text with no cloud service or API key.
- Write Mode and Command Mode
- Write Mode drafts new text or rewrites a selection in any text field. Command Mode launches apps, runs shortcuts and triggers system actions by voice.
- Per-app prompts
- Assign different prompt sets to different apps so the tone follows the context, for example casual in Slack and formal in Mail.
- Optional cloud AI enhancement
- Post-processing can instead use OpenAI, Groq or a custom provider with your own API key, which is stored in the macOS Keychain.
Plans
Dictato
Dictato€19.99
one-time payment, one Mac at a time
Lifetime license with all four engines, proofreading, tones, translation, profiles and updates. VAT is included, and the license can move Macs up to 3 times per 30 days.
FluidVoice
FluidVoice$0
The full Mac app with every speech model, Write and Command modes and optional Fluid Intelligence. GitHub Sponsors support is optional.
Ways to pay less
Dictato
- Lifetime license
One-time lifetime license for €19.99
A single payment of 19.99 € including VAT buys a lifetime license with updates and no renewal. It follows a 7-day free trial and carries a 14-day refund.
FluidVoice
No public discounts listed.
