OpenWhispr vs Voxtype

OpenWhispr

• Open-source dictation on Mac, Windows or Linux
• Unlimited free local transcription with a paid cloud option
• Teams that need SSO, audit logs and compliance documents

Voxtype

• Linux users on Wayland desktops such as Hyprland, Sway or GNOME
• People comfortable setting up a tool from the terminal
• Dictating prompts into terminals, editors and coding agents

OpenWhispr

• The Free plan caps OpenWhispr Cloud at 2,000 words a week and meeting recordings at 5 hours a month.
• The iPhone and iPad app, device sync, Agent mode and API and MCP access all start on Pro.
• Chat over your data needs Business, and SSO, SCIM and audit logs are limited to Enterprise.
• Local model speed depends on your hardware, and cloud processing needs an internet connection.

Voxtype

• There is no Windows or mobile version; packages cover Linux and macOS only.
• Setup happens in the terminal: it runs as a daemon, and on Linux the hotkey is bound in the compositor or needs the user added to the input group.
• Prebuilt Linux packages need a recent distribution, such as Ubuntu 24.04, Debian Trixie or Fedora 40 or later.
• Grammar cleanup and meeting summaries are not built in; they rely on a separate tool such as Ollama that you install yourself.

OpenWhispr

Dictation in any app

Press a hotkey, speak, and the text appears at the cursor in any application on macOS, Windows or Linux, in 100+ languages with auto-detection.

Local models or cloud

Whisper and NVIDIA Parakeet models run on the device for free and work offline. Cloud processing uses OpenWhispr Cloud or your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or Groq keys.

Bot-free meeting notes

Captures the computer's audio during a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams call without a bot joining, then turns your rough notes and the transcript into decisions and action items.

Audio file transcription

Drop in MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC and other audio files to get a transcript, processed on the device by default, then summarize it or extract action items.

Voice instructions and Agent mode

Spoken instructions such as "clean this up" or "draft an email to Mike" rewrite or generate text. Agent mode is included from the Pro plan.

Custom dictionary

Add names, jargon and technical terms the models tend to miss. The dictionary also learns new words from the corrections you make.

Voxtype

Push-to-talk at the cursor

Hold a hotkey, ScrollLock by default, speak and release, and the text is typed at the cursor, with the clipboard as a fallback. A toggle mode starts and stops with one press each.

Nine local speech engines

Whisper, Parakeet, Moonshine, SenseVoice, Paraformer, Dolphin, Omnilingual, Cohere Transcribe and OpenVINO Whisper are switched with one config line. Models load on first use and unload when idle.

GPU and NPU acceleration

Whisper runs on Vulkan across GPU vendors, the ONNX engines use CUDA 12 or 13 on NVIDIA and MIGraphX on AMD cards, and OpenVINO runs Whisper on Intel NPUs.

Meeting mode

Continuous transcription with automatic chunking and speaker attribution for meetings and interviews, stored locally and exported to Markdown, plain text, JSON, SRT or VTT.

Text processing

Spoken punctuation turns words such as "comma" into symbols, replacement tables fix common mistranscriptions, and an optional command pipes the transcript through a local LLM or a shell script.

Linux desktop integration

Compositor keybindings cover Hyprland, Niri, Sway, River, GNOME and KDE, with an evdev fallback for X11. It pauses MPRIS media players while recording and shows a floating waveform.

OpenWhispr

• Free$0

  Unlimited local models and your own API keys, 2,000 OpenWhispr Cloud words a week, 5 hours of meeting recordings a month and a custom dictionary.

• Pro$6.67

  per user / month, billed annually ($80), or $8 billed monthly

  Unlimited cloud transcription, Agent mode, 20 hours of meeting recordings a month, device sync, API and MCP access, and the iPhone and iPad app.

• Business$13.33

  per user / month, billed annually ($160), or $16 billed monthly

  Everything in Pro plus unlimited meeting recordings, chat over your data, basic team management and priority support.

• EnterpriseCustom

  SSO and SAML, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, org-wide retention controls, custom data processing agreements and dedicated support.

Voxtype

• Voxtype$0

  The full tool for Linux and macOS with every engine and meeting mode, installed from the AUR, a .deb or .rpm package, Nix, an AppImage or Homebrew.

OpenWhispr

• Annual discount

  2 months free with annual billing

  Pro is $80 a year against $8 a month, and Business is $160 per user a year against $16 a month.

• Education

  40% off for 12 months for students and teachers

  People using OpenWhispr for their studies or classroom get 40% off for 12 months by emailing support with proof of status. The same offer covers military service and assistive use.

• Nonprofit

  40% off for 12 months for non-profits

  Non-profit work qualifies for 40% off for 12 months. Email support with proof of status to receive a personal code.

Voxtype

No public discounts listed.