Wired reviews paid voice typing apps and points to free options

In short: Paid voice typing apps like Wispr Flow can be convenient, but Wired found several free or low-cost alternatives that do similar work.

What's going on

A growing number of apps promise you can write by speaking instead of typing. One example is Wispr Flow, which costs $144 per year or $15 per month after a short free trial.

Wired tested Wispr Flow and found the results can be good, especially because it does more than basic transcription. The app first turns speech into text, then uses a large language model, or LLM (a text generator that can rewrite and tidy writing), to remove filler words like “um” and “like” and to break thoughts into clean sentences and paragraphs.

The Wired review argues that the building blocks behind these apps are now widely available. For example, Apple Dictation and Google Assistant Voice Typing are free on many devices, and some speech to text tools like OpenAI’s Whisper and Nvidia’s Canary are open source (free for anyone to use and modify). For the cleanup step, many people already pay for tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini, which can rewrite rough text into something more readable.

What to watch

Wired names Spokenly as a strong free alternative on macOS and Windows, especially if you use “local” models (tools that run on your own computer, like cooking at home instead of ordering delivery). That can reduce costs and keep your audio and text from leaving your device. The bigger question is whether more paid apps will need to justify subscriptions as free and offline options get easier to set up.

Source: Wired