Free AI Dictation App for Mac: What Each Free Plan Caps

The best free AI dictation app for Mac is the one whose cap you will not hit. As of October 30, 2026, macOS Dictation, Granola, Fireflies Talk and Handy have no word limit, Wispr Flow stops at 2,000 words a week on desktop, and Monologue gives 1,000 words as a trial.

Every cap above comes from the vendor's own pricing, docs or help page, read on October 30, 2026. We did not benchmark accuracy or speed, so nothing here says which app transcribes best. It says which ones will stop you, and when.

A free AI dictation app for Mac usually hits one of four caps

A word cap is the one most people expect. Wispr Flow's pricing page lists a 2,000 words a week limit on desktop and "limited weekly use" on mobile. Typeless says its free plan has limited words each week but publishes no figure. Monologue's free trial is 1,000 dictation words plus 10 recorded notes, and it is called a trial, not a plan.

A quality cap keeps the words unlimited and weakens what you get. superwhisper's free plan allows unlimited dictation with local Whisper models but no AI-powered modes. Willow Voice's free Basic plan gives unlimited use of a weaker speech-to-text model and 20 Scribe (its AI writing feature) uses a week.

A session cap limits one dictation, not the total. Granola cuts a hands-free dictation at 20 minutes and pastes what it has. macOS Dictation has no timeout, but stops after 30 seconds without speech.

A policy cap is a promise that can change. Speechify's voice typing page says it is free "today, though this may change in the future", and Granola's voice typing is in beta.

Does Mac have built-in voice typing? Yes, and it has no time limit

Dictation is part of macOS itself, so it is the baseline any app on this list has to beat. Apple's support page says you can dictate text of any length without a timeout, and on Apple silicon you can keep typing while you speak. You start it with the Microphone key or a shortcut you set in Keyboard settings.

The catch is how much it does for you. Apple's page describes automatic commas, periods and question marks, and says that in macOS 27 an on-device model improves spelling, punctuation and capitalization, but only in English on Macs with an M3 chip or later and at least 12GB of memory. It does not describe removing filler words or adapting to the app you are in, which Granola, Speechify and Fireflies each document for their own tools.

Two other details matter. Apple says whether general text dictation runs on your device shows in System Settings under Keyboard, so check it rather than assume. And if Voice Control is on, standard Dictation is not available.

Is Wispr Flow free? Yes, up to 2,000 words a week on desktop

Wispr Flow is free on Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, and no credit card is needed to start, according to its pricing page. The free plan caps desktop dictation at 2,000 words a week, gives limited weekly use on mobile and includes limited access to its Notetaker. Wispr Flow Pro removes the dictation limit at $12 per user per month on annual billing, or $15 month to month.

Is 2,000 words enough? Speechify says most people speak at about 150 words per minute, so the cap is roughly 13 minutes of talking a week. That covers short replies and the occasional prompt. It does not cover dictating a daily journal, long emails or a draft article.

Is Granola voice typing really unlimited? For words, yes. For minutes, no

Granola launched voice typing on October 29, 2026, and TechCrunch quotes the company's announcement as "Unlimited words, for free." Granola's voice typing page repeats it, and its pricing page lists voice typing as included on Basic, Business and Enterprise. We found no word cap on either page or in the docs.

The limits are elsewhere. Granola's help center calls voice typing a beta on the Mac desktop app, and a single dictation runs for at most 20 minutes. It needs the Accessibility and microphone permissions, and your shortcut defaults to the fn key.

It is also not an offline tool. Granola's privacy page says it sends your audio, your dictionary and, with screen context on, limited text from the app you are dictating into to its transcription and AI providers, which it says do not train on your dictations. A failed dictation is kept as encrypted audio on your Mac for 24 hours so you can retry it.

Is there a free alternative to Wispr Flow? Yes, five with no weekly word cap

If 2,000 words a week is too tight, Granola (above) and the four below are the free options whose own pages show no weekly word limit. They differ in what you give up.

Fireflies Talk: free dictation inside the Fireflies app

Fireflies says Talk offers unlimited dictation on every plan, including the free plan, with no word limit and no separate subscription. On a Mac you install the Fireflies desktop app, hold the Fn key and speak, and double-tap to go hands-free. It supports 90+ languages and says dictations are stored on your device. Skip it if you do not want a meeting-notetaker app installed just to dictate.

Speechify: free today, with a pricing-page contradiction

Speechify's voice typing page says it is free on Mac and Windows, needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, and ships an on-device model that lets you dictate fully offline. Its pricing page disagrees: the free plan is listed as "text to speech features only", and Voice Typing appears in the Premium column at $139 a year or $29 monthly. We would treat Speechify as free until it says otherwise, and not build a workflow on it.

superwhisper's free plan: unlimited, but no AI cleanup

superwhisper says its free plan gives unlimited dictation with any local Whisper model, custom vocabulary, text replacements and up to two modes without AI processing. It says nothing you dictate leaves your device on that plan. New users also get 3,000 words of free access to all Pro features, after which the app drops to Free. Pro costs $8.49 a month, $84.99 a year or $249.99 once, and adds cloud models, AI modes and context awareness.

Handy: free, open source and offline

Handy is an MIT-licensed app that transcribes locally with Whisper or Parakeet models and pastes the result into any text field. Neither its README nor its homepage describes a word limit. Its homepage describes the job as "transcribe what you say and put it into a text box", so expect transcription, not the rewriting that Granola or Speechify describe. It works on macOS, Windows and Linux, and you grant microphone and Accessibility permissions at setup.

Free offline dictation app for Mac: four ways to keep audio on the machine

Handy, superwhisper, Speechify and macOS Dictation can all run without sending your audio to a vendor, with conditions. Handy works completely offline. superwhisper's free plan uses local models only, and its docs say local voice models transcribe without an internet connection. Speechify says its on-device model keeps working with no internet. Apple's dictation depends on your Keyboard settings and language.

Granola does not belong on this list, as its privacy page above shows. Monologue lists offline transcription in its free trial, but a 1,000-word trial is a test, not a daily tool. For meeting notes rather than dictation, our post on an offline AI note taker covers six apps.

Which free dictation app to pick

• Pick macOS Dictation if you dictate short bursts, want nothing to install, and can live without filler-word cleanup.
• Pick Granola or Fireflies Talk if you want AI-cleaned text with no word cap and already use, or do not mind installing, a meeting-notes app.
• Pick Handy or superwhisper's free plan if audio must stay on your Mac and you will take plain transcription.
• Pick Wispr Flow's free plan if you dictate under about 13 minutes a week and want its dictionary and snippets.
• Skip Monologue, Typeless and Willow Voice's free tiers as a main tool unless the cap suits you: a 1,000-word trial, an unpublished weekly word limit, and a weaker model respectively.

As of October 30, 2026, Upfynd lists 285 products in AI Audio & Voice and 273 in Notes & Knowledge, so the dictation tools above sit next to hundreds of related tools you can compare. If you make a dictation app and it is missing, you can submit it for free. Caps change quickly in this category, so check the vendor page linked above before you commit.