The best transcriber app, by the job you need done
To type your own speech into any app, the best transcriber is Lven Instant: on-device, offline, no word cap, never rewrites, free. To caption what others say: Google's Live Transcribe on Android and Live Captions in Windows 11, both on the device. To turn a recording into text: Otter.
- Which job: captions of others, recordings, or your own dictation
- Where the audio is processed
- Works offline
- Limits and price
- What it does to the words
The only dictation product compared on this site that is always on-device, never rewrites your words, has no usage cap and ships on Linux — and it is free.
Right for: Typing your own speech into any app — documents, chat, email, code — on Windows, Linux or Android, with nothing uploaded.
The same bubble with the transcription done on our servers, at a third of Wispr Flow's price: no word cap, no rewrite unless you turn on AI polish, nothing kept after delivery, and nothing heavy on your machine.
Right for: The same dictation job on a device that cannot hold the on-device model.
Google's accessibility app for Android: it captures speech and sound around you and shows them as text on the screen. Its job is understanding other people, not typing into your apps.
Right for: Following a conversation, a lecture or a meeting on an Android phone.
Built into Windows 11 (version 22H2 and later): captions the speech in any audio on the PC, processed entirely on the device — Microsoft states that audio and captions never leave it.
Right for: Captioning calls, videos and meetings on a Windows 11 PC at no extra cost.
Not dictation. Otter records meetings and transcribes them in the cloud with summaries and speaker labels; it does not type at your cursor.
Right for: Meeting notes with summaries and shared transcripts.
The best-known cloud dictation app. Polished, fast, and it rewrites your words: in July 2026 the company traced accuracy complaints to a default that changed words users had not asked it to touch.
Right for: A Mac or iPhone user who wants dictation rewritten into finished prose and does not mind cloud processing.
Free, built in, and on most configurations it sends your audio to Microsoft's online speech service.
Right for: Occasional dictation with zero setup and zero cost, when cloud processing is not a concern.
Common questions.
Is a transcriber app the same as a dictation app?
Can Lven transcribe an audio file or a meeting recording?
Which transcriber works offline?
What is the best free transcriber?
- Google — Use Live Transcribe: captures speech and sound as on-screen text; languages downloadable for offline use on select devices and Pixel phones running Android 12 or later
- Microsoft — Use live captions: Windows 11 version 22H2 and later; all processing on the device, audio and captions never leave it; 20 recognition languages
- Otter.ai pricing — Basic free with 300 monthly transcription minutes; Pro $8.33/user/mo billed annually or $16.99 monthly
- Google Play — Live Transcribe listing: price 0, in-app purchases listed
- Wispr Flow pricing page — Pro $15/user/mo monthly or $12/user/mo billed annually; free tier 2,000 words/week on desktop
- Digital Trends — Wispr Flow traces accuracy complaints to an over-aggressive Auto Cleanup that changed words
- Typeless — home page and pricing page: Mac, Windows, iOS and Android; polished-writing rewrite; free tier 8,000 words/week; $12/member/mo billed yearly, $30 monthly
- Superwhisper — AI voice to text for macOS, Windows and iOS; offline and cloud models
- ClassEve — the engine Lven Instant ships vs. Whisper-class models, measured on consumer-grade hardware (speed, accuracy, latency)
- ClassEve — What the polish pass changes: the 31-case golden corpus