Apps similar to WhisperBuddy include Handy STT, which is free and open source. Other options are Vibe Transcribe, Voxtral, OpenWhispr and FUTO Voice Input. You're spoiled for choice with Audio Transcription Tools like WhisperBuddy: we list more than 100 alternatives for Mac, the web, Windows, iPhone and Linux.
Glasscribe is a lightweight macOS menu bar app that transcribes speech in real time — entirely on your device. Built on Apple's native Speech framework (macOS 26 Tahoe), it captures both system audio and microphone input across 22+ languages with real-time on-device...
Scriber Pro transforms your audio and video files into accurate text in seconds with the power of AI transcription. Whether you're transcribing meetings, interviews, lectures, or personal recordings, Scriber Pro makes it effortless.
Provides automatic and human-powered transcription for audio and video files in over 119 languages, enables accurate subtitles, translates transcripts, integrates with major communication tools, and supports team collaboration and review for accessible content.
Spain
EU
On-device voice dictation for Mac. Hold a hotkey, speak, release, and Whisper-transcribed text appears at your cursor. No cloud, no account, no subscription.
United States
Subanana is a multilingual AI speech-to-text workspace for subtitles, transcripts, translation, meeting minutes and live event captions.
Hong Kong SAR China
NotchLive is a macOS menu bar app that displays real-time AI-powered captions and translations directly in your MacBook's notch. It uses on-device Whisper AI (via CoreML) for speech recognition and Apple Translation for real-time translation — nothing ever leaves your Mac.
Kekoso is a menu bar app for macOS that turns speech into text without sending audio anywhere. Press a hotkey, talk, release, and the text is pasted into whatever field you were typing in.
Kazakhstan
Iris Flow is an open-source overlay dictation app for Apple Silicon Macs. Hold Left-Ctrl to speak, release, and the transcript is pasted at the cursor in Notes, Slack, browsers, editors, and other apps. There is no account and no hosted backend.
Transcriboar is a lightweight Android transcription app that uses the device’s built-in SpeechRecognizer to convert speech to text in real time.
United States
Bulbul is a free, open-source voice dictation app for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. Hold a hotkey (or tap the bubble on your phone), speak, and cleaned-up text appears in whatever app you're using — editor, browser, chat, terminal.
Open-source Mac application supporting local transcription of microphone, media, and system audio sources, with editable transcripts, live captions, privacy by design, export in TXT, Markdown, JSON, PDF, SRT, WebVTT, translation, and offline processing. Requires Apple silicon.
China
Record meetings, lectures, and podcasts. Transcribe in 10+ languages with on-device Apple models. Get ChatGPT-powered summaries via Apple Intelligence — no subscriptions.
Armenia
India
