Comparison
Dictate vs Superwhisper
Superwhisper has been a leader in the local-first dictation niche on Mac. They support on-device transcription, a strong privacy posture, and an LLM action stack that does more than just turn speech into text. If you want everything to run on your laptop with no cloud, Superwhisper is a real choice. Dictate is a different bet.
Where Superwhisper is genuinely strong
- Local-only mode — transcription without the network.
- Strong privacy story — audio doesn’t need to leave the device.
- LLM action chains for more than just dictation.
Where Dictate makes a different bet
- Managed cloud transcription tuned for insertion reliability.
- Signed offline entitlements — short bursts work without network.
- Audio is discarded after transcription — we keep the text, not the recording.
- Account-backed transcript history, glossary, and settings.
Side-by-side
| Dimension | Dictate | Superwhisper |
|---|---|---|
| API-backed transcript history | Yes | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Polish / AI rewrite step | Yes | Yes |
| Glossary / custom dictionary | Partial | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Accessibility-API insertion | Yes | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Mac App Store availability | No | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Pricing model | Subscription $8/month, monthly only | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Local-only privacy story Superwhisper supports on-device transcription; Dictate is cloud-only today. | Partial | Yes |
| On-device LLM action chains | No | Yes |
| Multilingual quality | Unknown — see vendor docs | Unknown — see vendor docs |
| Native Apple Silicon | Yes | Yes |
Cells marked “Unknown — see vendor docs” mean we couldn’t verify the capability from public sources at time of writing. We’d rather say “we don’t know” than guess.
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Run them side by side and pick the one that fits your workflow.