Write On vs Wispr Flow
I build Write On, so read this knowing that. Everything below about Wispr Flow comes from their own published pricing page, and I have tried to be fair enough that you would still trust the rest of the site if you went and checked.
The short version: if you dictate on a Mac and you would rather own a tool than rent one, buy Write On. If you need Windows, or your phone, or a team plan, buy Wispr Flow. Those are genuinely different products for genuinely different people.
What it costs
| Write On | Wispr Flow | |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial | 7 days, nothing held back | 14 days of Pro, no card — longer than mine |
| Then | once, and it’s yours | $15 a month, or $144 a year billed yearly — or drop to the free tier at 2,000 words a week on desktop |
| After one year | $144 | |
| After three years | $432 | |
| After five years | $720 |
Wispr Flow figures taken from wisprflow.ai/pricing, 21 August 2026. Their yearly plan is used throughout, because it is the cheaper of their two and it would be dishonest to compare against the more expensive one. If their pricing has changed since that date, theirs is right and this page is stale — tell me and I will fix it.
Where the difference actually comes from
Wispr Flow does the listening on their servers. That is what buys them a hundred languages, an iPhone app, an Android app, and a Windows client — a phone does not have to be fast if the transcription is happening somewhere else. It is also what makes a subscription necessary: those servers run whether you dictate or not, and somebody has to pay for them every month. That is not a criticism, it is just arithmetic.
Write On does the listening on your Mac. That is what makes it a one-time purchase — there is nothing running that I have to fund monthly — and it is what makes it work on a plane. It is also exactly why it is Mac only: the trade is real, and it goes both ways.
What Wispr Flow does better
Languages
Over a hundred of them. Write On does English plus 24 more European languages — most of Europe, but not the whole world.
Every device
Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android. Write On is a Mac app and will stay one.
Teams and compliance
Team plans, admin controls, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification. Write On has none of that. It is one person’s app, sold to one person at a time.
A free tier that never ends
2,000 words a week on desktop, forever, at no cost. Write On’s free period is 7 days and then it stops — shorter than their 14-day Pro trial, too. If 2,000 words a week covers you, their free tier beats paying me anything.
What Write On does better
You buy it once
One payment and the app is yours, including every update. No renewal date, no price rise, no meter running while you think.
It works with the wifi off
On a plane, on hotel wifi, in a basement, during an outage. Same speed, same result, because your Mac is doing the work.
There is no account
No sign-up, no password, no email verification, nothing to be breached. A license key, not a login.
It keeps working without me
If I stop shipping updates tomorrow, the copy on your Mac carries on exactly as it is. There is no server to switch off.
So which one
Buy Wispr Flow if you want it on your phone or a Windows machine, you are buying for a team, or your employer needs the compliance paperwork.
Buy Write On if you dictate on a Mac, you are tired of subscriptions, or your work is the kind that should not be leaving your machine at all.
Both trials are free and neither asks for a card, so the cheapest way to settle it is to run both.
Try Write On freeMore on how the offline part actually works, and how to verify it yourself, is on the security page. Comparing against a local tool instead? Write On vs MacWhisper.