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SnailText vs SuperWhisper

SuperWhisper vs SnailText — which fits you?

Both run AI dictation locally on your machine. SuperWhisper is the more mature Mac-first product with a deeper feature set and a lifetime price option. SnailText treats Windows as a first-class platform, ships a free tier without a 15-minute timer, and costs less per month.

Updated May 2, 2026 · About SuperWhisper

At a glance

The eight things that actually differ.

SnailText and SuperWhisper compared across eight dimensions
Dimension SnailText SuperWhisper

Where audio is processed

On your device

On your device — cloud optional via BYOK

Free tier shape

Unlimited dictation with 2 compact models

15 min of cloud AI, then basic features

Subscription

$7.49/mo · $89/yr

$8.49/mo · $84.99/yr

Lifetime option

Not in 2026

$249.99 one-time

Windows maturity

First-class from Day 1 — same models as Mac

Windows shipped Nov 2025; macOS since 2023

Modes / per-context prompts

Yes — but less mature

Yes — best in category

BYOK to cloud LLMs

Not yet

GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, ElevenLabs, more

Refund policy

30-day, no questions

30-day refund on paid plans

= SnailText wins this row, = SuperWhisper wins. Rows without a check are honest washes.

Their side

When SuperWhisper is the right call

If you're on Apple Silicon and you'd rather pay once than rent forever, SuperWhisper's $249 lifetime is hard to argue with. Even at our best annual price of $89/year, you break even on lifetime in three years. After that, SuperWhisper is free and we are not.

Their Modes system is also genuinely better than ours today. If you regularly switch between dictating code, prose, customer emails, and Slack — and you want each context to have its own vocabulary, autocapitalize rules, and keyboard shortcut — SuperWhisper's implementation is more polished. Our Modes work, but they're catching up, not leading.

And if you want to plug GPT-5 or Claude Opus 4.5 into your dictation flow for cloud STT or LLM cleanup, SuperWhisper's BYOK setup is the most complete in the category. We don't ship BYOK in 2026.

Our side

When SnailText is the better fit

Two practical things tend to push people from SuperWhisper to us. First, Windows. SuperWhisper's Windows build shipped November 2025, while their macOS app has been actively developed since 2023 — there's a real maturity gap. Windows updates ship frequently now, but two years of macOS-first product time leaves visible polish differences. We treated Windows as a first-class platform from Day 1 — same models as Mac, same UI, same release cadence.

Second, the free tier. SuperWhisper's free tier gives you 15 minutes of cloud-AI recording, then drops to "basic features indefinitely." Our free tier is unlimited dictation with the two compact local Whisper models — no minute cap, no daily reset. For most everyday dictation, the free tier is genuinely usable forever.

And on monthly cost — $7.49/month vs $8.49/month. Small gap, but no BYOK token bills layered on top. The cloud post-processing in SuperWhisper Pro requires you to bring (and pay for) OpenAI or Anthropic API keys separately. Our subscription is the total monthly cost.

Third, what "local" actually covers. SuperWhisper processes audio on-device — that part is accurate. Their Smart Modes feature sends additional context to Modal's cloud infrastructure on each dictation: the active app name, clipboard contents, and focused window text. This is visible in their own network traffic. SnailText has no outbound connection in the dictation pipeline at all — audio, clipboard, focused window, everything stays on your machine. Verify in any network monitor.

  • · Windows treated as a first-class platform — same models, same release cadence as Mac
  • · Truly unlimited free tier — no recording cap, no trial timer, no watermark
  • · Localised UI (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian) — SuperWhisper is English-only
  • · Fully local dictation pipeline — audio and context both stay on your machine

Subscription vs lifetime — the real math

SuperWhisper sells a $249.99 lifetime option, and most reviews flag it as the standout pricing move in the category. We don't have a lifetime tier in 2026, and we're honest about why: our backend is built around subscription verification, and adding lifetime means a real refactor we haven't done yet. So this is a structural difference, not a marketing hedge.

The math: at $89/year for SnailText Pro Yearly, you spend $267 over three years — SuperWhisper's lifetime is $249.99. So break-even is just under three years. Past that, you keep paying us and SuperWhisper is free. If you're confident you'll dictate for several years and you're happy with what SuperWhisper ships, lifetime wins. If you'd rather not commit that confidence to any product upfront, subscription wins.

We may add a lifetime tier eventually. We won't ship a half-baked one to match a feature.

The Windows maturity gap

SuperWhisper started Mac-only and added Windows in November 2025 (v1.0.0 on their changelog). Their macOS app has been shipping since at least August 2023. That's two years of macOS-first product development — features, UX polish, edge cases — that the Windows build is still catching up on, even though both platforms get frequent updates now.

Their homepage is explicit about hardware: "Offline models only run really well on Apple Silicon macs" and "Intel Macs work best with Cloud models." They don't make the same caveat about Windows publicly, but the same constraint applies — Whisper-class local inference is fastest on Apple Silicon.

We treat Windows and Mac as equal first-class platforms from Day 1. Same Whisper and Parakeet TDT v3 models on both, same release cadence, same UI. If your daily driver is a Windows machine and you want dictation that was built for it from the start — not added later — that's the case for us.

The flip side: SuperWhisper has iOS, and we don't. If a meaningful share of your dictation happens on a phone, neither product is the full answer for you, but SuperWhisper covers more of it.

BYOK — depth vs simplicity

SuperWhisper's BYOK story is genuinely the most complete in the category — Pro users plug in API keys for OpenAI's GPT-5 series, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, and ElevenLabs Scribe v2. ElevenLabs publishes its own benchmarks claiming Scribe v2 outperforms Whisper Large v3 across 102 languages, so for users with tough audio (heavy accents, code-heavy speech, noisy environments) the BYOK cloud route can pull ahead of any local model.

We don't ship BYOK today. The trade-off is honest: no extra token bills, no extra config, no "why is dictation suddenly costing me $40 in OpenAI credits this month" questions. The local models are what you get, and the local models are what you pay for.

If the BYOK ceiling is what you want, SuperWhisper is the right product. If you'd rather have one subscription, one bill, and dictation that works without ever touching a third-party API, we are.

FAQ

Common questions about SuperWhisper.

A few. Lower monthly price ($7.49 vs $8.49). A free tier with no recording cap. Localised UI in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. One subscription covers up to 3 devices. If those don't matter to you and you'd take lifetime over monthly, SuperWhisper is a fine pick — they have two more years of macOS-first product polish, and on Apple Silicon that's where it shows. The honest case for us on Mac is the free tier and the price; the honest case against us on Mac is feature maturity.

You can — it works, and they ship updates frequently. The honest comparison is about maturity, not active development. Their Windows app launched November 2025; their macOS app has been actively developed since 2023. Two years of Mac-first product time shows up in feature parity and edge-case polish. We built for Windows and Mac as equals from Day 1 — same models, same UI, same release timing. If you want a Windows dictation app that wasn't a port, that's the case for us.

We do, but theirs are more mature. Our Modes work — you can set per-mode STT model and language. Theirs handle per-mode keyboard shortcuts, custom vocabularies, autocapitalize rules, and prompt templates. If Modes are central to how you dictate, SuperWhisper is genuinely ahead today.

Possibly, but not in 2026. Our backend is built around subscription verification and adding a lifetime tier means a real refactor we haven't done. We'd rather start at $7.49/month — at the bottom of the category alongside Voibe's promo $7.42 and below SuperWhisper's $8.49 — than ship a half-baked lifetime tier just to match a feature.

Not in 2026. SuperWhisper's BYOK to ElevenLabs Scribe v2 / GPT-5 is the right pick if you need cloud-grade STT for tough audio with strong accents or background noise. We're researching opt-in cloud STT for Pro users who want it, but it's not on the near-term ship list.

SuperWhisper transcribes audio/video files (Pro feature). We don't. If you have hours of recorded interviews or meetings to transcribe, SuperWhisper is the right tool. We're built for live dictation; file transcription is a Phase 2 feature for us at best, and honestly MacWhisper is also worth a look in that space.

It's adding it, in most cases. SuperWhisper Pro is $8.49/month for the app, but if you turn on Scribe v2 for STT or GPT-5 for cleanup, you're paying ElevenLabs / OpenAI separately by the token. For light dictation it's pennies; for heavy daily use it can add $10–30/month on top of the subscription. The "$249 lifetime + free model usage" math is real; the "$249 lifetime + frontier cloud features" math depends on how much you actually use them.

Verdict

SuperWhisper is the right pick if you're on Apple Silicon, you want lifetime over subscription, and you'd use the BYOK depth and Modes maturity that the extra macOS product time has given them. SnailText is the right pick if Windows is your main machine and you'd rather not deal with a recently-shipped Windows port, you want a real free tier, you'd rather have one all-in monthly bill than juggle BYOK tokens, and bilingual UI matters. We're not trying to replace SuperWhisper for Mac power users — we're trying to be the cleaner choice for everyone they don't fit yet.

Download for Mac Or for Windows →

Free to start. Pro from $7.49/mo · $89/yr. Works offline.

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