Choosing a dictation app

Seven questions worth asking. Updated 24 August 2026.

Dictation tools look nearly identical on a feature list. They differ enormously in ways a feature list does not show: where your voice goes, what happens when the wifi drops, and what you are left with if the company stops trading.

These are the questions we would ask. We have answered each one for Voyce, including the ones where the honest answer is that you want something else. We have deliberately not printed anyone else's prices or claims, because those change on their servers and not on ours, and a stale table here would be us getting someone else's business wrong. Ask them directly. The questions are the useful part.

1. Where is my voice actually transcribed?

The important distinction is on-device versus cloud, and marketing language blurs it deliberately. "Private", "secure" and "encrypted" are all compatible with uploading every word you say to somebody's server. The question to ask is not whether it is secure. It is whether the audio leaves the machine at all. A useful test: unplug the network and see whether it still works.

Voyce On your own CPU. There is no upload step and no transcription service behind it, which is why it keeps working with the wifi off. The model is fetched once, on first run, and never again.

2. Do I need an account to use it?

An account means your usage is attached to an identity on someone's database, and it means the product can be switched off remotely. Some tools need one before they will transcribe a single word.

Voyce No. The free tier needs no account, no email and no card. Buying a licence needs an email address so we can send you the key, and the key is pasted into the app. There is still no account and no password.

3. What happens when the company disappears?

Worth asking of any small software company, including this one. If the product is a client for a cloud service, it stops the day the service does. If the licence is checked against a server on every launch, it stops when that server stops answering.

Voyce A lifetime licence is verified offline against a key built into the app, so it never contacts us and cannot be switched off. A monthly licence checks in, but keeps working for 14 days without an answer, because our servers failing is our problem rather than yours. The transcription itself never needed us.

4. Is the free tier a free tier, or a trial?

"Free" often means free for fourteen days, or free for the first 2,000 words, after which the tool you have built a habit around stops. That is a trial. It is a legitimate thing to sell, but it is worth knowing which one you are signing up to before you rely on it.

Voyce 15 minutes of dictation a day, every day, with no end date. It is not a countdown and it does not expire. If 15 minutes a day is enough for you, that is a complete answer and you never need to pay.

5. Does it type where I am already working?

There are two designs. One gives you a window to dictate into, which you then copy out. The other types directly into whatever application has focus. The second is much faster in practice and works in software the tool has never heard of.

Voyce Types into the focused window. There is nothing to copy and nothing to paste. It works the same in Word, a browser, a terminal or a chat box because it does not need to know what they are.

6. Can I teach it my own vocabulary, and how?

Every engine fails on names, jargon and product names, which are the words you use most. So ask two things: can you teach it, and what does it read in order to learn? Some tools improve by watching the edits you make in your other applications, which means reading your documents and your messages.

Voyce You correct it in its own panel, and it learns the word for next time. It does not watch what you type elsewhere. An ordinary English word has to be corrected twice before it is trusted, so one typo cannot teach it to rewrite a common word everywhere.

7. What does it cost in a year, and in five?

Monthly pricing is easier to start and harder to compare. Multiply it out. Then check whether a one-off option exists at all, because for a tool you expect to use daily for years, that is usually the honest comparison.

Voyce £8 a month, or £149 once for a lifetime licence. The lifetime option pays for itself somewhere under two years and then costs nothing. The full pricing is here.

When Voyce is the wrong choice

Written plainly, because finding this out after paying is worse for both of us.

You are on a Mac, an iPhone or an Android. Voyce is Windows only. There is no other version and none is promised.
You want to transcribe recordings or files. Voyce dictates live speech and does nothing with an existing audio file.
You want meeting notes, speaker labels or summaries. Voyce is a typing tool, not a meeting assistant. Use something built for that.
You want to talk to it hands-free. There is no wake word, and we removed the control rather than leave a switch that does nothing. You hold a key.
Your machine has Smart App Control switched on. Voyce is not code-signed yet, and Smart App Control refuses unsigned software outright: not a warning you can dismiss, the installer simply will not run. We confirmed this on a machine with it enforcing. It is on by default on many new Windows 11 PCs. Turning it off is not a workaround worth taking, because Windows will not let you turn it back on. A certificate is being bought; until then this is a genuine reason to wait.
You dictate mainly in a language other than English. The shipping models are English.

Back to Voyce · Documentation · Pricing · Changelog