TL;DR: AI cleanup strips your "um", fixes your punctuation, and reshapes rambling speech into sentences. It is genuinely great for anything a human will read and completely pointless for prompting Claude Code. Wispr Flow has the best cleanup included. Infina ships raw on purpose, with cleanup as an optional add-on on top of the yearly plan, because most of our users are talking to agents that do not care.
One thing to hold in mind while you read the rankings below. Infina runs on three spoken triggers and there is no fourth. Say "type" and a sentence and it lands as typed text in whatever app is in front of you. Say "send it", or just "enter", and it presses Enter so the prompt actually goes. Say "open Cursor" or "open Slack" and your computer switches apps for you.
Nothing is held down and nothing is pressed. There is no push-to-talk key to find and no Enter key to reach for two hundred times a day, which is the part every other tool in this category leaves to your hands. Wispr Flow, Superwhisper and the rest all stop at inserting text, which leaves the two keypresses around every prompt exactly where they were.
What cleanup actually is, and what it costs
A dictation app without cleanup gives you what you said. A dictation app with cleanup runs that transcript through a language model and gives you what you meant: filler removed, punctuation inserted, half-finished sentences repaired, sometimes tone adjusted to the app you are in.
Three costs come with it, and vendors rarely lay them out:
It usually means cloud. Cleanup models are large. Running one well on a laptop alongside a speech model is a real ask, which is why most cleanup layers run on a server.
It adds a beat. The text appears after the model has thought about it, not as you speak.
It rewrites you. Mostly for the better. Occasionally it smooths out a technical term, a name, or a deliberately terse instruction into something you did not say.
| App | Cleanup included | Where it runs | Hands-free | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wispr Flow | Yes, always on | Cloud | No | $15/mo ($12/mo annual) |
| Superwhisper | Yes, per mode | Local or cloud models | No | $84.99/yr; $249.99 lifetime |
| Aqua Voice | Yes, its whole pitch | Cloud | No | Checked July 2026, see site |
| Willow Voice | Yes | Cloud | No | Checked July 2026, see site |
| MacWhisper | Yes, on transcripts | Local or cloud | No | Free tier; Pro €65 once |
| Infina | Optional add-on | Cloud add-on | Yes, three triggers | $99/year, add-on $60/yr |
1. Wispr Flow: the best included cleanup
If cleanup is the feature you are shopping for, this is the one to beat. It runs on every dictation without you configuring anything, strips filler aggressively, punctuates well, and matches tone to the app you are typing into. Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, 100+ languages.
It is cloud-only, which is the direct consequence of doing cleanup this well, and it is $15/month or $12/month billed annually, so $144 to $180 a year. It inserts text and stops there: no app switching, no send.
Pick it if: you write for human readers all day and cloud is fine. Skip it if: you need local, or you want the loop finished. wisprflow.ai, and Wispr Flow vs Infina.
2. Superwhisper: cleanup you configure, locally if you want
Superwhisper's modes are the most flexible approach here. You define what a mode does, point it at a local or a cloud model, and get email-shaped output in one context and note-shaped output in another. Being able to keep the whole chain local is the thing nobody else on this list offers seriously.
Free tier, $84.99/year, or $249.99 lifetime, which is cheaper than Infina. Hotkey-driven, no send.
Pick it if: you want cleanup without sending audio anywhere. Skip it if: you do not want to configure modes.
3. Aqua Voice: cleanup as the entire product
Aqua Voice is built around the idea that dictation should produce finished text, not a transcript, and it leans harder into the rewriting than anyone. If you want something that takes a rambling spoken paragraph and hands back a tight one, this is the category's purest expression.
We last checked its pricing on July 4, 2026 and have not re-verified it since, so check withaqua.com rather than trusting a number in an SEO roundup, including ours. Cloud-based.
Pick it if: the rewrite is the product you want. Skip it if: local matters.
4. Willow Voice: cleanup with a writing focus
Willow sits in the same bracket: speech in, polished prose out, aimed at people producing written work rather than prompting machines. Same caveat as Aqua, our last price check was July 4, 2026, so see willowvoice.com. Cloud-based.
Pick it if: long-form writing by voice. Skip it if: you are prompting agents.
5. MacWhisper: cleanup applied to recordings
MacWhisper's cleanup is aimed at transcripts of things you already recorded: meetings, interviews, calls. It can tidy them, summarize them, and export them, with the option of keeping the whole thing local. That is a different job from cleaning up live dictation, and it is the best tool here for it.
Free tier, Pro €65 once. The €59 figure floating around SEO roundups is out of date.
Pick it if: you clean up recordings. Skip it if: you want live typing polished.
6. Infina: raw on purpose, cleanup as an option
Infina's base product deliberately does not rewrite you. That is a design decision, not a gap, and the reason is who it is for: if you are dictating a prompt into Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, a missing comma changes nothing, an "um" changes nothing, and the model in front of you is already a language model that handles imperfect input for a living. Adding a rewrite step there costs you latency and buys you nothing.
What Infina spends its effort on instead is the part nobody else removes: the keyboard. "Open Cursor." "Type" plus your prompt. "Send it", or just "enter". Nothing is held down, no push-to-talk key, and you are not pressing Return two hundred times a day.
If you do write for human readers, there is an optional cloud add-on on top of the $99/year plan: $5 per month billed annually at $60 a year, with a 7-day trial that requires a card. It adds LLM-polished output for text people read. It is something you turn on after you have bought the yearly plan, if you find you want it. If you mostly prompt agents, your yearly plan is already enough and we would rather you kept the $60.
Pick it if: you prompt AI tools all day and want the whole loop hands-free. Skip it if: polished prose is the main output and you want it included in one price. Details: cloud add-on, dictation for writers.
When Infina is not the answer
- Cleanup is the feature you are buying. Wispr Flow includes it and does it best.
- You want cleanup that never leaves your Mac. Superwhisper with local models.
- You write long-form prose by voice. Aqua or Willow are built for that.
- You are cleaning up recordings. MacWhisper.
- You want one price with everything in it. With Infina, polish is a separate add-on.
FAQ
Which dictation app removes filler words automatically? Wispr Flow does it on every dictation with no setup and is the strongest here. Superwhisper does it per mode and can do it locally. Aqua Voice and Willow Voice both build their product around it. Infina's base output is raw; filler removal comes with the optional cloud add-on.
Do I need AI cleanup if I dictate prompts to Claude Code or ChatGPT? No. The model reading your prompt is already a language model and handles filler, missing punctuation, and half-finished sentences without difficulty. Cleanup adds a delay and changes nothing about the result. Save it for text a person will read.
Does AI cleanup mean my audio goes to the cloud? Usually yes. Wispr Flow, Aqua, and Willow are cloud-based. Superwhisper and MacWhisper can run cleanup against local models if you configure it that way. Infina transcribes locally by default, and the optional cleanup add-on is the part that uses the cloud.
Can AI cleanup change what I actually said? Yes, occasionally. Rewriting is what it is for, and a model smoothing a sentence can flatten a technical term, a product name, or a deliberately blunt instruction. For code, commands, and anything quoted, raw transcription is safer.
How much does Infina's cleanup add-on cost? It is $5 per month billed annually at $60 per year, on top of the $99/year plan, with a 7-day trial that requires a card. It is optional and sits on top of a paid plan. Most people dictating to AI agents never need it.
The bottom line
Cleanup is worth paying for when a person reads what you wrote, and worth skipping when a model does. Wispr Flow is the best included version and the most expensive. Superwhisper is the best local version. Aqua and Willow go furthest on rewriting. Infina leaves your words alone by default, removes the keyboard from the loop instead, and sells cleanup as an option you can add later if you want it.
More: dictation for writers, Wispr Flow vs Infina, cloud add-on.
The short answer, by what you are trying to do
If you want to skip the detail above, find your sentence in this table and buy that one.
The tools this page covers (Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, MacWhisper) are at the top. The rest of the field follows, because the right answer is sometimes none of the above.
| Tool | Price | Keyboard needed | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infina | $99 a year, unlimited words and unlimited commands | No. Speak "type", speak the prompt, say "send it" or "enter". | you want to prompt AI tools without touching the keyboard. Say "type" and the words go in, "send it" and the prompt goes, "open Cursor" and you are in the next agent. It is the only one of these that finishes the whole loop by voice in the tools developers prompt in all day. |
| Wispr Flow | $15 a month, or $144 a year billed annually | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you need dictation on an iPhone or an Android phone as well as a laptop, or you write in one of 100+ languages. Those are the two things Infina does not ship. |
| Superwhisper | $8.49 a month, $84.99 a year, or $249.99 once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want to pick and swap the speech model yourself, and dictation into a text box is the whole job. It stops where the text box ends: there is no spoken send, and no spoken app switch. |
| MacWhisper | 65 euros, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | the job is transcribing recorded audio files rather than talking to your computer while you work. |
| VoiceInk | $25 to $49, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want plain local dictation at the smallest possible price and you never need your voice to control the machine. |
| Talon | free | No, once you have learned its command language. | you want to drive the entire computer by voice, cursor and clicks included, and you are willing to learn a command language to get there. Talon is the serious hands-free tool on this list. Infina goes after the same freedom with three ordinary English words instead of a syntax to learn. |
| Apple Dictation | free, built in | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you dictate a sentence here and there and do not want to install anything. |
The part that is actually different: zero keypresses
The mainstream dictation apps (Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, VoiceInk, Apple Dictation) are all push-to-talk: you hold or press a key to start talking, and you press Enter to send. That is two physical acts on every single prompt. A hundred prompts in a day is two hundred keypresses that exist only to start and stop the tool. Infina removes both of them. Nothing is held, nothing is pressed, and the same loop runs on three spoken words.
There are three triggers and there is no fourth. "type" types, "send it" sends, "open" opens and switches apps. The send trigger answers to either wording, "send it" or a plain "enter", whichever you find yourself saying. That is the entire vocabulary: no command language, no grammar, no custom scripts to write, nothing to memorize beyond those three words.
When Infina is not the answer. If you need dictation on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android phone or Linux, Infina is a Mac and Windows desktop app and there is no phone version. Wispr Flow covers phones.
Everywhere else, the difference is the loop. Every other tool in that table types words into a box and stops, leaving your hands to press Enter and pick the next window. Infina finishes it: say "type" and your sentence, say "send it" (or just "enter"), say "open Cursor", and keep going without a key.