TL;DR: You can test every serious Mac dictation app for nothing, and only some of them want a card first. Infina gives you 2,000 words and 50 voice commands with no card, which is enough to find out whether hands-free typing and sending changes your day. Wispr Flow and Superwhisper both run ongoing free tiers, MacWhisper and VoiceInk have free versions and refunds, and Talon and Apple Dictation are simply free. Here is exactly what each one lets you do.
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. Talon is the other genuinely hands-free option and it is free, but it asks you to learn a command language. Three ordinary words is the whole difference.
What to actually test during a trial
Most people spend a trial checking transcription accuracy, decide all the apps are fine, and buy on price. That is the wrong test, because accuracy stopped being the differentiator a while ago.
Test the friction instead. Over one working day, count:
- How many times you touched the keyboard to start talking.
- How many times you pressed Return to send what you dictated.
- How many times you reached for the trackpad to change window.
Those three numbers are the product. Transcription is table stakes.
| App | What is free | Card required | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infina | Full app, hands-free included | No | 2,000 words, 50 commands |
| Wispr Flow | Ongoing free tier | No | 2,000 words a week desktop, 1,000 a week on iPhone |
| Superwhisper | Ongoing free tier | No | Smaller local models, Pro features locked |
| MacWhisper | Free version | No | Pro transcription features locked |
| VoiceInk | Free trial, plus 14-day refund | No for the trial | Trial period |
| Talon | Entire app, forever | No | None, you pay in setup time |
| Apple Dictation | Entire feature, forever | No | None |
1. Infina: 2,000 words and 50 commands, no card
The trial is the whole app, including the part most people are here to test: hands-free mode. Say "type" and your sentence goes in. Say "send it", or a plain "enter", and it is submitted. Say "open Cursor" and you are in the next app. Nothing is held down, so this runs with your hands nowhere near the keyboard.
The two caps are 2,000 words of voice typing and 50 voice commands, and no card is required to start. Fifty commands is deliberately enough to feel the loop rather than just see it work once: it is roughly a morning of prompting an AI agent, which is exactly the test that decides whether this is worth $99/year to you.
Transcription runs on your Mac during the trial exactly as it does after you pay, so what you are testing is the real thing rather than a cloud demo.
If you buy and later want polished prose for human readers, there is an optional cloud add-on at $5/month billed annually at $60 on top of the yearly plan, with its own 7-day trial. It is a post-purchase choice and prompting AI tools does not need it.
After the trial the plan is $99/year flat, unlimited words and unlimited voice commands, with a 7-day refund and no questions asked.
Test this: do a normal morning of prompting and count your keypresses. See Infina's pricing for what happens after.
2. Wispr Flow: the most generous ongoing free tier
Wispr Flow gives 2,000 words a week on desktop and 1,000 a week on iPhone, indefinitely, with no card. That is a genuinely usable amount for light dictation and the best free tier on this list for people who want to keep using something for nothing.
It is also the only way to test the thing Wispr Flow is uniquely good at: the same account across Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, in 100+ languages, with its rewrite layer polishing as you speak. Paid is $15/month, or $12/month billed annually.
Test this: whether the rewrite layer changes your words in ways you like, and whether cloud-only latency bothers you. Head to head in Wispr Flow vs Infina.
3. Superwhisper: free tier that never expires
Superwhisper's free tier runs small local models with no time limit and no card. It is the cleanest way to find out whether local, on-device transcription is good enough for your vocabulary before spending anything.
Pro is $8.49/month, $84.99/year, or $249.99 lifetime, and unlocks the larger model menu and the per-context modes that are the real reason to buy it.
Test this: whether local models handle your technical vocabulary. That answer transfers to every other on-device app here.
4. MacWhisper: free version, then €65 once
MacWhisper's free version transcribes files with smaller models, which is enough to judge the thing it is best at. Pro is €65 once and adds the better models, batch work, and improved dictation.
Test this: throw a real recording at it, not a clean one. Meeting audio with crosstalk is where transcribers separate.
5. VoiceInk: free trial plus a 14-day refund
VoiceInk offers a trial before the $25 to $49 one-time purchase, and a 14-day money-back guarantee after. It is also open source, so the other form of free evaluation available here is reading the code.
Test this: whether an indie, hotkey-only app feels solid enough for daily work.
6 and 7. Talon and Apple Dictation: free, permanently
Talon is free to download in full. There is no trial because there is nothing to buy; its Patreon buys early access and support, not the app. What it costs is setup time, and the honest trial is asking whether you will actually spend a weekend configuring a command language.
Apple Dictation is already installed and free forever. Before you trial anything on this page, use it for a week. If you never turn it on, no paid app will fix that. And while you are there, turn on macOS Voice Control in Accessibility settings, which is a separate free feature that can press Return and click things.
When you do not need a trial at all
- You dictate occasionally. Apple Dictation, no trial needed, it is already there.
- You want to control the whole Mac by voice for free. Talon or Voice Control, both free forever.
- You need a phone app. Only Wispr Flow and Superwhisper have one; Infina does not, and no trial will change that.
- You need languages beyond English. Wispr Flow or Superwhisper, again decided before any trial.
- You need auditable source. VoiceInk, decided by reading rather than trying.
FAQ
Does Infina have a free trial? Yes: 2,000 words of voice typing and 50 voice commands, with no card required. It is the full app including hands-free mode, so you can test the "type", "send it", "open" loop properly before paying $99/year.
Which dictation app has the best free tier? Wispr Flow, at 2,000 words a week on desktop indefinitely, if you want something to keep using for free. Superwhisper's free tier is the best way to test local on-device transcription. Talon and Apple Dictation are free outright.
Do any dictation apps require a credit card for the trial? None of the main Mac apps require one to start. Infina's trial needs no card, and Wispr Flow's and Superwhisper's free tiers do not either. Infina's optional cloud add-on trial does require a card, but that is a post-purchase option.
What should I test during a dictation trial? Count keypresses, not typos. Over one normal day, count how many times you touched the keyboard to start talking, pressed Return to send, and reached for the trackpad to switch apps. That number is what separates these apps.
What happens when the Infina trial runs out? You are asked whether to buy the $99/year plan, which lifts both caps to unlimited words and unlimited commands. There is a 7-day refund if it turns out not to fit.
The bottom line
Nothing here costs money to evaluate. Start with Apple Dictation for a week to prove you will dictate at all. Then trial the one that matches your shape: Infina if your typing feeds AI tools and the keypresses are what you want gone, Wispr Flow if you need phones and languages, Superwhisper if you want a local hotkey app, VoiceInk if the budget is small, Talon if you will invest the time.
More on the free end of the market in free dictation apps for Mac, and the full ranking in best dictation apps for Mac.
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, VoiceInk, Talon, Apple Dictation) 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.