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Sotto Voce and Wispr Flow
Both put a dictation keyboard on your iPhone: you talk, and your words appear in whatever app you're typing in. The biggest difference is where your voice goes to become text. Here's a fair side-by-side, including where Wispr Flow is the better pick.
Side by side
| Feature | Sotto Voce | Wispr Flow |
|---|---|---|
| Where speech becomes text | On your iPhone | On Wispr's servers“Transcription always occurs on the cloud.” |
| Works offline | Yes, once its speech models have downloaded | No |
| Account | None | Required |
| Platforms | iPhone, iOS 26 | Mac, Windows, iPhone (iOS 18.3 or later) and Android |
| Languages | English | 100+ |
| Rewrites what you say with AI | No. It types what you said. | Yes: removes filler words, adds punctuation, adapts tone to the app |
| Free | 1,000 words a week | 1,000 words a week on mobile, 2,000 on desktop |
| Paid, UK | £2.99 a month, £19.99 a year (first 7 days free), or £74.99 once for life | £15 a month, or £143.99 a year |
| Paid, US | $2.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $79.99 once for life | $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly |
Checked 29 September 2026 against Wispr Flow's own website, help centre and App Store listing. Sources are at the bottom of this page. Prices change; the App Store shows the current price before you buy.
Which one is for you
Choose Sotto Voce if
- you don't want recordings of your voice leaving your phone
- you dictate without signal: on a plane, underground, abroad
- you'd rather not make an account
- you dictate in English on an iPhone
- you want to pay once, or pay a seventh of the yearly price
Choose Wispr Flow if
- you want the same dictation on a Mac, Windows PC or Android phone
- you dictate in a language other than English
- you want AI to rewrite and format what you say
- you need team features, or a plan that covers HIPAA
Why where it happens matters
When dictation runs on a server, your voice is recorded, sent over the internet and turned into text on someone else's computer. Wispr Flow says it encrypts that data in transit and at rest and gives you controls over whether it's stored or used to improve its models. It also notes that it isn't end-to-end encrypted, because “the service must process audio to produce a transcript.”
Sotto Voce avoids the question. Speech is turned into text on your iPhone, by Apple's on-device recogniser or by NVIDIA Parakeet running through Core ML, so there's no recording to send, store or protect. The app's only network request is a one-way download of model files. Read the privacy policy.
Switching from Wispr Flow
- Install Sotto Voce from the App Store and open it once. It asks for the microphone.
- In Settings › General › Keyboard › Keyboards, add Sotto Voce and turn on Allow Full Access. You can keep Wispr Flow installed and switch between them with the globe key.
- In any app, switch to Sotto Voce and tap Start. More on dictating.
Try it free. Sotto Voce is free for 1,000 words a week, with no account and no card, so you can use it alongside Wispr Flow before deciding.
Sources
- Wispr Flow website, platforms and features: wisprflow.ai
- Wispr Flow pricing: wisprflow.ai/pricing and the in-app UK prices
- “Transcription always occurs on the cloud”: wisprflow.ai/data-controls
- Encryption and “the service must process audio”: Wispr Flow security and compliance FAQ
- Account: Manage your Flow account
- iPhone keyboard and Full Access: Set up the Flow keyboard on iPhone
- Languages, iOS version: Wispr Flow on the App Store
Wispr Flow is a trademark of Wispr AI, Inc. Sotto Voce is not affiliated with Wispr. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we'll correct it.