Superwhisper vs Apple Dictation
Jude Mercer, SEO and Content, Memoe — 15 October 2026
Memoe is an agent you talk to, and it talks back. It lives in your Mac's notch instead of in a chat window, so you can talk to it from whatever app you're in. It runs on the AI you already pay for — your Claude subscription through Claude Code, or your ChatGPT plan — so there's no new model to buy. Underneath, it runs Hermes Agent, the open-source agent harness from Nous Research, and it keeps a memory of you in plain files on your Mac that you can read, edit and delete.
Superwhisper and Apple Dictation are both dictation: you talk, and your words land as typed text in whatever app has focus. Apple Dictation is already on every Mac, free, with nothing to install. Superwhisper is a separate paid app with a meeting assistant, a model picker and a custom vocabulary built around the same job. Below is what each one's own source says about itself, read today. What Memoe does is set out after the table.
What each one's own source says
Everything below about Superwhisper comes from superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026. Everything about Apple Dictation comes from Apple's own support guide, "Dictate messages and documents on Mac", read 15 October 2026.
| Superwhisper | Apple Dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | "Turn your voice into polished text. Works in Slack, Gmail and any other site or app" (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | "With Dictation, you can speak to enter text anywhere you can type it" (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Stopping and starting | Hold a key to talk, in the pattern described throughout its own site (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Speak for any length without a timeout while dictating; "Dictation stops automatically when no speech is detected for 30 seconds" (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Voice commands for punctuation and formatting | Not described on its own site as a named feature (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Says the name of a punctuation mark or emoji, or "new line"/"new paragraph", to insert it while dictating (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Talks back out loud | Not mentioned anywhere on its own site — it describes itself as text dictation throughout (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not described — the guide covers dictation only; it doesn't describe Dictation answering questions or taking spoken commands (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Meeting notes | A built-in "Meeting assistant": "Focus now, we take notes. Record and digest meetings effortlessly with automatic notes" (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not offered — not mentioned anywhere in the guide (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Learning your vocabulary | "Use your own words — enter names, abbreviations, and specialized terms once. Superwhisper remembers forever" (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not offered — no custom-vocabulary feature anywhere in the guide (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Where speech is processed | Works offline on Apple silicon; its own FAQ says "Intel Macs work best with Cloud models. Offline models only run really well on Apple Silicon macs." Its own page also states "SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant" (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Keyboard settings let you check "whether your voice inputs and transcripts... are processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers"; sharing recordings with Apple to help improve it is a separate, optional choice (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Choice of AI model | Lets you pick a model for its formatting "modes," naming GPT‑5, Claude Haiku 4.5, Llama 4, Grok 4.1 and Gemini 3.0 Flash among its options (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not offered — nothing in the guide describes a choice of model (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Platforms | "macOS, Windows, iOS and Android" (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Built into macOS already, on every Mac that runs it — nothing to install or download (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
| Price | Free tier: try Pro features up to 3,000 words, then its free features stay available forever, by its own FAQ. Pro is $8.49 a month, from the structured pricing data the page itself publishes (superwhisper.com, read 15 October 2026). | Free — nothing to buy, nothing to install, already part of the Mac you have (Apple's support guide, read 15 October 2026). |
What Memoe does
Hold one key from any app, say what you need, and Moe answers out loud and goes and does it: reads the mail and calendar you've connected, takes meeting notes on your Mac with nothing joining the call, drives some Mac apps itself for a specific task, and touching the trackpad stops it. "Hey Moe" is there too, once you switch it on in Settings. Before Moe sends anything to another person it shows you exactly what will go out and waits for your click. About 2 to 5 seconds before it speaks.
What it remembers about you is kept in plain files on your disk that you can read, edit and delete. The thinking comes from your own ChatGPT or Claude plan, an API key, or a model on your Mac — not resold, not marked up. Memoe is a free Mac app, and everything that runs on your Mac is free; Away, from $20 a month, is a cloud computer of your own that keeps going when the Mac is shut, and Away+ is $50 a month. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later. It is signed and notarized by Apple and it updates itself. It is beta, built by one person, so expect a few rough edges.
See also: Memoe vs Superwhisper, Memoe vs Apple Dictation and Superwhisper vs Wispr Flow.