Superwhisper
Superwhisper runs AI transcription models directly on your device. Your audio never touches a server. No internet connection needed, no cloud processing, no data to worry about.
Most speech-to-text tools send your audio to a server somewhere. That means your words travel across the internet, get processed on someone else's hardware, and sit in a log you can't control. You're trusting a company's retention policy with everything you say.
Superwhisper takes a different approach. The AI models run on your own machine. Audio goes from your microphone into a local model, gets transcribed, and that's it. There's nothing to intercept because nothing leaves the device. This isn't a privacy toggle buried in settings. It's how the whole system is built.
It also means you can use it anywhere. On a plane. In a building with no wifi. Behind a corporate firewall. Your transcription works the same whether you're connected or not.
Security professionals and people working in classified environments can't send audio to external servers. It's not a preference, it's a rule. Superwhisper's offline mode means they get modern AI transcription without any data leaving the network perimeter.
Healthcare workers and lawyers deal with sensitive information all day. Patient records, case details, privileged conversations. On-device processing means there's no cloud provider to vet, no BAA to negotiate for the transcription layer, no third-party data processor in the chain.
Then there are the travelers. People who write on planes, work from hotels with terrible wifi, or live in areas with unreliable internet. Offline transcription just works regardless.
Developers use it too. Talking to AI coding tools while working on proprietary codebases, without sending audio through an external service. GDPR and CCPA become simpler when there's no voice data to regulate in the first place.
| Superwhisper | Otter.ai | Wispr Flow | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fully offline | Yes | No | No |
| Audio stays on device | Yes | No | No |
| No account required | Yes | No | No |
| Works without internet | Yes | No | No |
| Cloud option available | Yes | Cloud only | Cloud only |
| Multiple model sizes | Yes | No | No |
| macOS + Windows | Yes | Web only | macOS only |
"Superwhisper delivers on the dream of an AI-native operating system. The best part: it's insanely fast and does just what you expect."
— Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel
"Tried @superwhisperapp today. Very nice. Lets me talk to Cursor and then it codes for me, just gets it right."
— Pieter Levels, serial entrepreneur
Yes. The offline models download once and then run entirely on your machine. You can turn off wifi, enable airplane mode, whatever. Transcription keeps working.
The larger on-device models get very close to cloud accuracy for most languages. English is the strongest. If you're on an Apple Silicon Mac, you can run the biggest local models comfortably. On older hardware, you might want a mid-size model, which is still good for everyday use. Cloud models do have an edge in noisy environments and less common languages.
Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later) are the sweet spot. Intel Macs and Windows PCs can run offline models too, though performance varies with your hardware. iOS also supports on-device transcription.
When you use offline mode, audio goes from your microphone to a model running on your CPU or GPU. That's it. No network request, no temporary upload, nothing leaves the device. There's no data for anyone to breach because it never exists anywhere but your own computer's memory, briefly.
No. The free tier includes offline transcription and doesn't require an account. You can download Superwhisper and start using it without signing up for anything.
Superwhisper's offline mode keeps all data on-device, which removes the cloud processing concern entirely. We can't give legal compliance advice, but the architecture is designed so that no audio or text data leaves your machine. Security teams and compliance officers tend to like that.
Download Superwhisper and use offline mode without creating an account.
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