Recommended Models

Our top picks for different use cases — free, accurate, private, or fast.

Here are our top picks for different use cases. All cloud providers listed here have free tiers — you can get started without paying anything.

Best Free Setup

Groq — Free forever with rate limits. No credit card, no expiration. Uses Whisper Large on Groq's ultra-fast LPU hardware. Transcription is nearly instant, even for long recordings.

This is our #1 recommendation for most users. Sign up takes 30 seconds.

Best Accuracy

Cohere Transcribe — Best-in-class 5.4 Word Error Rate, the lowest among all cloud providers. Free trial tier, no credit card required. Supports 14 languages (no auto-detect).

Deepgram Nova-3 — Excellent accuracy with 100+ language support. New accounts get $200 in free credits (no expiration).

ElevenLabs Scribe 2 — Excellent for multi-language transcription. Free tier available.

Best Privacy

Local Whisper Large Turbo — Runs entirely on your Mac. No data leaves your device. 1.5 GB download, ~1.8 GB RAM. Best on Apple Silicon.

Parakeet — NVIDIA's model optimized for Apple Silicon. Fast and accurate, supports 25+ languages.

Best for Older Macs

Groq — If your Mac struggles with local models, Groq offloads all compute to the cloud. You get fast results regardless of your hardware.

Best for Multiple Languages

Whisper Large Turbo (local or via Groq) — Supports 100+ languages with good accuracy across most of them.

ElevenLabs Scribe 2 — Known for excellent multi-language support, including less common languages.

Quick Comparison