Comparison

Flit vs Spokenly

The Mac-first choice

Free, cross-platform, cloud on the upsell

The short answer

If you dictate all day on a Mac, Flit is the better tool: streaming text, per-app tone rules, a local codebase index, and formatting produced by fixed rules rather than a model guess. Spokenly is free and spans four platforms, which makes it a sensible starting point for occasional dictation, and its Local Only Mode is a genuine privacy feature. The trade is depth: covering four platforms means the macOS-specific work does not get done.

Side by side

  Flit Spokenly
Where transcription happens Your Mac Local or cloud, your choice
Price $49 once Free, or $9.99/mo Pro
Account required No No
Platforms macOS only Mac, iOS, Windows, Linux
Built for macOS only Yes No, four platforms
Text appears as you speak Yes Not stated
Per-app tone rules Yes Not stated
Knows your codebase Indexes it locally Not stated
Exact times and commands Fixed rules Not stated

Compared against Spokenly’s own published information. “Not stated” means they do not publish that detail. Prices change, so confirm before you buy.

Why people pick Flit

  • Being Mac only means every decision is a macOS decision: the Neural Engine path, the accessibility layer, the notch HUD.
  • Text appears while you are still speaking.
  • Per-app tone: casual in Messages, professional in Mail, exact words in Terminal, by your own rules.
  • It reads your open project so spoken file and symbol names come out spelled correctly.
  • One payment. Spokenly is free until you want the managed cloud models, then it is monthly.

In fairness

  • It is free for unlimited local transcription, with no trial and no cap.
  • Four platforms, so one habit works across your devices.
  • An MCP server, so AI coding agents can drive dictation directly.

Listed because they are true. Spokenly lets you choose local or cloud, which is a choice worth having and also a setting somebody can get wrong. Flit does not offer the cloud option, so there is nothing to misconfigure and nothing to check before a sensitive dictation.

What actually decides it

Free is the hardest competitor to argue with

For occasional dictation a good free tool is the right answer, and Spokenly is one. The case for Flit is volume. If you dictate all day, the difference between text arriving as you speak and arriving after you stop, and between formatting that guesses and formatting that cannot drift, is felt hundreds of times a week. That is where $49 stops being a cost and starts being the cheapest hour you buy this year.

Four platforms versus one

Cross-platform is a genuine advantage for a user and a genuine constraint for a developer. Every feature has to work four ways, so the ones that depend on macOS specifics tend not to get built. Flit gave up your phone and your PC to spend everything on one platform. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how many machines you write from.

The verdict

Choose Flit if

you dictate all day on a Mac and want streaming text, per-app tone, and formatting that cannot drift.

Join the waitlist

7 days free · $29 once, up to 2 Macs · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon

Choose Spokenly if

you want free, or you write on more than a Mac.

Questions

Why pay $49 when Spokenly is free?

For occasional dictation, do not. The paid case is daily volume: streaming text, per-app tone rules, the codebase index, and deterministic formatting are worth real money if dictation is how you write, and worth nothing if you dictate twice a week.

Is Spokenly private?

It offers a Local Only Mode that blocks network requests, and its free tier runs local models. Its paid tier is managed cloud models. Flit has no cloud path to switch on or off.

Does Spokenly stream text as you speak?

Its site does not state this, so we do not claim either way. Flit does, and you can watch it happen in the demo on our homepage.

Pricing

One price. Yours forever.

You will buy Flit once and it is yours permanently, on up to 2 Macs, with 12 months of updates. No subscription, no account, no upsell.

Launch pricing

First 100 licenses

Once they are gone, Personal steps to $39, then $49. Lifetime goes to $99.

Personal

Most people

$29

was $49

Yours forever, on 2 Macs. Updates for a year.

Lifetime

$79

was $99

Yours forever, on 2 Macs. Every update, forever.

Not on sale yet. These are the prices Flit will launch at. macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon. 7 days free first, no card, and a 30-day refund.

Both include

  • Every feature. There is no Pro tier and nothing is held back.
  • All 99 languages and every local model, downloadable free.
  • Developer mode, snippets, the dictionary that learns, a style per app.
  • No account. Flit never asks who you are.

Questions? The pricing page answers the usual ones. If a future major version is ever a paid upgrade, you will hear it from us before you pay for anything.