Wispr Flow vs Aqua Voice vs Ottex AI

Wispr Flow sits at the premium end with a $15/month subscription. Aqua Voice, a YC W24 startup, offers a more accessible $8/month plan. Ottex AI's BYOK model typically costs $1-3/month for regular users.

Both Wispr Flow and Aqua Voice offer limited free tiers: Wispr gives you 2,000 words/week, Aqua offers 1,000 words to try. These free tiers are easily exhausted in a productive morning of dictation.

The key difference is transparency. With BYOK, you see exactly what you're paying per minute of transcription. With subscriptions, you're paying the same whether you dictate 5 minutes or 5 hours per day.

All three apps use cloud-based AI models, which generally provide better accuracy than local processing. Wispr Flow uses proprietary models, Aqua Voice uses their own cloud infrastructure, and Ottex AI lets you choose from Gemini, Whisper, Claude, and others.

Aqua Voice boasts 450ms latency in their 'Instant Mode', making it feel nearly real-time. Wispr Flow and Ottex AI have similar cloud latencies depending on your internet connection and chosen model.

One notable difference: Aqua Voice supports only 49 languages, while Wispr Flow and Ottex AI support 100+. If you need Dutch, for example, Aqua Voice won't help you—as users have noted.

Voice commands make the difference between dictation that flows naturally and dictation that requires constant manual editing. The ability to say 'scratch that' and correct mistakes without touching the keyboard is essential for maintaining your train of thought.

Wispr Flow has good voice correction support—you can say 'scratch that' or 'actually' to fix mistakes. Aqua Voice notably lacks voice corrections entirely; if you make a mistake, you have to stop and manually edit.

Ottex AI matches Wispr Flow's corrections and adds unique inline AI commands. Say 'Ottex start summarize this paragraph Ottex end' and the AI processes your request mid-dictation. No other tool offers this.

Both Wispr Flow and Aqua Voice offer context awareness—the ability to understand what's on your screen and format dictation accordingly. However, they implement it very differently, with significant privacy implications.

Wispr Flow's context awareness captures screenshots and sends them to their cloud servers. Aqua Voice claims to process screen content locally without uploading images. Neither approach is ideal for privacy-conscious users.

Ottex AI doesn't have context awareness but offers something more powerful: inline AI commands. Instead of passively formatting based on context, you actively command AI transformations mid-dictation. Say 'Ottex start write a professional email about [topic] Ottex end' and get formatted output instantly.

All three apps are cloud-based, meaning your audio is sent to servers for processing. The key questions are: what else is sent, where is it stored, and for how long?

Wispr Flow's Context Awareness captures screenshots of your screen and uploads them to their cloud. This has raised serious concerns among developers and anyone handling sensitive information. Enterprise privacy features require $10,000+/month pricing.

Aqua Voice processes context awareness locally (screen content doesn't leave your device) but your audio still goes to the cloud. Some users have expressed concern about a YC startup's data practices, and the browser extension requests access to all browser tabs.

Ottex AI sends audio directly to your chosen API provider (OpenRouter, Google, etc.) with zero storage on Ottex servers. You control exactly where your data goes, and nothing is retained after processing.

Performance differences between these apps come down to architecture: Electron (web wrapper) vs native code, and cloud dependencies.

Wispr Flow is built with Electron and it shows: ~800MB RAM idle, 8% CPU in background, and 8-10 second startup times. On Windows, users report freezing issues that can take down other apps.

Aqua Voice uses a more efficient architecture with lower resource usage, though their browser extension can add overhead. The desktop app is reasonably lightweight.

Ottex AI is native Swift, targeting ~50MB memory footprint with near-instant startup. Since transcription happens in the cloud, your CPU stays cool.