Alternatives

Two rules for these comparisons

Each page covers one product: what it does today, verified against its own site or repository, and where LocalType differs.

We say where the other product is better. Several of these pages recommend staying where you are, and two of them send you to open-source projects instead, because a comparison that only ever concludes in our favour is not worth reading.

And nothing here describes another company's plans. What a product does today is checkable; what it will do next year is not.

The comparisons

• Braina Alternative Android Braina does its dictating on a Windows PC. If you want the same thing happening on the phone itself, that is a different piece of software, and LocalType is built for exactly that.
• Dictation.io Alternative Dictation.io is a page you open in Chrome on a computer. LocalType is a keyboard on your phone, with the recognition happening on the device itself instead of over the wire.
• Dragon Dictation Android Alternative People who know Dragon from a desktop expect the same thing on a phone.
• FUTO Voice Input Alternative FUTO Voice Input keeps your speech on your phone, and that is the right instinct.
• Google Voice Typing Alternative Almost everyone meets dictation through Gboard, and almost nobody asks where it happens.
• Handy Computer Android Alternative Handy runs on your computer.
• iPhone Dictation On Android People switching from an iPhone often cannot articulate what they miss about dictation.
• Live Transcribe Alternative Two very different needs bring people to this search, and the right answer is opposite depending on which one you have.
• Otter.ai Alternative If you are looking for an Otter.ai alternative because you would rather your audio was not uploaded, start here.
• Phravia Alternative Phravia lets you decide, per your own comfort, whether a sentence is transcribed on your phone or in the cloud.
• Samsung Keyboard Voice Input Alternative Samsung's keyboard can already dictate without a connection if you set it up.
• Speechnotes Alternative Speechnotes gives you a page to dictate into and a Copy button underneath it.
• SwiftKey Alternative SwiftKey is a very good keyboard.
• Transcribro Alternative Transcribro was right about the important thing: speech recognition belongs on the phone.
• Whisper Keyboard Android Whisper made good speech recognition something you can run yourself instead of renting.

If none of these is your situation

The guides cover the questions underneath: how on-device recognition works, what to check before installing any keyboard, and where dictation genuinely beats typing on a phone.

All guides