Why do voice transcription apps charge monthly when Whisper runs locally?

https://www.lucidvoice.app/

35•metalogical•3h ago

Comments

metalogical•3h ago

Whisper runs fine locally. So why are Willow ($144/year), Wisprflow ($120/year), and SuperWhisper ($120/year) all subscriptions?

I got frustrated paying monthly for something that could run on my Mac, so I built Lucid Voice:

- 100% offline (Nvidia Parakeet + Llama)

- $20 one-time (mainly to cover Apple's notarization costs)

- Runs on surprisingly low-end hardware (M1 base models work fine)

- No cloud, no data collection

Open to feedback on anything - pricing, the tech stack, or if this should just be free: https://lucidvoice.app

cebert•2h ago

Good idea. I was hoping to at least see an overview of this from my phone, but when I opened the link, it said it’s for desktop only and became uninterested.

metalogical•2h ago

Just pushed an update for mobile - should work now. Happy to give you a free license key if you want to try it on your Mac. Would love feedback

rvz•2h ago

> - No cloud, no data collection

How can this be guaranteed if it is closed source?

Other than that, great project.

metalogical•2h ago

You can block it with Mac's firewall and verify zero network calls. Privacy policy at https://lucidvoice.app/privacy

Might open source if there's demand - testing that now

Multiplayer•1h ago

Does this do the formatting that wisprflow will do kind of thing?

metalogical•29m ago

Yes - makes corrections, removes filler words, formats naturally. That's what the Llama post-processing does

amluto•47m ago

Some developers seem to do okay by writing open source software and selling it on the App Store. I’ve even paid for software like that :)

joshribakoff•1h ago

Thanks for sharing. As someone who used dragon naturally speaking, which did fine tuning back in the 90s, i was genuinely surprised at the implementation gap.

amanzi•1h ago

Can you build a Linux version? :-)

Still haven't managed to find one that works as well as MacWhisper.

gopalv•1h ago

> Can you build a Linux version? :-)

Generally speaking, it is the hardware not the OS that makes it easier to build for Macs right now.

Apple Neural Engine is a sleeping giant, in the middle of all this.

daemonologist•55m ago

Parakeet still runs at 5x realtime on a middle-of-the-road CPU; it should be quite doable (at the cost of some battery life).

wild_egg•47m ago

Get your favourite coding agent to make one. These things are incredibly simple. You really only need a few ingredients:

- `sherpa-onnx` bindings for your favourite language

- package for capturing your mic input

- package for hotkey capture

- package for clipboard management (or shell out to `xclip`)

- shell out to `xdotool key --clearmodifiers "ctrl+v"` to paste

Tell it to go research all the above and then assemble into whatever form you want. I had Claude write a Go daemon that loads parakeet and runs as a systemd user service listening for Alt-Space in about 20 minutes.

metalogical•27m ago

Mac-only for now but might port to Linux if there's enough demand. What desktop environment are you using?

nextworddev•1h ago

Can you open source this

randyrand•57m ago

you mean give it away for free? how would he require payment?

ottobonn•1h ago

I have been looking for this on Linux (Gnome) and would love something like it. I can't find a simple way to get system-level voice input.

metalogical•25m ago

Yeah, hearing this a lot. I'll definitely into Linux support

dockerd•37m ago

The pricing is good for customer.

At the same time, I think you shouldn't give away "Lifetime updates" for same pricing tier. Are you planning to support it for the next 10+ years and across next 5-10 mac hardware/version without any new license cost?

metalogical•14m ago

Honestly not trying to make serious money from this - more validating if people want local-first tools. If it takes off, might add a support tier, but ultimate goal isn't profit. Just wanted something that works without monthly charges.

satvikpendem•1h ago

MacWhisper [0] is a long-running project with a lot more features, what's the main difference, just the price?

[0] https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

behnamoh•56m ago

it's been a PITA though, lots of features not working, files disappearing and the developer blaming the OS (!), and separate payment for the iOS app.

metalogical•22m ago

Right now it's dictation-first vs MacWhisper's file transcription focus. Planning to add meeting recording and batch processing eventually.

Heard some feedback about reliability issues with MacWhisper as well - trying to build something more stable from the ground up.

drewda•1h ago

For a premium UI around the open-source Whisper core, there's also MacWhisper: https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

varenc•1h ago

It's why everything is a subscription these days: you make more money.

Consumers undercount the true total cost. And because X% of people will forget they're subscribed and keep paying forever.

If every month you had to either consent to recurring charge on your card or unsubscribe, I'm sure billions of revenue would evaporate overnight from people mass unsubscribing.

(I wish there was regulation that required companies to automatically pause monthly subscriptions if you haven't logged in to or used the service in any way for 3+ months. Though that would create some weird incentives)

turdprincess•56m ago

Virtual credit card numbers are a great way to combat this.

For example, the Wall Street journal pricing is pretty wild (8 dollars a month for the first 3 months then jumps to much higher) so I use a virtual card which expires right before the planned price hike.

For other services I like to either use a virtual card with a single transaction limit, or just buy the service and cancel right away which typically is equivalent to just paying for a month

LoganDark•49m ago

I tried to cancel a virtual card to cancel a service (that only allowed me to change anything by phone call, so this would have been far more convenient and less confrontational) and they tallied up a "delinquent balance" and threatened to sue if I didn't pay everything I owed in order to cancel.

Canceling the card does not work for predatory companies. Maybe for well-meaning ones that automatically cancel when a charge declines.

seemaze•13m ago

I switched home insurance away from liberty mutual after my term was up and did not renew. Three weeks after my coverage with them lapsed I received a notice from a collection agency for a late fee for coverage I never purchased. FUCK automatic billing and non-consensual subscriptions.

siva7•39m ago

It's not that you make more money with subscriptions. It's because you make some money to survive at all if you're not a big company. People who run a small business understand this.

metalogical•10m ago

I get that subscriptions help small businesses survive. But when the software runs 100% locally and doesn't need servers, one-time seems fairer. That's what I'm testing.

Brybry•33m ago

I think requiring notification would be better than automatically pausing (or maybe let people choose?)

My elderly parents have a cheap voip landline that they never use but keep for peace of mind. It'd be unideal if that got automatically "paused" and then it didn't work the one time they tried to use it to call 911.

Sure, the scenario would mean their cell phones are not working, or they're suffering from some cognitive issue, so it's unlikely -- but still plausible.

metalogical•2m ago

Exactly this. When I looked at Wisprflow at $12/month, I realized over 2 years I'd pay ~$290 for software that runs entirely on my Mac with near-zero server costs on their end.

The "forgot to cancel" revenue model works, but (like you implied) it's predatory when the software doesn't need ongoing infrastructure.

hastamelo•1h ago

I find the Windows included one (Win+H) very good.

geor9e•42m ago

Okay, but have you used the large Whisper model? Sure, voice typing has been around for 10 or 20 years. And it's great if you have a good mic and enunciate, but these new models are insane. You can just mumble something from across an entire room, with peanut butter in your mouth, and it won't miss a single word.

3r7j6qzi9jvnve•34m ago

It might make up a bunch of words, like "subtitles by soandso", when there's silence though... /s

dSebastien•1h ago

That's why I'm building Knowii Voice AI. It's a fork of Handy (handy.computer) in which I'm going to add fun features, exploring different areas of what we can do with voice on a computer.

It's local first, privacy first, one-time payment. You buy it and get lifetime updates.

Currently available for Windows and very soon for MacOS and Linux. I'm working on Wayland/Hyprland support because I'm using Omarchy;-)

https://voice-ai.knowii.net

geor9e•38m ago

so you're asking for $50 for a fork of a free app, on the premise that you're "going to" add to it

dSebastien•33m ago

I have already rebuilt the UI to be fully responsive (great for tiling window managers), added new features, improved the history, fixed hotkey handling for Wayland and many other things. I'm a solopreneur, and if I want my business to survive I need this endeavor to be sustainable

dSebastien•31m ago

People who run tiny side businesses understand this is the only way to go. Yes I could have started from scratch, but what's the point.

If you look at Handy's website, you'll see that the author encourages forks anyway.

I'm also offering support for my customers and will build what they want. It's a different game.

dSebastien•16m ago

I wrote a post with more background here: https://www.knowii.net/c/announcements/knowii-voice-ai

odie5533•32m ago

It's literally just the free and open source Handy app with a slightly darker theme. Even your sales pitch is just lifted from Handy.

snthpy•1h ago

Why do shops charge for strawberries when they grow for free in my garden?

Brian_K_White•50m ago

They do not. (charge monthly for strawberries that have already been sold and "run locally")

Void_•53m ago

I made WhisperType [1].

The price tag is $30/YEAR. The current MRR is about $700 and I'm paying $7/mo for Groq Whisper Turbo.

These apps really don't have any reason to be so pricey, it's all just margin.

1. https://whispertype.com/

maxlin•50m ago

The same reason any software costs money even when you run it locally I suppose. Local software having a subscription instead of a single price seems to just be increasingly common these days.

I'd assume there are good free alternatives though. If not I'd have a non-zero motivation to build one, having dabbled enough with whisper and running several of my own distributed automatic transcription systems

trenchpilgrim•50m ago

Whisper runs so well locally on recent hardware, I've embedded it directly into hobbyist applications to provide STT-based commands.

odie5533•43m ago

Handy https://handy.computer/ is a free and open source voice transcription app. Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows, and you can pick which model. Everything runs locally. There is no API.

I use the app constantly, all day long.

protocolture•32m ago

Its been years since I touched transcription professionally, but my memory is that they started off as a mechanical turk operation.

Lawyers usually would purchase transcription devices, and then either they would have a pool of transcribers (i remember installing foot pedals for forward/back playback operation) or pay a subscription to the manufacturer for mysterious likely offshore people to transcribe for them.

People have a hard time letting go of revenue, but I am betting most of the same people are still in business and want to pied piper consumers of transcription services to the same business model that now costs them pennies instead of wages.

protocolture•31m ago

https://voicex.com.au/olympus-rs28h-usb-foot-control.html

Oww my back

metalogical•20m ago

For anyone interested in trying it: DM me at https://x.com/arbitr_ary and I'll send you a free license key (make sure to retweet my pinned post first if you want to help spread the word :) )

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