Private Whisper vs. Superwhisper: The Private, Cross-Platform Alternative

Two great voice dictation apps — one important difference

If you've been looking for an AI dictation app, you've almost certainly run into Superwhisper. It's a polished, mature, feature-rich tool that helped popularize the whole category. It deserves its reputation.

But "voice-to-text on your Mac" and "voice-to-text you can actually trust with everything you say" are not the same product. Private Whisper was built for the second one — a dictation app where privacy is the default, not an upgrade, that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and that costs pennies instead of a monthly subscription.

This post is an honest comparison. We'll tell you where Superwhisper is genuinely the better choice, and where Private Whisper pulls ahead. No strawmen.

The 30-second verdict

	Private Whisper	Superwhisper
Price	Free fully-local mode; ~$2.50/mo pay-as-you-go for cloud	$8.49/mo · $84.99/yr · $249.99 lifetime
Account required	No — pay anonymously with crypto or card	Yes
Platforms	macOS, Windows, Linux	macOS (great), Windows (rough), iOS (keyboard only)
Audio storage	Never stored or trained on	Recordings saved to disk (and iCloud) by default
Verifiable private cloud	Yes — Tinfoil hardware enclave	No — cloud audio proxied, policy vague
Custom dictionary	Yes	Yes
AI cleanup	Yes	Yes
Languages	25 local, dozens more in cloud	100+
Meeting assistant	Not yet	Yes
One balance across a full AI suite	Yes — same key works on ppq.ai	No

If you want the most mature Mac power-user tool with meeting transcription and 100+ languages, Superwhisper is excellent. If you want real, verifiable privacy on any operating system without a subscription, keep reading.

1. Privacy: the difference between saying "private" and being private

Both apps market themselves as privacy-friendly. The difference is in the defaults.

Superwhisper processes audio locally when you pick an on-device model — genuinely good. But by default it also saves a copy of every recording to disk, and with iCloud Drive enabled those files sync to Apple's cloud. Users have been asking for an opt-out on the public feedback board for a while. And when you switch to a cloud model for accuracy, your audio is sent off-device; the privacy policy doesn't clearly spell out how those cloud modes are handled. (Cloud API keys are also stored in plaintext on disk rather than the system keychain.)

Private Whisper was designed so you never have to wonder. You choose your privacy level per your needs:

• Fully Local — Transcription (Parakeet) and cleanup (a local Gemma model) both run entirely on your machine. Audio never leaves your device, and it works offline. This mode is completely free.
• Confidential Cloud — When you want more speed than local, cleanup runs inside a Tinfoil hardware-secured enclave, and your audio is encrypted before it's sent. This is verifiable privacy, not a pinky-promise.
• Fast Cloud — Maximum speed and accuracy. Audio is processed anonymously and never retained.

Across all modes, PPQ never stores your audio or trains on it. We collect only anonymous metadata (timestamp, duration, language) — no IP addresses, no personal identifiers. And because you can pay with crypto and use the app without an account, you can dictate in a way that isn't tied to your identity at all.

2. Every operating system, not just Mac

Superwhisper is a Mac-first product. Its macOS app is mature and polished. Its Windows app exists but is widely reported as rough — crashes, freezes, and clipboard issues that lead reviewers to say "test it before you buy." On iOS it's a keyboard extension only, not a full app, and there's no Linux support at all (Android is the single most-requested missing feature).

Private Whisper ships native builds for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows, and Linux (AppImage and Debian package). If your team isn't 100% on Macs — or you personally live in Linux — this is the difference between "works for me" and "works for everyone."

3. Pricing — and the part most comparisons miss

Superwhisper uses a traditional subscription: $8.49/month, $84.99/year, or $249.99 for a lifetime license. The free tier is limited to small local models.

Private Whisper is pay-as-you-go. Fully-local dictation is free forever. If you use the cloud modes, you pay only for what you use — the average user spends around $2.50 per month, with no subscription and no minimum commitment. Your first 20 dictations are free, and you can top up with as little as 10 cents in crypto.

Here's the part that makes Private Whisper more than "a cheaper Superwhisper": the same PPQ balance works across ppq.ai, too. PPQ gives you pay-per-use access to hundreds of frontier chat, image, video, and audio models — GPT, Claude, Gemini, and more — in one place. So the credits you top up for dictation also replace your ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI subscriptions. One balance, one login-optional account, your whole AI stack — instead of $20/month here and $20/month there.

4. Features, head to head

Where the two apps are closer than you'd expect:

• AI cleanup — Both remove filler words ("um," "uh"), fix grammar, and turn rambling speech into text that reads like you wrote it. This is table stakes now, and both do it well.
• Custom dictionary — Both let you teach the app your names, brands, acronyms, and jargon so they're transcribed correctly every time. Private Whisper has this too — you're not giving up vocabulary accuracy to get privacy.
• Works in any app — Both paste directly into whatever has focus: Slack, VS Code, Gmail, Notion, your terminal, an LLM prompt box — anywhere with a text field. Both are hotkey-driven with toggle and push-to-talk options.

Where Superwhisper is genuinely ahead (credit where it's due):

• Meeting assistant — Superwhisper can record and summarize meetings. Private Whisper doesn't do this yet. If meeting transcription is your main use case, that's a real point for Superwhisper today.
• Language breadth — 100+ languages vs. Private Whisper's 25 local (plus dozens more in the cloud). If you dictate in a less common language locally, check that it's supported first.
• Maturity — Superwhisper has had more time to accumulate power-user options and polish.

Who should pick which?

Choose Superwhisper if: you're Mac-only, you want built-in meeting transcription, you need one of its 100+ languages locally, and a subscription doesn't bother you.

Choose Private Whisper if: you want privacy you can actually verify, you're on Windows or Linux (or a mixed team), you'd rather pay pennies-per-use than a subscription, and you like the idea of one balance that also covers all your other AI tools.

Try it free

Fully-local mode is free, there's no account required, and your first 20 cloud dictations are on us. Download for macOS, Windows, or Linux and see how it feels to just talk.

Get Private Whisper Here

What is PayPerQ?

Private Whisper is built by PayPerQ (PPQ) — a pay-per-query AI service that gives you instant access to hundreds of chat, image, video, and audio models in one place. Instead of a $20+/month subscription, PPQ users pay only for what they use, averaging just a few dollars a month. Account registration is optional, no monthly commitments, credit cards and all major cryptos accepted. Top up with as little as 10 cents and start using premium AI immediately — and the same balance powers your Private Whisper dictation.