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The Next New Thing · YouTube

A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones

Two hosts test FluidVoice against Wispr Flow and SuperWhisper live, side by side — and one of them deletes his paid app on camera.

Posted
3 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
33.5K
999 likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

A free, open-source, on-device dictation app can match paid cloud subscriptions like Wispr Flow and SuperWhisper on speed and real-time accuracy, while removing the privacy risk and the monthly fee.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You currently pay $10-15/month for a cloud dictation app like Wispr Flow or SuperWhisper and want a free, private alternative that matches it on speed.
  • You're a Mac user comfortable installing an open-source app via Homebrew or a GitHub release and tweaking settings like hotkeys and voice engines.
  • You dictate emails, documents, or notes daily and want AI-powered cleanup and a custom dictionary for names and company terms built into your workflow.
SKIP IF…
  • You're on Windows or Linux — the app demoed here is macOS-only.
  • You need enterprise support, SSO, or team admin controls — this video only covers the individual, self-hosted setup.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Two hosts compare FluidVoice, a free open-source Mac dictation app that runs its speech model entirely on-device, against the paid cloud tools Wispr Flow ($15/mo) and SuperWhisper ($10/mo). In a live side-by-side test on an identical sentence, FluidVoice keeps pace with Wispr Flow while showing a real-time word-by-word preview neither paid app offers. The hosts walk through picking a voice-engine model (fast vs. high-accuracy), building a custom dictionary so names and company terms transcribe correctly, and routing dictated text through configurable AI prompts for automatic cleanup. By the end, one host has already uninstalled SuperWhisper. The core conclusion: the underlying speech models are already open or commercially available — the paid apps are selling a polished wrapper, and that wrapper no longer justifies the subscription.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:09

01 · Intro

Andrew previews a free, open-source, on-device dictation app.

00:09 – 00:27

02 · Why Andrew is replacing paid dictation apps

Andrew and Adam compare what they currently pay for Wispr Flow and SuperWhisper.

00:27 – 00:36

03 · Adam's SuperWhisper setup

Adam explains his current paid setup and monthly cost.

00:36 – 01:03

04 · Why Andrew wants a local alternative

Andrew lists his three objections to cloud dictation: privacy/subpoena risk, cloud latency, and weaker UX.

01:03 – 01:21

05 · Introducing FluidVoice

FluidVoice surfaced after the hosts' GitHub 'top repos of the week' show and shot up in stars.

01:21 – 01:39

06 · Adam's first reaction after trying it

Adam describes starring the repo immediately after testing it.

01:39 – 02:15

07 · Installing and customizing FluidVoice

Andrew downloads it for Mac, picks the 'blazing fast' voice engine, and sets hotkeys.

02:15 – 02:42

08 · Wispr Flow speed test

Andrew dictates a test sentence into Wispr Flow and times how long it takes to appear.

02:42 – 03:09

09 · FluidVoice speed test

Andrew dictates the same sentence into FluidVoice, showing the live word-by-word preview.

03:09 – 03:18

10 · Why real-time text preview matters

Andrew highlights being able to see the words land in real time versus just a waveform.

03:18 – 04:03

11 · Open source control and customization

Adam explains that the underlying models are open/available and paid apps just wrap them; FluidVoice lets you keep the source forever.

04:03 – 04:30

12 · Using AI prompts to clean up dictation

Dictated text can be routed through a configurable AI prompt (e.g., format as an email) before pasting.

04:30 – 05:15

13 · Custom dictionaries for names and company terms

Adam shows adding coworker and company names to the custom dictionary so they transcribe correctly.

05:15 – 05:33

14 · Choosing between faster and more accurate models

Adam tested the higher-accuracy Cohere model but stuck with Blazing Fast since he couldn't tell the difference.

05:33 – 06:27

15 · Installation delay to watch for

Both hosts hit a stalled install progress bar that silently resumed after several minutes.

06:27 – 06:54

16 · Why Adam removed SuperWhisper

Adam says he's already uninstalled SuperWhisper after zero issues with FluidVoice.

06:54 – 07:04

17 · Watch the GitHub repo show next

Sign-off pointing to the GitHub repo show where FluidVoice was first surfaced.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • A $10-15/month cloud dictation subscription carries three costs at once: the fee, sending every spoken word to a third-party server, and the latency of a round trip to that server.
  • The underlying speech-to-text models used by paid dictation apps are open or commercially available to anyone — what you're actually paying for is the polished Mac wrapper around them.
  • Open source means you keep the exact version you have forever, even if the company behind a paid alternative disappears, pivots, or starts charging more.
  • A live real-time text preview — seeing your own words appear as you speak instead of a moving waveform — proves a dictation tool heard you correctly before you even stop talking.
  • Building a custom dictionary of the specific names and company terms you say every day is the single highest-leverage setup step for any dictation tool, paid or free.
  • A model that scores a couple of points higher on accuracy but runs slower rarely wins in daily use, because most people can't perceive that small a difference.
  • A progress bar stuck at a low percentage during a local AI model download isn't necessarily a failed install — some downloads silently resume and finish minutes later.
  • Once a free, open-source alternative matches a paid tool's reliability, the paid tool's remaining case shrinks down to convenience features alone.
Takeaway

Open source dictation now matches the paid apps

LOCAL VS CLOUD

A free, open-source, on-device dictation app running on this Mac matched paid cloud tools like Wispr Flow and SuperWhisper on speed and real-time accuracy, while removing the privacy risk and the monthly fee.

02Why Andrew is replacing paid dictation apps
  • A $10-15/month cloud dictation subscription carries three costs at once: the fee, sending every spoken word to a third-party server, and the latency of a round trip to that server.
04Why Andrew wants a local alternative
  • Local, on-device speech models remove the subpoena and data-retention risk of cloud dictation entirely, since audio never leaves the machine.
05Introducing FluidVoice
  • Actively surfacing under-starred open-source repos, not just the already-popular ones, is how you find genuinely useful tools before they blow up.
07Installing and customizing FluidVoice
  • A free, open-source tool can match a paid app's setup polish — choice of voice engine, hotkey, and continuation key — so 'open source' doesn't have to mean 'less configurable.'
08Wispr Flow speed test
  • The only fair way to compare two dictation tools is a live side-by-side test on the identical sentence, not marketing claims or isolated demos.
09FluidVoice speed test
  • Seeing your own words appear on screen as you speak, not just a moving waveform, is what proves a dictation tool actually heard you correctly.
10Why real-time text preview matters
  • A visible live transcript removes the 'is this even working' anxiety, which is a bigger everyday usability problem than any small accuracy gap between models.
11Open source control and customization
  • The underlying speech-to-text models are open or commercially available to anyone; what paid dictation apps actually sell is the polished wrapper around them.
  • Open source means you keep the version you have forever, even if the company behind a paid alternative disappears, pivots, or starts charging more.
12Using AI prompts to clean up dictation
  • Routing raw dictated text through a configurable AI prompt before it lands in the target app can auto-strip filler words and apply formatting rules you set once.
13Custom dictionaries for names and company terms
  • Building a custom dictionary of the specific names and company terms you say every day is the single highest-leverage setup step for any dictation tool, paid or free.
14Choosing between faster and more accurate models
  • A model that scores a couple of points higher on accuracy but runs slower rarely wins in daily use, because most people can't perceive that small a difference.
15Installation delay to watch for
  • A progress bar stuck at a low percentage during a local model download isn't necessarily a failed install — some downloads silently resume and finish minutes later.
16Why Adam removed SuperWhisper
  • Once a free, open-source alternative matches a paid tool's reliability, the paid tool's remaining case shrinks down to convenience features alone.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

On-device (local) speech model
A speech-to-text model that runs entirely on your own computer instead of sending audio to a cloud server, so no recording ever leaves the machine.
Custom dictionary (dictation)
A per-app word list you add to a dictation tool so it correctly transcribes specific names, products, or company terms it would otherwise misspell.
AI prompt cleanup
An automatic step where raw dictated text is passed through a configurable AI instruction (e.g., 'remove filler words, format as an email') before it's pasted into the target app.
Voice engine (model tier)
The specific speech-recognition model a dictation app uses to convert audio to text; different tiers trade transcription speed against accuracy.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:09productZapier ↗
01:08toolFluidVoice ↗
00:16toolWispr Flow
00:16toolSuperWhisper
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:44
“I don't like it for a few reasons. Number one, I'm sending it up into the cloud... who knows who's gonna subpoena what that I said.”
sharp, specific privacy objection to cloud dictation→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
03:31
“The models are either open or available, and these companies have packaged it into a nice Mac app for you. Fluid Voice is open source.”
names the actual product paid apps are selling→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
05:57
“I've already removed Super Whisper from my computer.”
concrete proof-point payoff line, said mid-video not just at the end→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
04:49
“It's never gonna spell your name wrong when I speak to it because it knows exactly how Andrew Warner is spelled.”
tangible custom-dictionary payoff→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

This little dictation app is free, open source, and uses AI on your computer, and I'm going to show you how you can install it and use it right now. Presented by Zapier, the AI automation company.
Adam, everyone's using audio dictation apps on their computers. They're paying $15 a month for it. I'm using WhisperFlow,
and we've got a better solution, one that's completely free and works way better. What do you use? What do you pay?
I use this thing called Super Whisper. It's using all the same models that all these other tools use. And I'm paying it's about $10 a month, uh, but I don't like to think about it too much.
10 is fine. This is I pay $15
a month because I pay, um, monthly for this. I don't like it for a few reasons. Number one, I'm sending it up into the cloud, which I don't have any worries about any private information, but who knows who's gonna subpoena what that I said, numb number one.
Number two, if it's going up into the cloud, it's taking longer. And number three, I happen to believe that there's a better user experience, and WhisperFlow is not giving it to us, and neither are these other apps. So you and I did the GitHub show, and we talked about the top, uh, repos of the week.
And then I said, I've gotta attach something to it that people are not, like, starring enough, and it's this. It is something called Fluid Voice.
Look. It shot up after we did our GitHub show, which is incredibly popular. If you're not watching it, folks, you gotta watch it.
We reveal these types of things all the time. I'm I'm one of those stars, Andrew. I'm that star right at the kinda top third there.
Was like, oh, man. After I tried it and I started using it, immediately came back to the to the repository,
gave it a star because I I think these guys are gonna be really successful. It's an awesome product. It's fantastic because
you get to customize it. You you get to download this or get the whole, uh, the whole, um, what is it called?
The code base, and you could change it to however you want. Or you could just go to their website, and you can get it. I got it and downloaded it for Mac.
The setup is super duper easy. I then once I had it, I got to pick which voice engine I wanted. And I said, I want the blazing fast one, but you can go even, um, you can go for whatever model you like.
And then you can customize it here by telling it what you want to use as your hotkey, what you want to use as your continuation key. It will even do some edits on your text if you want it.
Let me show you what it looks like compared to WhisperFlow. On WhisperFlow, I'm gonna hit the f n key, I'm gonna say, my name is Andrew, and I'm just gonna be talking directly into the screen, and I'm gonna talk super fast because I'm a New Yorker at heart, and I will always talk super fast.
And you can see on the very bottom of my screen how all my WAV files are coming in. Let's see how long it takes for it to come through. Let go.
It's thinking. Not not bad. Right?
Yeah. That's good. I think it basically got it.
Now I'm going to switch over to, um, Fluid, and watch this. My name is Andrew, and now I'm gonna be using this Fluid Voice thing. And notice on the bottom of my screen, you cannot just see that it's typing with the WAV thing, but it's also showing the words, which lets me see that what I'm saying is actually going through.
And it's letting me see what kind of features I've got on and where it's planning to to paste it, in this case, into, um, Chrome. Let's let go of the button, the hotkey, and let's see how fast it pasted in.
That's amazing. Right. And the fact that I could see it in real time is fantastic.
Really good piece of software. I'm so glad that that we got to share this with people. What do you have to add on this?
You've been using this a lot longer than I have. I mean, there's there's so much. So so number one, I think you glossed over something I think it's really important here.
You know, Whisper Flow, Super Whisper, all these other ones, they're all companies Mhmm. That are charging us to use this software. The models are are either open or available, and these companies have packaged it into a nice Mac app for you.
Fluid Voice is open source. You could download the source. You could save it forever.
You don't ever have to pay these guys money. Other people are gonna come in here and and contribute to it. They're gonna change it.
There's gonna be versions of this. The fact that this is open means that this is free, and it's going to be free. And you get the control.
Now you don't have to customize it if you don't want to, but you could. But what you've already pointed out is when you go into the settings, there's a lot of custom available there, including, you know, running all of your transcriptions through AI prompts before Right.
They get pasted into the application. And so you could have set up, I wanna I wanna prompt for writing emails. Well, now it's gonna remove your ticks.
It's gonna add, you know, a new line after dear Andrew. I love the show that we do together. It'll add the the new line there.
It'll add the comma, and you can customize those prompts. You can also customize the dictionary.
I've already when I get one of these tools, the first thing I do is I drop into the custom words, and I add in all the names of the people that I work with that I say out loud all the time. I add the names of the companies that I work with because they're all spelled weird. And immediately, once you put them in this dictionary, again, with Fluid Voice is gonna use AI to plug in those words.
And so it's never gonna spell your name wrong when I speak to it because it knows exactly how Andrew Warner is spelled. It knows how my name is spelled. My partner, Jesse Pucci, it knows all of that.
Is it j e s s I, j e s I e, j e s s e? Like, fluid voice knows. So I've put all of that in in place, and agree.
I'm on the blazing fast model too, but I did actually test out a couple of the other models. Mhmm. I tested one of the even faster ones.
I also tested one that was I don't remember which it was. Yeah. The cohere high accuracy.
It's it got, like, two more accuracy points, but it's a little slower. And I decided, no.
I can't tell a difference. And so I'm I'm on the same one that you're on. The the only weird thing, you know, when I first downloaded this, I installed it.
I clicked blazing fast. It started to install. And then nothing happened.
And nothing happened. And I actually wrote you a Slack message. It was like, oh, man, Andrew.
Like, I was wrong. I in the video, I said this is gonna be amazing, and it's not.
I'm sorry. But you know what? I waited a couple more minutes.
The thing installed,
and it totally works. And I've I've already removed Super Whisper from my computer. That's a good note because the same thing happened to me.
And because it happened to you, I knew to watch out for it. What happens is it will say 3%, uh, installed, and then it just stops, and it won't do anything.
And then a few minutes later, maybe ten, fifteen minutes later, it shifts from 3% to 98 to a 100, and then it's done. So Yep. That that part wasn't working well.
Everything is Little inconveniences
to me like that are gonna be worth the $10 a month. Plus, like, since it's installed and since it's running, I've had zero issues. Everything has worked great.
The little pop up works great. I love that you can see the text as you're speaking instead of just the little thing that's moving. Because half the time, like, wait.
Can it actually hear me? Is it connected to my Bluetooth headphones that are in the other room? Like like, is this working?
Seeing the the text on the screen is is amazing too. And it's free. Did we mention that it's free?
I love that it's free. I love that it's open source. Fluid Voice is one of many apps that we showed in the GitHub repo show.
Click the link here, and we'll show you the others. See you there.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Andrew Warner opens with a flat claim: the free app beats the $15-a-month one. What follows is a live, unscripted speed test — same sentence, same moment, two apps racing to paste it into the screen — and by the end his co-host has already deleted his paid subscription's app from his computer.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

05:15list

Voice engine tiers (speed vs. accuracy)

  1. Blazing Fast (Parakeet) — English only, fastest transcription
  2. Cohere High Accuracy — multilingual, a couple points more accurate, noticeably slower

FluidVoice ships multiple downloadable voice-engine models; the two hosts both landed on the fast tier after testing the high-accuracy one and finding the gap imperceptible in daily use.

Steal forpicking a default speech model for any personal dictation or transcription tool
CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK
06:54next-video
“Fluid Voice is one of many apps that we showed in the GitHub repo show. Click the link here, and we'll show you the others.”

Soft cross-promotion to their own GitHub-repos-of-the-week show, framed as 'here's where we found this' rather than a hard sales pitch.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA
00:09productZapier ↗
01:08toolFluidVoice ↗
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

cold open
hookcold open00:00
FluidVoice intro
valueFluidVoice intro01:08
Wispr Flow speed test
valueWispr Flow speed test02:28
FluidVoice speed test
valueFluidVoice speed test02:55
custom dictionary
valuecustom dictionary04:45
sign-off / CTA
ctasign-off / CTA06:54
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

cold open00:00Frame at 00:04 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:04Frame at 00:08 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:08Frame at 00:12 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:12Frame at 00:18 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:18Frame at 00:24 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:24
cold open00:00Frame at 00:04 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:04Frame at 00:08 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:08Frame at 00:12 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:12Frame at 00:18 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:18Frame at 00:24 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:24Frame at 00:28 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:28Frame at 00:31 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:31Frame at 00:34 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:34Frame at 00:38 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:38Frame at 00:44 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:44Frame at 00:49 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:49Frame at 00:54 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones00:54Frame at 01:00 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:00FluidVoice intro01:06Frame at 01:12 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:12Frame at 01:18 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:18Frame at 01:24 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:24Frame at 01:30 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:30Frame at 01:36 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:36Frame at 01:41 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:41Frame at 01:45 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:45Frame at 01:50 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:50Frame at 01:57 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones01:57Frame at 02:02 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:02Frame at 02:07 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:07Frame at 02:10 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:10Wispr Flow speed test02:17Frame at 02:23 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:23Frame at 02:28 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:28Frame at 02:33 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:33Frame at 02:39 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:39FluidVoice speed test02:44Frame at 02:50 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:50Frame at 02:55 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones02:55Frame at 03:00 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones03:00Frame at 03:06 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month 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open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:12Frame at 05:18 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:18Frame at 05:24 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:24Frame at 05:30 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:30Frame at 05:36 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:36Frame at 05:43 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:43Frame at 05:49 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:49Frame at 05:56 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones05:56Frame at 06:03 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:03Frame at 06:10 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:10Frame at 06:16 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:16Frame at 06:23 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:23Frame at 06:29 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:29Frame at 06:35 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:35Frame at 06:40 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:40Frame at 06:45 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:45Frame at 06:51 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:51Frame at 06:55 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones06:55sign-off / CTA06:59Frame at 07:02 from A free, open-source dictation app that beats the $15/month ones07:02
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