How Dictation Apps Charge: Free, Paid, Weekly Plans

Dictation and voice apps on the US App Store are overwhelmingly free to download, and most of them charge through in-app purchases. Of the 426 apps tracked, 275 apps are free with in-app purchases ¹, 117 apps are free with nothing to buy ², 31 apps are paid apps ³ and 3 apps are paid and also sell in-app purchases ⁴. Weekly plans are a minority tactic: 50 apps list one ⁵. A lifetime purchase is listed by 60 apps ⁶.

The row for each app is its US listing as Apple shows it, read on October 30, 2026. The figure in each row is the number of in-app purchases Apple lists, capped at ten. For prices rather than business models, see our data on App Store prices and dictation app prices.

Free with in-app purchases is the default way these apps charge

The free-with-purchases group has more than twice as many apps as the group that is free with nothing to buy (275 against 117), and far more than the paid apps. These apps list a median of 3 in-app purchases ⁷, from none to ten.

Two details matter when you read those numbers. First, a free download is an entry point, not a price: the plan that unlocks the product sits behind the in-app purchase list. Second, the group is not uniform. A few apps flagged as having purchases list none, for example Microsoft SwiftKey and Meta AI, so the label describes how Apple classifies the page, not how many plans exist.

Paid apps are rare and mostly sit on the Mac

Only 31 apps are paid apps ³, and by definition they list no in-app purchases (the median is 0 in-app purchases ⁸). Most of them are Mac listings, which fits a desktop habit of paying once for a utility. The few paid apps that also sell in-app purchases list a median of 1 in-app purchases ⁹.

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Within transcription the paid share is higher than within dictation: 15 of 108 transcription apps ¹⁸ against 7 of 85 dictation apps ¹⁹. Meeting-notes apps are the other way round: only 6 of 111 are paid ²⁰. Voice assistants have none (0 of 14 apps ²¹).

Weekly plans cluster in meeting and voice notes apps

Every app that sells a weekly plan is also a free app with in-app purchases, and the plans concentrate in two kinds of product. Meeting-notes apps list a weekly plan in 24 of 111 cases ²², and voice-notes apps in 8 of 46 ²³. Dictation apps rarely do: 6 of 85 ²⁴. Relative to each other, the share of meeting-notes apps with a weekly plan is about three times the share among dictation apps.

Elsewhere the share is small. Transcription apps list a weekly plan in 9 of 108 cases ²⁵ and voice keyboards in 3 of 32 ²⁶. Voice assistants and medical and professional apps list none (0 of 14 and 0 of 30 apps).

One likely reason is the product. Summaries of a call or a lecture are bought for a short job, so a cheap weekly price fits a buyer who may cancel within days. A dictation app is used daily for months, so monthly and yearly plans fit better. The data shows the pattern, not the motive. Some apps that sell a weekly plan also fill Apple's list at the maximum of ten purchases, which means cheaper or other plans can be missing from what we read.

Lifetime purchases are more common in dictation than in meeting notes

A lifetime purchase is the one-time alternative to a subscription. It is listed slightly more often than a weekly plan across the whole set (60 apps against 50), but the order flips by kind. Dictation apps list a lifetime purchase in 16 of 85 cases ²⁷, more than twice as many apps as list a weekly plan. Meeting-notes apps list a lifetime purchase in 13 of 111 ²⁸, fewer than list a weekly plan.

Voice-notes apps list a lifetime purchase in 9 of 46 cases ²⁹, a share close to the dictation share. Transcription apps list one in 18 of 108 ³⁰ and voice keyboards in 4 of 32 ³¹. Like weekly plans, every lifetime purchase belongs to a free app with in-app purchases, never to a paid app.

Medical and voice assistant apps follow different models

Two groups sit apart. Medical and professional apps are mostly free with nothing to buy (23 of 30 apps ³²), with the other 7 free with purchases ³³. None of them lists a lifetime purchase (0 apps ³⁴). One plausible reason is that such products are sold to clinics and hospitals by contract, so the listing shows no price, though the data does not say.

Voice assistants are free with purchases in 9 of 14 cases ³⁵, and the other 5 sell nothing ³⁶. All of them lack both a weekly plan and a lifetime purchase.

Dictation apps, the group most readers care about, look like the whole market: 54 of 85 are free with purchases ³⁷, 23 are free with nothing to buy ³⁸ and 7 are paid ¹⁹.

What the data cannot tell you

The data says nothing about other places to buy. Many of these apps also sell plans on their makers' websites, often for less because Apple takes no commission there. A listing records only what the App Store page shows.

Apple lists at most ten purchases. An app with more plans can have cheaper or other plans missing, and a count at the cap is a floor.

Periods are read from names. A plan called only "Pro" has no stated period, so a weekly or lifetime purchase named that way is not counted. Trial and introductory prices are not shown as such, and free trial entries are not counted. The real number of weekly and lifetime sellers is probably somewhat higher than shown.

Some kinds have no rows. Built-in dictation, browser extensions, speech-to-text APIs and open models are in our scheme but have 0 apps here ⁴⁵, because they are not sold as App Store listings in the US or are web services. The spec also excludes our own app. Apple's built-in dictation, which costs nothing, is therefore not part of these shares.

US storefront only. Other countries show prices in their own currencies, often lower, and a snapshot read on one day does not show promotions.

What this means if you are choosing how to write

If you dictate every day, look first at dictation apps with a monthly, yearly or lifetime option rather than a weekly plan, and read the full purchase list before you start a trial. A free download tells you little about the cost, and a weekly price repeats far faster than it looks: check the renewal period in the listing before you accept it.

If you want to pay once, use the lifetime and paid-app filters on the table below, and note that paid apps are mostly Mac apps. If you need dictation without paying at all, the free group with nothing to buy and the dictation that ships with your phone or computer are the places to start. Our overview of dictation software compares what the options do, our market overview shows who makes them, and the pricing pages above show what the plans cost.

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