What is the best free Hindi speech to text?

For most people, the best free Hindi speech to text is the voice typing already on the device they use. Gboard on Android, Apple Dictation on iPhone, Windows voice typing on a Windows PC and Google Docs voice typing all list Hindi. Paid and online tools are worth it when you need something the built-in tools lack, such as a transcript of a recording. Whichever you pick, test it on your own Hindi, because accuracy differs from tool to tool.

The built-in tool is the best choice for dictating as you type

Each common platform has a built-in tool with Hindi on its list.

Read the table as a list of where Hindi is offered, not a ranking. Apple's page lists Hindi in its general Dictation section, but Hindi is not in the separate On-Device and Modeless Dictation section ². That means you cannot assume Apple's Hindi dictation works without a connection. Test it in airplane mode before you depend on it.

Free transcription of recordings has an allowance, not an unlimited plan

For a recording, such as a meeting or a voice note, you need a service that accepts audio files. Some free transcription sites set an allowance, and allowances change, so read the current terms before you upload anything.

Cloud speech services also have free tiers. Microsoft's Azure AI Speech free tier includes 5 audio hours a month of standard real-time transcription ⁵. That is enough to test, but it is a developer service rather than a dictation app, and five hours is a limit to plan around for regular work.

Free tools also differ in where your audio goes. Some send it to a company's servers, so read the privacy statement of any tool you use for confidential speech.

An open-source Hindi model is free to use, but it needs a developer

If you are building an app, an open model is the free option with the most room to customize. AI4Bharat's Hindi IndicConformer model is listed on AIKosh, the Indian government's AI portal, under the MIT license ⁶. The MIT license lets you use the model at no charge, but you must host and run it yourself. A model listing is not an accuracy test, so test it on your own audio before you build on it. Our question on speech to text APIs for Indian languages compares the options.

Browser tools depend on the browser you use

Some free Hindi tools run in the browser, and they may work in only some browsers. Check which browsers a tool supports before you rely on it. Our free online dictation page works in the browser, and our free audio to text page handles recorded files.

Free does not mean equally accurate, so measure Hindi yourself

The accuracy gap matters more than the price. On the FLEURS benchmark, Whisper large-v2 had a word error rate of 21.5 percent for Hindi ⁷. In a 2025 Mistral table of FLEURS results, Gemini 2.5 Flash had 6.76 percent in Hindi ⁸. Those are different systems, and together they show how wide the range is. Word error rate counts the share of words a recognizer gets wrong, so 21.5 percent means about one word in five.

Accuracy can also drop on names, places and technical terms. Our Hindi voice typing guide covers the research on accents and named entities, and it is the place to start if your work is full of names.

It depends on the job, the device and the audio

• You want to type in an app: Use the built-in dictation on your device. It is free, and it works where you already type.
• You need a transcript of a recording: Use a free transcription service with a clear allowance, and check the text against the audio. Check the length limit of each file too.
• You need Hindi offline: Test the built-in tool with airplane mode on, because support for offline Hindi varies by platform.
• Your audio is confidential: Read where the tool sends it, and prefer a tool that processes audio on the device.
• You are a developer: The open model is free to use, but budget time for hosting and testing.

What to do: test two tools on the same paragraph

1. Start with the built-in tool on your device, and check that Hindi is in its language list.
2. Write a paragraph of about 150 words in Hindi, with the names and terms you use at work.
3. Dictate it with the built-in tool and, if you need a second opinion, with one free alternative from the list above.
4. Count the wrong words in each output, then divide by the number of words in your paragraph for a rough word error rate.
5. Choose the tool with the fewest errors on your own text, and check its allowance or terms before you rely on it.

For the typing side of the same question, see the question on how to type faster in Hindi. For the full subject, read our Hindi voice typing overview, and for computers in particular, the question on Hindi voice typing on a computer.