How do you test dictation software before buying?

Test dictation software on your own voice, microphone and writing, because reviews rarely use the conditions you will. A fair test needs a reference text for each passage, a timer and a note of the errors you find. It answers the question a ranking cannot: how well this tool handles the way you speak and write. The best dictation software guide gives the same steps alongside a comparison of the apps, and the dictation software overview covers the basics.

Reviews use other microphones and rooms, so their scores will not match yours

Accuracy depends heavily on conditions. In one study, close-talking read speech recorded in a studio had a word error rate of 3.7% with deep neural network models ¹. Real recordings made with a single distant ceiling microphone in an apartment had a word error rate of 12.0%, in different speech and rooms from the studio test ². A review written in a quiet room with a headset tells you little about a laptop microphone on a kitchen table. Your own test is the only result that matches your setup.

Fix the microphone and the room before you score anything

Use the same microphone and placement for every app, so the comparison is fair. For a headset, Nuance's Dragon guidance is to keep the microphone about an inch from the side of your mouth, not touching it ³. For a handheld microphone, the same guidance is to keep it about 1 to 3 inches from your mouth ⁴. Test with the headset or microphone you actually own, not the one in the demo video.

Score word error rate, and time the corrections

Researchers describe word error rate (WER) as a standard measure of discrepancy between machine and human transcriptions ⁵. You count the words the app gets wrong against your reference text, then divide by the number of words in the reference. The word error rate entry explains each type of error.

Score the text on the screen, not the audio you hear. In an in-lab study, participants missed over 50% of speech recognition errors when they listened to the audio output of the recognized text ⁶. So compare the written output with your reference, line by line.

Time the corrections as well as the first pass. A tool that drafts quickly but needs long fixes is not faster for you. Note the minutes from your first word to a finished, corrected passage, for each app.

Test every field you use, and then test offline

Dictate into each program you really use, such as your mail app, your document editor and your notes app. Each one can behave differently, so a result in one field does not carry over to another.

Then turn Wi-Fi off and dictate again. On Windows 11, voice typing needs an internet connection, a working microphone and the cursor in a text box ⁷, so it will fail this step. An app that says it works on the device should still work with the connection off. If it does not, you have learned what its offline claim means.

Compare the cost at your own word volume

Count the words you dictate in a typical week before you compare prices. Wispr Flow's free plan allows 2,000 dictated words per week on desktop ⁸, so a heavy user will need a paid plan sooner. If you are above a free limit, work out the monthly cost from the list price on the vendor's page, and check whether it is billed monthly or annually.

Yap, which we make, belongs in the same comparison, run on the same passages as the other apps. Its prices are on the pricing page, and you can try it with the download page.

Record the results in one table and decide

Put every passage and app in one table, so the comparison is easy to read.

Keep the built-in tool if its errors and correction time are acceptable. Pay for an app only when it clearly lowers both the word error rate and the correction time on your passages. Before you pay, read its privacy terms, and use the checklist in how to choose a dictation app.

If the test shows many errors, the cause can be the microphone or the room rather than the app. Work through the how to improve dictation accuracy question first, then run the test again. For the wider question of which tool is most accurate in general, see the most accurate dictation software.