Is MacWhisper free?

Yes, you can use MacWhisper for free, and you can pay once for Pro. The maker's website lists the Free plan at €0, free forever ¹, and MacWhisper Pro as a single payment of €64 with lifetime updates ². There is no monthly fee for the direct-download version. Free transcribes audio and video files on your Mac; Pro is for speed, speaker labels and volume. Our MacWhisper guide covers the whole app, and this page answers the price question on its own. Prices below were checked on October 27, 2026.

The free version is a real tier, not a trial

The free version is a permanent free tier. MacWhisper's own feature list for it sets no minute cap or expiry date, and it describes transcription on the Mac's GPU at up to about 30 times real time ³. That is the maker's best-case ceiling, not a promise for every Mac. Your audio is processed on the Mac itself: the privacy policy says no audio, text or other data leaves your device ⁴.

The catch is the model list. The free feature list says it supports all Whisper models, but that some are only fully available to Pro users ⁵. The page does not say which ones, so open the model list in the app before you decide that free is enough.

Pro adds speakers, faster models and recording

The first three Pro rows have their own pages: which model is best, recording meetings and speaker recognition.

What Pro costs, and how to pay less

Pro is a perpetual license. The store where the purchase happens, Gumroad, listed it at €65 on the same day ¹¹, a euro above the website. Ways to pay less or hedge the risk:

• Students, journalists and non-profits can get 25 percent off Pro by emailing the maker and describing their work ¹². There is no automatic student checkout, so you have to ask.
• Teams can buy packs, from €54 a license for 5 down to €44 a license for 50 ¹³.
• Refund: the maker says you can ask for your money back within 7 days ¹⁴.

A personal license is meant for your own devices, with a soft limit of three ¹⁵.

It depends: the App Store edition is priced differently

There are two editions. The Mac App Store edition is called Whisper Transcription. It sells weekly, monthly and yearly subscriptions and cannot take a MacWhisper license key ¹⁶. In the US its Pro Lifetime in-app purchase is listed at $99.99 ¹⁷. Only the direct download can dictate into any text field and detect meetings ¹⁸. The iPhone and iPad app is free with all local models, with an optional subscription for cloud transcription and AI summaries ¹⁹. If you want the one-time price, buy from the maker's website, not the App Store.

What to do

1. Start free. Transcribe a real recording of yours. For one or two English speakers, free is often enough.
2. Upgrade if you hit a wall: more than two speakers, hours of audio, or recording a call. Use the 7-day refund window to test.
3. Look at the alternatives before paying. The free audio-to-text tool runs in your browser, and our guide to free dictation on Mac lists built-in options. If dictation is your main need, compare Superwhisper too.