Is there a free medical dictation app?

Yes, you can get dictation software for free, but a free app is a general tool. We did not find a free app that combines clinical vocabulary, integration with an electronic health record (EHR) and a business associate agreement (BAA) for patient information. A free tool is a reasonable choice for letters, general notes and practice, as long as no patient identifiers go in. Patient records need more, as the rest of this page explains.

Free dictation apps work offline, but they are built for general text

Handy is a free, open-source app. The project describes it as a speech-to-text application that works completely offline ¹.

On a Mac, Apple says general text Dictation is processed on your device, and you can check this in Keyboard settings ². That keeps audio on the device. Whether the tool recognizes clinical terms is a separate question, and you should test it.

Free plans of paid apps can also be useful. Superwhisper's free plan gives unlimited dictation using local Whisper models, and it includes custom vocabulary and text replacements ³. Custom vocabulary is the feature that matters most for clinical words. Voice Control on a Mac accepts up to 1,000 custom vocabulary terms, and you can teach it how to say each one ⁴. You enter those terms yourself. We did not find a clinical vocabulary that ships with any of these free tools, so a free app only knows the medical words you teach it.

Keeping audio on your device does not settle the privacy question

On-device processing reduces where your audio goes, but it does not replace the contract HIPAA requires. Whether a vendor must sign a BAA depends on whether it receives or keeps patient data. HHS says a cloud service provider that holds health information for a covered entity must sign a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement ⁵.

A signed BAA is also not the end of the job. Microsoft says that offering a business associate agreement helps support HIPAA compliance, but that using its services does not on its own achieve HIPAA compliance ⁶. The Security Rule requires an accurate and thorough risk analysis of the electronic protected health information you handle ⁷. A free app will not do that analysis for your practice.

Paid clinical products are priced per user, so get an itemized quote

When a clinic needs dictation into the patient chart, the paid option is a clinical product such as Dragon Medical One. Resellers quote it at about $99 per user per month on a one-year term, $89 on two years and $79 on three years ⁸. Those are reseller quotes, so ask for an itemized quote that includes setup, the microphone and support before you budget. How much Dragon Medical One costs walks through the numbers.

The table below shows where a free general tool fits and where it does not.

Five steps before any free app goes near patient work

1. List what you will dictate. If the text includes patient names, dates of birth or diagnoses, use a product whose vendor will sign a BAA.
2. Test on your own non-patient text. Dictate ten notes, count the errors, and measure the word error rate. Practice material can help: see where to find medical dictation examples.
3. Ask the vendor in writing whether it will sign a BAA, and where your audio and text are stored.
4. Ask your compliance officer for the risk analysis. Is Apple Dictation HIPAA compliant? shows the questions to ask about Apple's tool.
5. Get an itemized quote for any paid option before you commit, and compare the total with the one-time setup costs.

Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows. It is a general-purpose tool, not a clinical product, so it belongs with the general tools described above. If you want to test a general tool on your own notes, see the download page.

For the three medical dictation workflows, read our guide to medical dictation. For the wider subject, see dictation for work.