What is the best dictation app for veterinarians?

We could not find independent evidence that one veterinary dictation app is the best. Some products we found say they write into practice management software, and their accuracy and time-saving claims come from the vendors. The one independent comparison we found is a small teaching study that favoured the iPhone's built-in speech recognition over OpenAI's Whisper. So a built-in tool may be enough for case notes that you read and sign yourself. For the reasons, the options and what to test, read on.

The evidence is a small study, not a trial in practice

The best independent study we found is a 2025 comparison of speech tools for veterinary ophthalmology teaching cases. It recorded five clinical case discussions ¹, and seven raters scored the transcripts and summaries: four final-year veterinary students and three clinicians ². The iPhone's built-in speech recognition outperformed Whisper on readability, technical accuracy and clinical flow ³.

Five cases and seven raters are too few to generalise. The study also rated transcripts and summaries, not real practice records, and it did not measure error rates directly. Treat it as a reason to test the built-in tool first, not as proof that it wins in your clinic.

The named products range from a dictation app to an AI scribe

Three products came up most often in our search, and each is a different kind of tool.

Talkatoo's home page describes it as dictation, AI and scribe software for vets, and says it is trusted by more than 30,000 veterinary professionals worldwide ⁴. The user count is a vendor's claim. VetSkribe's store listing describes voice-to-text charting, and it names no specific integrations, so ask the developer which systems it supports.

We did not find independent accuracy or time-saving figures for any of these. The vendor claims that notes come faster are the kind of figure to test, not to repeat.

It depends on the practice system, the device and the note type

• Your practice management system. The most important question is whether the tool writes into your records. A tool that only pastes text will still need someone to move it.
• Your devices. A built-in tool comes with an iPhone, but a desktop practice may need a different app.
• Your notes. Short case notes that you read and sign are a different job from a full consultation with a client, which may need a scribe that records the visit.
• Your data rules. Ask where recordings and text are stored and for how long. Vendors differ in where they host data.

What to test before you choose

1. Dictate five real case notes into the trial version and into the built-in iPhone tool, and count the corrections in each.
2. Check that the text lands in the correct field of your practice software, not only in a text box.
3. Ask each vendor for its integration list, its data storage location and its retention terms, and get the answers in writing.
4. Keep a record of the time each note takes with each tool, and compare the results after a week rather than on the first day.

For the wider picture, see the professional dictation guide, which covers specialist products by field. For a general tool you can try first, see the free dictation software guide. If your clinic wants a scribe that records the visit, read what the Heidi dictation app is, which covers one scribe that also offers dictation. The dictation software hub links to every guide on this topic.