Speech engines
Parakeet or Whisper: speed, or your vocabulary.
Blurt ships both engines and runs both on your Mac, so this is not a sales pitch for one of them. They differ in three ways that matter for dictation: speed, languages, and whether they can learn the names you say.
By Jahanzaib Akhter · Updated
For dictation on an Apple Silicon Mac, pick Parakeet v3 when you dictate long stretches in English or another European language and want the fastest result. Pick Whisper large-v3-turbo when you need other languages or rely on custom vocabulary, because only Whisper can be biased towards your names and terms. Blurt, $3.99 a month, ships both and switches between them in Settings.
Where the two engines differ
Speed: Parakeet wins
Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, from NVIDIA, is the fastest engine Blurt offers and runs on the CPU. In our own test on one Apple Silicon Mac, it transcribed a 47-second English clip in 0.95 seconds, against 1.06 for Compact Whisper and 1.23 for Max Accuracy. The default Accurate build was not in that test. Whisper large-v3-turbo runs on the Apple Silicon GPU through Metal, and the default Accurate build returns a normal sentence in under a second on an M2 Air. Both feel instant for a short reply; the gap shows on long dictation.
Custom vocabulary: only Whisper
Whisper accepts a biasing hint, so Blurt feeds it your custom vocabulary, the corrections it has learned from your edits and, if you turn context awareness on, terms from the screen. Parakeet has no biasing at all. Replacement rules still work on Parakeet, because they rewrite the text after recognition, but it will not learn to hear a new name.
Languages: Whisper covers far more
Parakeet v3 handles 25 European languages, English included, and detects which one you are speaking. Whisper covers roughly 99 languages and lets you pick one or leave it on auto-detect. If you dictate in Japanese, Arabic or Hindi, the choice is made for you.
Punctuation out of the box
Parakeet writes punctuation and capitals itself, so its raw output already reads like sentences. Blurt notices this and skips the local formatting model when there is nothing for it to fix. Whisper punctuates too, and smart formatting still does the heavier work of paragraphs and lists for both.
Size on disk
Parakeet is 670 MB. Whisper comes in three builds of the same model: Compact at 574 MB, Accurate at 874 MB as the default, and Max Accuracy at 1.6 GB. Accurate invents fewer words on short or quiet clips than Compact at the same speed, which is why it is the default.
A simple rule
Start on Accurate. If you mostly dictate long English or European-language text and the names you use come out right, try Parakeet for the speed. If names start coming out wrong on Parakeet, switch back: your vocabulary, replacements and history are shared, so switching costs a download and nothing else.
Side by side
Competitor details and prices checked Sept 2026| Feature | Whisper large-v3-turbo | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | OpenAI | NVIDIA |
| Runs on | Apple Silicon GPU, via Metal | CPU |
| Speed in Blurt | Under a second per sentence (Accurate, M2 Air) | Fastest of the four engines |
| Languages | Roughly 99, choose one or auto-detect | 25 European, English included, auto-detected |
| Custom vocabulary biasing | Yes | No. Replacement rules still apply |
| Punctuation and capitals | Yes | Yes, built in |
| Download size | 574 MB, 874 MB or 1.6 GB | 670 MB |
| Default in Blurt | Yes, the 874 MB Accurate build | No |
Made by
Runs on
Speed in Blurt
Languages
Custom vocabulary biasing
Punctuation and capitals
Download size
Default in Blurt
FAQ
Is Parakeet better than Whisper for dictation?
It is faster, and for long English or European-language dictation that is often what matters. Whisper is the better choice when you need other languages or custom vocabulary, since Parakeet cannot be biased towards your names and terms. In Blurt both run offline on an Apple Silicon Mac.
Does custom vocabulary work with Parakeet?
Not for recognition in Blurt. Parakeet has no way to be biased towards a word list, so vocabulary only helps on Whisper. Replacement rules do work on Parakeet, because they rewrite the transcript after it is produced.
Which languages does Parakeet v3 support?
25 European languages including English: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian.
Do both engines work offline?
Yes. In Blurt, each downloads once from Hugging Face when you pick it, and after that runs entirely on your Mac with the wifi off.
Can I switch engines without losing my settings?
Yes. In Blurt, vocabulary, replacement rules and history are shared across all four engines. Switching only downloads the new model if you do not have it yet.
Keep reading
Try both. Keep the one you like.
14 days free, no card, no account. Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or later.