Blurt vs Apple Dictation · checked Sept 2026
Blurt vs Apple Dictation: free is a real argument.
Apple's dictation is built in, costs nothing and works on your phone too. It also has no vocabulary of its own, no history, and no idea how to lay text out. That is the gap Blurt is sold into.
Every buyer compares against this one whether they mention it or not. macOS dictation is free, on-device for supported languages on modern Macs, and good enough for a text message. It starts to hurt when you dictate work: proper nouns come out wrong the same way every time, punctuation is a guess, and there is nothing to fix it with.
What the free option cannot do.
It never learns your words
Apple's model leans on your contacts and little else. Blurt takes a custom vocabulary that biases the model, replacement rules for words it keeps mishearing, and near-miss matching. It also proposes corrections it spots in your own transcripts, so the same mistake stops repeating.
It hands you a wall of text
Blurt strips filler words, restores punctuation, and can run a local model that turns a rambling take into paragraphs or a bulleted list. Nothing is sent anywhere to do it. There is also Polish, a shortcut that rewrites text you have selected in any app.
It forgets everything instantly
If the insertion goes into the wrong window, Apple's version is gone. Blurt keeps searchable history you can edit, copy and export, and it holds the text there if insertion fails rather than losing it.
It cannot record a meeting
Blurt's meeting mode captures your microphone and the call's system audio as separate tracks, transcribes both on your Mac and exports Markdown. No bot joins the call and no recording is uploaded.
Side by side
Competitor details and prices checked Sept 2026| Feature | Blurt | Apple Dictation |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99/mo, $29/yr, or $99 once | Free, built into macOS |
| Model | Whisper large-v3-turbo, or Parakeet for speed | Apple's own speech model |
| Where it runs | Always on your Mac | On-device for supported languages, otherwise Apple's servers |
| Custom vocabulary | Yes, plus replacement rules and learned corrections | No, beyond names in Contacts |
| Formatting | Filler removal, punctuation, paragraphs and lists | Basic punctuation from spoken commands |
| History | Searchable, editable, exportable | None |
| Meetings | Mic plus system audio, transcribed locally | Not supported |
| Hardware | Apple Silicon Macs | Any Mac, plus iPhone and iPad |
Price
Model
Where it runs
Custom vocabulary
Formatting
History
Meetings
Hardware
Questions people ask about switching
Is Apple Dictation good enough?
For short messages and casual notes, often yes, and it costs nothing. The case for paying starts when you dictate long form, use names and jargon the model has never seen, or need the output formatted rather than dumped as one paragraph.
Does Apple Dictation send my voice to Apple?
It runs on-device for supported languages on recent Macs and falls back to Apple's servers otherwise, which is not always obvious from the interface. Blurt has no server path at all, so there is nothing to check.
Why is Blurt more accurate on names?
Two reasons. It runs a larger model than a system dictation service can afford to run constantly, and you can feed it the exact words it keeps getting wrong. After a week of corrections the difference on your own vocabulary is the thing people notice most.
Do I have to give up Apple Dictation to use Blurt?
No. Blurt uses its own push-to-talk key, Fn by default, with Right Command, Right Option and Right Control as alternatives. Both can sit on the same Mac.
What does Blurt need to run?
An Apple Silicon Mac, the Accessibility permission so it can type into other apps, and a one-time model download of roughly 874 MB for the default engine. There is no Intel build and no iPhone app.
Keep reading
Fourteen days against the free one.
No card, no account. Dictate a week of real work in both and the answer stops being theoretical.