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Whisper Dictator transcribes your fieldwork audio locally on Windows. Choose a file, watch the progress bar, and get a complete transcript you can code, quote, or save. Transcribe every lecture and every interview for a one-time $99. Yours forever, with nothing billed by the minute.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit) · Paid feature, current promotion active
A two-hour lecture recorded on your phone, a focus group session, the semi-structured interviews for your next thesis chapter. All captured, none of it transcribed yet.
Otter, Rev, and Descript process your files on their servers. For interviews covered by a consent form and an ethics board, sending them off your machine is a promise you have to keep.
Rev charges around $0.25 per minute for AI transcription. Forty hours of interviews works out to roughly $600. On a graduate stipend, that is a line item you cannot cover.
Whisper Dictator runs the entire transcription on your machine. Choose an interview or lecture file and the app transcribes it locally, then hands back a transcript you can copy or save as a .txt for coding. Nothing uploads. Nothing is billed by the minute.
Everything you need to turn a term of fieldwork into text, without a subscription.
Audio: mp3, m4a, wav, flac, ogg, opus, aac, wma. Video: mp4, mov, mkv, webm, avi. Recorder app, phone, or laptop, choose a file and go.
No per-minute fee, no monthly cap. Transcribe as many hours of interviews as your research needs, after one payment.
After setup, transcription runs with no internet. Your participants' audio never leaves the computer.
A two-hour lecture or a long focus group is processed in chunks so memory stays stable. No hard length limit is imposed by the app.
Copy the text or save it as a .txt file, then load it into your coding tool. Nothing is retained by a third party.
Auto-detect plus explicit presets for English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and Italian, useful for multilingual fieldwork.
Open Whisper Dictator and pick your interview or lecture file from disk. No account, no upload queue, no waiting for a cloud worker.
A progress bar shows the transcription running locally. Close the window and it keeps working while you read or take notes.
When it finishes, the transcript appears in a result window. Copy it to the clipboard or save it as a .txt file for your coding software.
How local file transcription compares to Otter, Rev, and Descript. The gaps are named honestly, not hidden.
| Capability | Whisper Dictator | Otter | Rev (AI) | Descript |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs entirely on your machine | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Your content stays private | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| No per-minute or monthly cap | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ~ |
| One-time price option | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Unlimited hours | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Speaker labels (who said what) | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Subtitle export (SRT/VTT) | ~ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ |
File transcription is part of the paid plan. Start free to try dictation, upgrade to transcribe files.
Try voice dictation first
~$3.33/month, billed annually
Pay once, transcribe forever. No renewals.
No. The file is processed by the app on your machine. Nothing uploads. This is the default and the only mode, which keeps your interviews inside the boundaries of your consent forms.
It handles a wide range of accents and works across many languages. What it does not do is label who said what: speaker labeling (diarization) is not offered. The transcript is complete and fully searchable, which is what qualitative coding needs. You attribute speakers in your coding tool as you read through.
No hard limit is imposed by the app. A two-hour lecture or a long focus group is supported. Very long files are processed in chunks so memory stays stable.
Annual $39.99 per year or Lifetime $99 one-time. Both unlock unlimited hours. A single cloud service can bill more than that for one round of fieldwork, so the one-time price pays for itself on your first project.
Yes. Lectures, seminars, voice memos, and field recordings all work the same way. See how file transcription works for the full list of supported formats.
Strong on clean recordings and workable across many languages. The transcript is a faithful, searchable record you can quote and code from. Accuracy improves as the app updates, at no extra cost to you.
Choose a file, get an accurate transcript, and keep it. No upload, no per-minute fee, on your own Windows PC.
Download for WindowsWindows 10/11 · Paid feature · 14-day refund