Free Dictation Keyboard for iPhone

Voice-to-text in any app. 100% on-device on Apple's Neural Engine. No cloud, no account, no subscription. Free forever.

SpeakUp keyboard on iPhone — custom keyboard with SpeakUp mic button and language selector

What you get

On-device transcription

Your voice is transcribed entirely on your iPhone with Parakeet (NVIDIA's open-source ASR model, Apache-2.0) running on Apple's Neural Engine via CoreML. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. Audio is processed locally in milliseconds and immediately discarded.

A keyboard mic button that works everywhere

SpeakUp installs a full QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated mic button. Tap it, speak, and your words appear in any app — Messages, Notes, Mail, Slack, Safari, anywhere you type. No app integration needed, no copy-paste from a separate app.

9 European languages, auto-detected

English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian — all at production quality. Plus Romanian as an "Experimental" tier (badged in the picker — lower accuracy than the other 8). Configure up to 3 languages in Settings; SpeakUp picks the right one automatically per recording.

Faithful transcription, not AI rewriting

SpeakUp transcribes what you said. Period. No paraphrasing, no AI "polish", no silent reorderings. Your words, your tone. If you wanted an AI to rewrite your text, you have plenty of options — this is not one of them, by design.

Free, forever

No subscription. No account. No word limits. No "free tier" that nags you to upgrade. iOS is free. Forever. The Mac version is €29 one-time.

How it compares

SpeakUpApple DictationWispr Flow
ProcessingOn-deviceHybrid*Cloud
Price (iOS)FreeFree$15/month
OfflineAlwaysPartial*Never
European languages9LimitedYes
AI rewrites your wordsNoNoYes
Works in every appCustom keyboardSystem onlyNot on iOS

*Apple Dictation processes some audio on-device but sends data to Apple servers for longer dictation and certain languages.

How it's built

SpeakUp for iPhone uses Parakeet TDT v3 — NVIDIA's open-source multilingual speech recognition model, running natively on Apple's Neural Engine via CoreML through the FluidAudio Swift package (Apache-2.0).

The keyboard extension and main app coordinate via a shared App Group container. The keyboard never touches the microphone directly — iOS kernel-blocks that anyway — so the main app handles recording and transcription. Your voice never leaves the device.

From iPhone to Mac

The iPhone keyboard is free because we want every iPhone user to feel what on-device dictation is like. If it earns a place in your daily workflow, you'll probably want it at your desk too — that is where SpeakUp for Mac comes in.

The Mac app is the same idea, removed of every iOS platform limit:

iPhone (free) Mac (€29 once)
Recording length 60 seconds per segment* Unlimited
Activation Tap mic on keyboard Global hotkey, types into any app
Engine Parakeet on Apple Neural Engine Whisper.cpp on Metal GPU + Neural Engine
Languages 9 30+
Custom Lexicons — Medical (DE), Software (EN), Legal soon
Subscription No No
Privacy On-device On-device

*iOS keyboard extension memory cap — a platform constraint, not a SpeakUp choice.

If the iPhone keyboard saved you time today, the Mac version pays for itself in about a week. 14-day free trial, no credit card. Try SpeakUp for Mac →

Or read the full comparison: Best Dictation Software for Mac (2026) →

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does SpeakUp for iPhone cost?

Free. No subscription, no account, no in-app purchases. The Mac version is €29 one-time and adds longer recordings, a system-wide hotkey that types into any app, and custom domain Lexicons (medical, software, legal).

Is there a free dictation app for iPhone?

Yes — SpeakUp is fully free on the App Store. Apple's built-in dictation is also free but limited (60-second cap on offline dictation, weaker non-English support, no custom keyboard). SpeakUp is a full QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated mic button that works in every app.

Does it work offline?

Yes. SpeakUp for iPhone runs 100% on your device using Parakeet on Apple's Neural Engine. Your voice never leaves your phone — not even for a millisecond. Works on the train, on a plane, anywhere with no signal.

Which iPhone models are supported?

iPhone running iOS 17 or later. The Parakeet model runs on Apple's Neural Engine, which is fastest on A17 Pro / A18 / A18 Pro chips but works on older models too.

Why does the keyboard need Full Access?

Solely to coordinate with the main SpeakUp app via a shared App Group container. The keyboard never accesses the network, never logs keystrokes, and never transmits any data. iOS requires Full Access for keyboard extensions that use shared storage.

Why is each recording limited to 60 seconds?

iOS caps memory available to keyboard extensions at about 48 MB. SpeakUp auto-stops at 60 seconds and immediately transcribes — tap the mic again to continue. This is a platform limit, not a SpeakUp choice. The Mac version has no such limit.

What languages are supported?

9 European languages — English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, and Romanian. The first 8 are validated for production accuracy; Romanian ships as 'Experimental' (lower accuracy, kept in the product because the founder is a native speaker). Built by a small team in Berlin — German isn't an afterthought.

Will my Mac license unlock anything on iPhone?

Not at v1.0 — the iPhone app is fully free as it stands. Future paid Lexicons or domain adapters may share entitlements; if you've bought SpeakUp for Mac, we'll honour that when the time comes.

Is there a SpeakUp version for Mac?

Yes. SpeakUp for Mac is €29 one-time (no subscription) and adds a global hotkey that types into any app, no 60-second recording limit, custom domain Lexicons, and Whisper-grade accuracy via Metal GPU + Apple Neural Engine. Same on-device privacy as iPhone. 14-day free trial.