Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.
People mostly look for Wispr Flow alternatives because of payment: the site has no standard way to attach a card of a Russian bank, and payments go in dollars. Potok (potok.now) is built differently for a user in Russia: payment by a Russian card directly in rubles, and the free plan gives 2500 words per week with no time limit, while Wispr Flow's free limit is 2000 words per week on desktop.
Wispr Flow is often called the benchmark of the genre: fast, with mobile apps and a neat interface. But for a user in Russia there is a snag from the very start: a card of a Russian bank cannot be attached on the site, you have to pay in dollars, and the company does not publish data on how the service handles Russian speech in particular, since the product is designed primarily for English. We look at when these reasons are enough to consider another service, and what to look at when choosing.
Why people look for a Wispr Flow replacement
The first reason is payment. On the site and in the apps for Windows and Mac, Wispr Flow has no standard way to pay with a card of a Russian bank: invoices are issued in dollars through a payment gateway that is standard for such a product. According to some reports, access is sometimes arranged through an App Store subscription, but there are no confirmed details about such a scheme, and you should not rely on it as an official way to pay.
The second reason is uncertainty about Russian. Wispr Flow states support for more than a hundred languages, but the product itself is designed primarily for English, and the company does not publish detailed public data on the quality of recognition of Russian speech in particular. For emails in plain English this is not a problem, but for mixed Russian and English speech with professional terms, check the result yourself instead of reading it off the general list of languages.
The third reason is the location of the servers. The country of Wispr Flow's data centers is not disclosed on the site: the wording stops at the word "cloud", with no specifics. For most tasks this is not critical, but for those who care about the jurisdiction of data processing in advance, such uncertainty is enough to look at a service with a more explicit policy. What switching to another dictation service looks like in practice is described in the article half a year of voice input instead of a keyboard: an honest account (in Russian).
| Service | Platforms | Free | Price | Payment from Russia | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | Free: 2500 words per week; full access for the first 14 days, no card needed | Pro 690 ₽/mo, 499 ₽/mo when paid yearly | Russian bank cards, rubles | cloud, servers in Russia; internet required |
| Wispr Flow | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android | 2000 words/week on desktop, 1000 words/week on mobile | $15/mo (Pro, monthly payment); $12/mo (Pro, when paid for a year ($144/year)) | there is no standard payment with a Russian card: on Windows/Mac/web payment is only in USD; per earlier data, from Russia it is actually possible to pay through an iOS subscription in the App Store, but the exact amount in rubles is not verified (not confirmed) | cloud (the data center country is not publicly disclosed) (not confirmed) |
| WhispeRu | Windows | 7-day free trial (no card) | 290 ₽/mo (monthly license); 1990 ₽/yr (yearly license); 4990 ₽/one-time (lifetime license) | rubles directly (payment via YooKassa) | device (offline) |
| MacWhisper | macOS | A free version is available ("Free forever", limited functionality), Pro is paid | €64/one-time (Pro, one-time purchase through Gumroad, lifetime updates); $29.99/yr (Pro, App Store version ("Whisper Transcription"), subscription); $99.99/one-time (Pro, App Store version, one-time purchase) | not disclosed | on the device (offline) by default, with local Whisper models; there are optional cloud transcription providers, but not as the main mode |
| Glas (LidFly) | Windows, macOS | 0 ₽ — 2000 words per week free for life, no card and no email sign-up; the first 2 weeks have no word limit | — | rubles directly: payment via SBP; invoices for companies and sole proprietors | cloud (Russia) — the site says “Russian servers, works without a VPN” |
| Diktuy | Windows, macOS | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 239 ₽/mo (Profi (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)); 2870 ₽/yr (Profi (year, billed in full)); 479 ₽/mo (Max (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)) | rubles directly (not confirmed) | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| Typeless | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | 8000 words per week (Free plan); new users get a 30-day Pro trial, then move to Free if they do not pay | $12/mo (Pro billed yearly (effectively $144/yr)); $30/mo (Pro billed monthly) | Visa/Mastercard cards; whether Russian cards are accepted is not stated | cloud (the server country is not officially disclosed; the privacy policy only says 'processed in real time on our cloud servers') (not confirmed) |
| Molvi | Windows, macOS | free forever, no accounts and no payment | — | not needed: the product is free; voluntary donations are accepted via Telegram Tribute or by card on the website, amounts are not fixed | device (offline; best quality on an NVIDIA GPU, otherwise a fast model on the CPU) |
| Spokenly | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS | local models (Whisper/Parakeet) are free forever with no word limit; connecting your own API keys (BYOK) is also free | $9.99/mo (Pro, monthly); $99.99/yr (Pro, yearly (≈$8.33/mo)) | not disclosed | hybrid: locally on the device (Whisper/Parakeet, free) or in the cloud (GPT-4o Transcribe, Deepgram Nova 3, Soniox and others, via BYOK or Pro) |
| GigaType | Windows, macOS | free with no limits: open source under the MIT license (Copyright (c) 2026 Disrupt Builders), all features are available without payment | — | not needed: there are no paid plans | device (offline, Sber's GigaAM neural network) |
| Talkpad | macOS, Windows, Android | 2500 words/week on desktop, 1500 words/week on mobile, free forever; plus a 14-day Pro trial | $6/mo (Pro (billed yearly, $72/yr)); $8/mo (Pro (monthly billing)) | unknown (not confirmed) | cloud (the legal entity is registered in Australia; the website is hosted on Cloudflare; the exact location of the ASR servers is not disclosed in the privacy policy) (not confirmed) |
What to check in a replacement
- Payment. Find out in advance whether the alternative accepts a card of a Russian bank directly, and do not discover it at the stage of buying an annual subscription: getting back dollars that were already charged through a foreign payment gateway usually takes longer than the subscription itself.
- Russian language. Test with your own phrases, terms and mixed speech, and do not rely on the "100+ languages" list on the developer's site.
- Where data is processed. If jurisdiction matters, find out the country of the servers explicitly and do not settle for the word "cloud". If you want the sound not to leave the computer at all, look at offline tools, for example WhisperU.
- Platforms. If you need mobile apps, as Wispr Flow has (iOS and Android), check the list of the alternative: Potok, for example, has no mobile versions at all.
- Free limit. Compare not only the number but also the term: a limit with no end date on the free plan is more convenient than a trial period limited in time.
- Response time. Evaluate the delay on long phrases on your own task, and not from demonstrations on the site.
- Legal entity. Find out who the contract is concluded with when you pay, especially for use in a company.
| Service | Platforms | Free | Price | Payment from Russia | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | Free: 2500 words per week; full access for the first 14 days, no card needed | Pro 690 ₽/mo, 499 ₽/mo when paid yearly | Russian bank cards, rubles | cloud, servers in Russia; internet required |
| Wispr Flow | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android | 2000 words/week on desktop, 1000 words/week on mobile | $15/mo (Pro, monthly payment); $12/mo (Pro, when paid for a year ($144/year)) | there is no standard payment with a Russian card: on Windows/Mac/web payment is only in USD; per earlier data, from Russia it is actually possible to pay through an iOS subscription in the App Store, but the exact amount in rubles is not verified (not confirmed) | cloud (the data center country is not publicly disclosed) (not confirmed) |
| WhispeRu | Windows | 7-day free trial (no card) | 290 ₽/mo (monthly license); 1990 ₽/yr (yearly license); 4990 ₽/one-time (lifetime license) | rubles directly (payment via YooKassa) | device (offline) |
Where Potok will not replace Wispr Flow
If mobile apps or work in several languages at once matter to you, Potok does not cover this: it has no mobile versions for Android and iPhone, there are versions for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the model is trained primarily for Russian speech, not for a hundred-plus languages at once.
Potok is a cloud service, recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet, just like Wispr Flow, so moving from one cloud service to another does not solve the question of offline work by itself.
Potok also does not support voice editing commands or transcription of files that are already recorded. These are separate tasks, unrelated to the choice between Wispr Flow and Potok.
Potok also does not translate speech on the fly between languages: it inserts the text of what you said, in the same language in which you spoke.
Frequently asked questions
The site has no standard way: payment goes in dollars through an ordinary payment gateway. According to some reports, access is sometimes arranged through an App Store subscription, but there are no confirmed details about this, and you should not count on such a scheme as a permanent solution.
Formally yes, among the more than a hundred languages it states, but the product is designed primarily for English, and the company does not publish detailed data on the quality of Russian speech recognition. Before switching, check the result on your own phrases.
Wispr Flow alternatives. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. Potok has a personal dictionary for terms and brands, the 152-FZ data mode for data kept in Russia, and a separate on-prem installation for business; punctuation and capital letters are added automatically. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For Wispr Flow alternatives you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Wispr Flow alternatives. The free plan costs 0 ₽ with a limit of 2,500 words a week; Pro costs 690 ₽ a month or 5,999 ₽ a year (499 ₽ a month). Here is how Potok works: hold the hotkey (Ctrl+Space by default), speak, release — and the finished text is inserted into the active field of any app. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For Wispr Flow alternatives you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Wispr Flow alternatives. Versions are available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the default hotkey is Ctrl+Space; there are no mobile versions. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. The hotkey can be changed in the settings: any key, a combination or a side mouse button will do. Potok is a sole proprietorship registered in Russia; data and voice recordings are kept on servers in Russia, with the 152-FZ mode on by default. For Wispr Flow alternatives you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Wispr Flow alternatives. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. Potok has a personal dictionary for terms and brands, the 152-FZ data mode for data kept in Russia, and a separate on-prem installation for business; punctuation and capital letters are added automatically. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For Wispr Flow alternatives you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Download Potok
Works with a single key in any program. 14 days of full access, then Free with 2500 words per week or Pro at 690 ₽/mo (499 ₽/mo paid yearly). Potok is a cloud service, so it does not work without the internet.
Download PotokOne subscription, two tools: dictation in any program on your computer and @potok_now_bot in Telegram, which transcribes voice messages, audio and video.
Primary sources: wisprflow.ai · support.microsoft.com