Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.
Of the 35 services checked, 25 have a free plan that works with no time limit: 8 have no paid plan at all, and 17 have a permanent limit next to a paid plan. For 4 services only a trial period is free. Potok (potok.now) is not included in this count: it has 14 days of full access, and after that 2500 words per week for free.
“Free” means different things in different voice input services: in some it is a plan with no time limit but with a volume limit, in others a trial period after which the service stops working without payment. We went through 35 services from our database and sorted the descriptions of free plans into these classes. This is part of the collection of data on voice input.
| Free access | Services | Which |
|---|---|---|
| Completely free, no paid plan | 8 | GigaType, Molvi, RechFlow, Win+H (Windows voice input), Voice Access (Windows 11), Apple Dictation, Google voice input (Google Docs voice typing + Gboard), Yandex dictation (Alice / Yandex Keyboard) |
| Permanent free limit and a paid plan | 17 | SpeakFlow, Diktuy, Talkpad, Lispr, v2txt.ru, Typeless, A-GOLOS, Glas (LidFly), Wispr Flow, Willow Voice, Spokenly, SuperWhisper, MacWhisper, Otter.ai, SpeechPad (voice notepad), Speechify, Transkriptor |
| Permanent limit and a trial period at the start | 3 | Talkpad, Typeless, Glas (LidFly) |
| Trial period only | 4 | WhispeRu, Voibe, VoiceHotKey, Voisty |
| Other or unclear | 4 | VoiceInk (free only if built from source), Voco and Laitis (Voco had no free version, Laitis does), Aqua Voice (1000 words, period not stated), Lynote (recognition limit not disclosed) |
| Per the website, not verified | 1 | Airword |
| No data | 1 | Dragon NaturallySpeaking |
| Total | 35 | — |
How we counted where there is a trial period and where it is free forever
We went through 35 services from the potok.now database and sorted the description of the free plan into four classes: completely free with no paid plan at all, a permanent free limit next to a paid plan, only a trial period at the start, and other, which includes building from source, a record covering two products at once and cases where the period is not stated. If the description of a plan as a whole is in question, as with Airword, that is a separate class, “by the site's statement, not verified”, neither “yes” nor “no”. An empty field, as with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, is the class “no data”, not a conclusion that there is no free plan. For Transkriptor only a part was verified, transkriptor.ru. Potok (14 days of full access, then 2500 words per week for free) is not included in this count.
What these figures do not take into account
The figures show how a service's free plan is described in our database, not that we checked it by paying with our own card. In some services the free limit differs between desktop and mobile: for example, at Talkpad and Wispr Flow the terms for the two platforms are different, and the count included the description of the plan as a whole. “Other” is not one reason but four different ones: open source code (a comparison of Potok with the free GigaType is on a separate page), two products in one row, an unstated period, and something else.
Where Potok does not win by these figures
Potok is not compared directly in this sample: its free model is different, 14 days of full access and then 2500 words per week for good, and it is not one of the classes in the table. Potok is a cloud service: recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet. For those who dictate all day this limit may be too small, and then you need a plan without a limit.
Frequently asked questions
25 of 35: 8 have no paid plan at all, and 17 have a permanent free limit next to a paid plan.
4 of 35. For 3 more services with a permanent free limit, a trial period comes as an extra bonus at the start.
Trial period or free forever. 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 Trial period or free forever you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Trial period or free forever. 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 Trial period or free forever you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Trial period or free forever. 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 Trial period or free forever you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Trial period or free forever. 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 Trial period or free forever you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
If you want to compare for yourself
Take one of your own tasks and dictate it in Potok. The first 14 days have no limits and need no card. Potok is a cloud service, so it does not work without the internet.
Download PotokYou dictate in the app, and recordings and voice messages are transcribed by @potok_now_bot in Telegram. 60 minutes per month are free; the Potok subscription removes the limit in the bot and in the app.
Built-in dictation and Potok
| Tool | Where it works | Russian language | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows voice typing (Win+H) | Windows 10 and 11 | Windows 11 only | Microsoft cloud, does not work offline |
| macOS Dictation | macOS | yes | on the device or on Apple servers |
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | primary language | cloud, servers in Russia, does not work offline |