Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.
After 14 days of full access, Potok (potok.now) keeps a free plan: 2500 words per week on one device. For those for whom this is not enough, Pro without a limit fits. The 14 days themselves are free and with no card, and the amounts for paid plans are shown in the table below.
Potok first gives 14 days of full access: you do not need to pay or attach a card for this. What happens next depends on the plan.
What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok
After the trial the free plan applies: 2500 words per week on one device. Other options are Pro and Business:
- Pro: without a word limit, with a personal dictionary for terms and names, snippets and priority support;
- Business: on request; servers inside the company perimeter, SSO and a shared dictionary are also connected on request.
Data is in Russia, and 152-FZ applies. You can get in touch at support@potok.now or in Telegram https://t.me/ai23c; there is no phone. Priority support is included in Pro. How much the paid plans cost is shown in the table below. More about prices is in the section how much Potok costs and what plans there are (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 |
| 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) |
| Voisty | Windows, macOS | 5 minutes of transcription (to judge the quality) | $6.7/mo (Pro); $67/yr (Pro (year)); $99/one-time (Lifetime) | Visa/Mastercard/Amex cards, PayPal; whether Russian cards are accepted is not stated (not confirmed) | device (offline, local models such as Whisper Large V3 Turbo / NVIDIA Parakeet) |
| v2txt.ru | Windows, macOS | Start plan: 2000 words/week | 0 ₽/n/a (all of Pro is free until the end of 2026 (the regular Pro/Premium price after 2026 is not published on the website)) | rubles directly (Visa, Mastercard, Mir cards and T-Bank are accepted) | cloud (Russia) in online mode; offline mode processes on the device |
| 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 |
| 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) |
| SpeakFlow | Windows, Web | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 690 ₽/mo (Personal (unlimited)) | rubles directly | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| 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) |
| A-Golos | macOS, Windows, Android | 20 minutes of audio per month free, no card attached | 490 ₽/mo (Lite, 120 min/mo); 4900 ₽/yr (Lite, yearly); 950 ₽/mo (Pro, 300 min/mo) | rubles directly (through an external payment provider, card data is not stored by the service) | cloud: the policy states that personal data is stored on servers in Russia, but the speech recognition itself is performed by OpenAI (USA); results and audio are not stored on the company's servers |
| 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” |
| SpeechPad (voice notepad) | Web (Chrome), Chrome extension, Android, iOS, integration modules for Windows/Mac/Linux | basic voice input in the notepad is free; transcription of audio/video up to 15 minutes is free | 100 ₽/mo (extended mode (integration of voice input with Windows/Linux OS, removal of the 15-minute transcription limit): the amount appears in user comments/reviews, and no exact official price list was found on the site) | yes: Robokassa and bank cards are accepted (for payment from abroad, an alternative site voicenotebook.com with PayPal is mentioned) | not disclosed |
How to choose a plan when the trial is over
For someone who dictates all day, the free limit is not enough: for such work Pro fits, where there is no limit. The dictionary and snippets are also included in Pro. For companies where the cloud is prohibited, only the business option fits: servers inside the company perimeter, SSO and a shared dictionary are connected on request. Answers to other questions about voice input are collected in a separate section of the site.
Where Potok is not the answer to this question
The dictation app is built like this: a cloud service, recognition on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet. There are no apps for Android and iPhone and no voice commands. Separately there is the Telegram bot @potok_now_bot for recordings and voice messages: without a subscription it gives 60 minutes per month, and one subscription removes the limit both in the bot and in the app.
Frequently asked questions
No. The trial is 14 days of full access for free and with no card. When it ends, the free plan applies: 2500 words per week on one device.
Pro works without a word limit, and it has a personal dictionary for terms and names, snippets and priority support. The free plan is limited to 2500 words per week on one device.
What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok. 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 What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok. 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 What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok. 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 What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok. 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 What happens after the 14-day trial in Potok you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Check it in one evening
Install Potok, dictate what you usually type and compare. 14 days of full access, no card needed. 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.
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 |
Primary sources: support.microsoft.com · support.apple.com