Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.
Autoreplace and autocorrect react to text typed letter by letter, while voice input inserts an already recognized phrase whole, so some of the system's correction rules simply do not fire on it. Sometimes this helps: there are fewer typos from the hand. Sometimes it gets in the way: the system may still swap a term or a name for its own variant. Potok (potok.now) reduces this with a personal dictionary of terms, and its response time is about 0.4 seconds.
Autoreplace puts a preset variant in place of a typed abbreviation, and autocorrect fixes typos, case and punctuation on the fly. Voice input works differently: it does not type letters one after another, but inserts a recognized piece of text at once into the field where the cursor is. Because of this difference the three mechanisms do not always act in agreement: in some places they help each other, and in others they create confusion that is easier to foresee in advance than to untangle later.
How voice input works
Most voice input programs follow one scheme: pressing a hotkey turns on microphone recording, the speech goes to recognition, in the cloud or locally on the device itself, and the finished text is inserted into the field where the cursor is. In Potok the default hotkey is Ctrl+Space: hold, speak, release, and the text appears in the active app.
An important detail for the topic of autoreplace is exactly how the text gets onto the screen. In most programs autoreplace and autocorrect watch letters as they are typed: a rule that fires replaces the typed combination of characters right after the user finishes typing it. Voice input bypasses this process: the recognized phrase arrives in the field as one block, not character by character, so some rules designed for character-by-character typing simply do not get a chance to fire. Other rules still fire, though: those that check the already finished text as a whole rather than the moment a letter is typed.
Voice input programs also differ in recognition architecture, and this too affects how fast text appears in the field. SpeakFlow, Talkpad and Lispr recognize speech in the cloud: the sound goes to a server and comes back as text. GigaType, Molvi, Voisty and WhispeRu, on the contrary, recognize speech right on the device, without sending sound outside. This choice determines whether the internet is needed for dictation, but the principle of inserting the finished text into the field is the same.
| 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 |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| Lispr | Windows, macOS | 60 minutes of dictation per week for free; the key features (push-to-talk, translation, dictionary, local history) always stay free, without an account | $7.99/mo (Pro, monthly); $79/yr (Pro, yearly (from $44.90 with regional discounts)) | unknown (not confirmed) | cloud (USA; recognition is done by Groq, Inc.) |
Where dictation saves time and where it gets in the way
Voice input saves time where autoreplace is usually useless: in long sentences with a free vocabulary, where there are no preset abbreviations to substitute. There are also fewer typos from the hand in dictated text, because letters are not typed by hand, and so there is less ground for autocorrect to fire on typos.
Voice input gets in the way where autocorrect checks the already finished text as a whole rather than the moment of typing. A specialized term, a rare name or an abbreviation that is not in the program's dictionary can be recognized correctly and then replaced by autocorrect with a similar dictionary word. From the app's point of view this looks like an ordinary typo fix, but in fact it spoils correctly recognized text. The same applies to autoreplace: if an abbreviation that normally expands into a phrase when typing happens to match a dictated word, it may expand where it is not needed.
A personal dictionary of terms and names, as in Potok, reduces this conflict: words from the dictionary are recognized in their original form and fit less under the autoreplace rules designed for a general vocabulary. How models recognize terms in Russian speech at all is in the material on voice input for Russian speech (in Russian).
| Task | Characters | Typing (200 chars/min) | Voice (900 chars/min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| chat reply | 300 | 2 min | 0.5 min |
| 1500 | 8 min | 1.7 min | |
| post or meeting minutes | 4000 | 20 min | 4.4 min |
| article | 10000 | 50 min | 11.1 min |
When it is better to type or take another tool
Manual typing with autoreplace turned on is more convenient where the text consists of short, often repeated phrases with preset abbreviations: addresses, template replies, legal wording. Voice input gives no gain for such tasks: transcribing and setting up exceptions for autoreplace takes longer than simply typing the familiar abbreviation by hand.
It is also worth remembering the limits of Potok itself: it is a cloud service, speech recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work without an internet connection. It has no voice commands for editing text that is already inserted: if autoreplace swapped something, you have to fix the text by hand, as with any other dictation program. For texts where absolute accuracy of specific terms is needed with no right to substitution, it is worth checking the result as a whole right away rather than trusting dictation and autoreplace at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
In most programs autoreplace watches the letters typed one by one and fires as you type; voice input inserts the recognized phrase as one block, bypassing character-by-character input, so such a replacement rule often does not get a chance to turn on.
Yes: if the app checks the already inserted text on the fly, it may swap an unusual name or term for a similar dictionary word, just as it would with typed text.
Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input. 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 Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input. 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 Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input. 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 Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input. 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 Autoreplace, autocorrect and voice input 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: speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · blog.speakflow.ru