What they do well — and where it stops
Dragon is 30 years of Fachsprache vocabulary
Dragon is the historical gold standard for German legal and medical dictation — three decades of Fachsprache vocabulary, mature voice commands, deep BRAO / Medical certification stack.
But Dragon for Mac has been discontinued since 2018, Linux never shipped, the cloud verticals run on Microsoft Azure (CLOUD Act-exposed under Schrems II), and pricing starts north of €600 netto perpetual. Sprecho gives a Mac- and Linux-capable team the same legal/medical vocabulary stack on EU-only infrastructure for €12.99 brutto / month.
At a glance
| Sprecho | Dragon Professional | |
|---|---|---|
| Price (monthly) | €12.99 brutto incl. VAT | From €699 netto one-time |
| Free tier | Yes · 2,000 words/week | No |
| Platforms | Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android | Windows only |
| EU hosting | Hetzner Falkenstein, Germany | Partial |
| German-language UI | Yes — native | English-only |
| AVV / DPA | Yes, public template | On request only |
Pricing for B2B buyers — netto, like-for-like
Dragon Professional Desktop is a perpetual licence from Nuance (US, Microsoft) — reverse-charge for German B2B, no VAT on the invoice. The cloud verticals (Medical One, Legal Anywhere) run through resellers with German VAT. Sprecho invoices direct from a German GmbH — one supply chain, one VAT line.
Sprecho Pro
VAT included & deductibleMonthly billing
€10.92 / mo netto
(€12.99 brutto incl. 19 % VAT)
Yearly billing · 15 % cheaper
€9.24 / mo netto
(€10.99 brutto · €131.88 brutto/yr · €110.82 netto/yr)
Dragon Professional v16
Reverse-charge invoice (B2B)Monthly billing
From €699 netto one-time (perpetual)
Windows only · Mac discontinued 2018
Yearly billing · 15 % cheaper
Dragon Medical One: €70 netto / mo
Cloud SKUs on Microsoft Azure (CLOUD Act under Schrems II)
Hidden costs
- Windows-only — Mac team locked out (Dragon for Mac discontinued 2018-10-22)
- Dragon Medical One on Microsoft Azure — US legal entity, CLOUD Act under Schrems II
- Perpetual licence ages — major-version upgrades typically cost the full price again
- No free tier, no trial without sales contact for cloud SKUs
Where your data actually lives
Named legal entities, named regions, named subprocessors. The single most concrete answer to: where does my audio go?
Sprecho
Melo Designer GmbH (Lower Saxony, Germany)
Hetzner Falkenstein / Nuremberg (Germany)
Dragon Professional
Nuance Communications (Microsoft, USA)
Dragon Pro Desktop: on-device (Windows) · Dragon Medical One: Microsoft Azure DE · Dragon Legal Anywhere: Deutsche Telekom Cloud
What each side built that the other didn't
Dragon is 30 years of German legal/medical Fachsprache; Sprecho is the cross-platform modern equivalent built on EU infrastructure.
What Dragon Professional built that Sprecho didn't
- Three-decade Fachsprache vocabulary maturity — DATEV, RA-MICRO, every BRAO and ICD code, refined by years of professional use.
- Full voice command grammar — "Scratch That", "Select [phrase]", "Cap next word", in-stream correction of any spoken token.
- BRAO, ISO 27001 and C5 BSI attestations for Dragon Legal Anywhere and Dragon Medical One verticals.
- Perpetual-licence option — pay €699+ once for Dragon Professional v16, no recurring fees.
What Sprecho built that Dragon Professional didn't
- Native cross-platform support — Windows, macOS and Linux. Dragon for Mac was discontinued 2018-10-22, Linux never shipped.
- EU-only data residency on Hetzner Germany — Dragon Medical One runs on Microsoft Azure (US legal entity, CLOUD Act under Schrems II).
- Subscription scaling that fits a fast-moving team — €10.99 brutto / month rather than €699+ upfront per seat.
- Modern desktop UI built for 2026 — Dragon's UI is recognisably legacy.
Honest feature comparison
Dragon's command grammar is best-in-class — we show every row honestly. Sprecho catches up where it matters for cross-platform German teams.
Platform support
Privacy & DSGVO
German language quality
Pricing
Dictation features
Switch in three steps
Dragon vocabularies are exportable. We help convert them to Sprecho dictionary entries — DM us for the script.
Download Sprecho
Win / Mac / Linux installer from sprecho.ai — 30 seconds.
Bring your vocabulary
Export your Dragon vocabulary (DragonBar → Accuracy Center → Vocabulary Editor → Export). We provide a one-off conversion script to Sprecho dictionary format — DM us.
Re-map your shortcut
Default shortcut is Fn + Option. Re-map to whatever you had on Dragon (typically a single key) — 10 seconds in Settings.
A 12-person Berlin law firm migrated in under an hour, including dictionary import.
“We were Dragon Legal customers for nine years. When Mac was discontinued and we couldn't equip our new associates, the migration was forced on us. Sprecho was the only one that ran on all three OSs.”