What they do well — and where it stops
MacWhisper is the gold-standard Whisper on Mac
MacWhisper is the cleanest fully-local Whisper experience on macOS for file transcription, with a €59 lifetime price that's genuinely fair.
But it's macOS-only and primarily a file-transcription tool — system-wide live dictation is a secondary feature that every reviewer flags as basic. If you need real-time dictation into DATEV, Medistar or RA-MICRO on Windows or Linux, MacWhisper can't help. Sprecho ships live dictation across Win / Mac / Linux with German Fachsprache out of the box.
At a glance
| Sprecho | MacWhisper | |
|---|---|---|
| Price (monthly) | €12.99 brutto incl. VAT | €59 one-time (Gumroad) |
| Free tier | Yes · 2,000 words/week | Yes |
| Platforms | Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android | macOS only |
| EU hosting | Hetzner Falkenstein, Germany | Hetzner Falkenstein, Germany |
| German-language UI | Yes — native | English-only |
| AVV / DPA | Yes, public template | Not public |
Pricing for B2B buyers — netto, like-for-like
MacWhisper is a €59 one-time purchase via Gumroad (US reseller). Gumroad zero-rates VAT for B2B buyers with a valid VAT-ID; otherwise EU VAT is added at checkout. Sprecho's annual subscription comes directly from Melo Designer GmbH — 19 % VAT recoverable on a single German invoice.
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)
MacWhisper
Reverse-charge invoice (B2B)Monthly billing
€59 one-time (Gumroad)
Lifetime purchase · Mac-only · file transcription primary use case
Hidden costs
- Mac-only — your Windows team doesn't get it
- System-wide dictation is a secondary feature (every reviewer flags it as basic)
- App Store version has no system-wide dictation at all (sandbox limits)
- No team workspace, no AVV, no Impressum on the product page
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)
MacWhisper
Good Snooze / Jordi Bruin (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
On-device (Whisper running locally on macOS)
What each side built that the other didn't
Different categories — MacWhisper is best-in-class for file transcription on Mac; Sprecho is live in-app dictation across platforms.
What MacWhisper built that Sprecho didn't
- Fully on-device Whisper transcription — zero cloud round-trip by default, strongest privacy story in this comparison.
- €59 lifetime price — pay once, use forever (Sprecho is a subscription).
- Excellent file-transcription accuracy on Mac, rated "ausgezeichnet" by Macwelt.
- Find & Replace post-processing rules for typo cleanup and term normalisation.
What Sprecho built that MacWhisper didn't
- Live system-wide dictation into any application on Windows, macOS and Linux — MacWhisper's live dictation is a secondary feature flagged as basic by every reviewer.
- Team workspace with shared dictionary and admin layer — MacWhisper is single-user.
- Public AVV and Impressum — MacWhisper has neither on the product page.
- German Fachsprache vocabulary trained on DATEV, RA-MICRO and Medistar terms.
Honest feature comparison
MacWhisper wins on local-first privacy. Sprecho wins on platform breadth, live dictation, and German vocabulary. Both are honest checks.
Platform support
Privacy & DSGVO
German language quality
Pricing
Dictation features
Switch in three steps
MacWhisper stores Find & Replace rules locally on disk. Easy to bring across.
Download Sprecho
Win / Mac / Linux installer from sprecho.ai — 30 seconds.
Bring your vocabulary
Open MacWhisper Settings → Find & Replace, screenshot the rules, re-enter as Sprecho dictionary entries (the mechanics differ slightly — string replacement vs. learned vocabulary).
Re-map your shortcut
Default shortcut is Fn + Option. Configure to match any MacWhisper trigger you used — 10 seconds in Settings.
A 12-person Berlin law firm migrated in under an hour, including dictionary import.
“I bought MacWhisper for transcribing client interviews. Then I needed live dictation into our Windows-based DMS — and Sprecho was the only one that did both ends.”