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Video, audio & media

MacWhisper

On-device whisper transcription with lifetime updates

Price: €64 once

PerpetualUpdates included, forever

Buy direct

Price read on macwhisper.com, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

Some optional AI features call out to cloud APIs you pay for separately

The full picture

Transcription itself is local, but optional extras such as model-assisted cleanup or non-local models call external services, billed to you at the provider's rates. The larger and more accurate Whisper models are multi-gigabyte downloads and want Apple silicon with plenty of RAM. The licence is priced in euros, so VAT and the exchange rate move the final figure. Do not confuse it with "Whisper Transcription" on the Mac App Store, a separate listing whose lifetime unlock costs considerably more than the direct €64 licence.

Replaces
Otter.ai Pro, Descript Hobbyist, Descript transcription plans and 1 more$100 and $192 a year. No payback figure, because we don’t convert currencies.
Seats
3 MacsPersonal licence, which support describes as a soft limit of 3 of your own devices; you can remove it from a Mac in Settings > Pro to move it.
Developer account
None needed

What it looks like

MacWhisper: Main MacWhisper window at 2280x1212: a transcript of an interview open with speaker labels (John / Neil deGrasse) and per-segment timestamps in the main pane, the right sidebar showing Display Mode (Transcript / Segments), Speaker Grouping with named speakers, Options and Cleanup sections, and the audio scrubber and playback-speed control along the bottom.
Main MacWhisper window at 2280x1212. Vendor site (macwhisper.com in-page screenshot gallery, Framer CDN)
MacWhisper: App window with an .mp3 (ApplePie.mp3) transcribed, filler words ('uhmm', 'ehmmm') highlighted inline in the transcript body, the Copy / Export toolbar and 'Search in transcript' field at the top, Display Mode / Speakers / Options / Cleanup sidebar on the right and the transport bar at 01:24 / 00:37.
App window with an .mp3 (ApplePie.mp3) transcribed, filler words ('uhmm', 'ehmmm') highlighted inline in the transcript body, the Copy / Export toolbar and 'Search in transcript' field at the top, Display Mode / Speakers / Options / Cleanup sidebar on the right and the transport bar at 01:24 / 00:37. Vendor site (macwhisper.com in-page screenshot gallery, Framer CDN)
MacWhisper: The side-by-side translation view: original English transcript in the left column and the Spanish translation in the right, each with its own Copy button, and the Translation sidebar showing source/target language pickers, a 'Translate to...' menu, Provider (Apple), 'Show Translations Side By Side' toggle and Auto Translation settings.
The side-by-side translation view. Vendor site (macwhisper.com in-page screenshot gallery, Framer CDN)

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

MacWhisper is a window you drag a recording onto. It runs Whisper on your own machine, and a few minutes later you have a transcript you can search, correct and export as subtitles. The local part is not a detail: interview audio, client calls, anything under an NDA and anything with a patient or a case number in it never leaves the Mac, which removes the whole conversation about where a transcription service stores your files and what it trains on.

The free tier is real and will transcribe a file. Pro is €64, paid once, and the page says updates are included for the lifetime of the app; it adds the larger models, batch jobs, speaker labels, system-audio and meeting capture, and translation. The boundary sits at anything genuinely remote — optional cleanup or assistant features that call a cloud model run on your own API key and your own bill. Buy it from the developer's site: the separate Mac App Store listing is a different product with a much dearer lifetime unlock.

If you transcribe one thing a month, the free tier covers it. If what you really want is to edit the recording by editing the transcript, that is Descript's trick, not this one, and you will be happier paying them.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Owners consistently give local, on-device transcription as the reason they picked it over a cloud service
  • Speed and accuracy recur across both threads, including reports of a 50-minute recording transcribed in under a minute on the newer models

Criticised

  • Commenters routinely note that the Whisper models themselves are free, naming open-source front ends and the command line as the cheaper route
  • Posters who want a dictation flow rather than file transcription describe rough edges and often end up pairing it with, or moving to, Superwhisper or Wispr Flow

Details

The price in full

There is a free tier, described as free forever. MacWhisper Pro is €64 for one licence, paid once, and the page states it includes lifetime updates. Priced in euros, so the dollar total depends on the rate and on VAT. A separate app, "Whisper Transcription" on the Mac App Store, sells subscriptions alongside Pro Lifetime unlocks at $89.99 and $99.99 — it is not this purchase.

The MacWhisper page at macwhisper.com
The developer’s own page. macwhisper.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Partly
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Good Snooze

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