Aqua Voice vs Willow Voice on Mac in 2026: prices, privacy and who should pick which

Aqua Voice vs Willow Voice at a glance

Aqua Voice and Willow Voice both turn speech into text on a Mac. You hold a key, speak, and the words land in the app you are using. The real differences show up in three places: the free plan, the privacy default and the monthly price you pay.

Both sites lead with dictation. Aqua's homepage is built around fast and accurate voice dictation. Willow's homepage is titled simply Voice dictation. Neither homepage, as checked for this page, describes help with what is on your screen.

Aqua offers the bigger ladder of paid plans. Pro has unlimited words, and Max adds Realtime Mode, Voice Commands and Early Access. Willow lists fewer tiers, but its pricing page does not label which price is monthly and which is annual. That gap matters when you compare numbers.

Where each app is stronger

• Aqua Voice: a clear paid ladder, with unlimited words on Pro and 70% off Pro and Max for students with a school email.
• Aqua Voice: a Privacy Mode switch that its site says keeps nothing on its servers when it is turned on.
• Willow Voice: Private Mode is the default, so you do not have to find a setting to get the stricter behavior.
• Willow Voice: a higher App Store rating on iPhone, 4.6 from 1.1K ratings, against 4.4 from 107 for Aqua Voice.
• Willow Voice: a free allowance of 20 Scribe uses per week that you can test before you pay.
• Lazur: a voice assistant that can look at your screen when you hold ⌥⌘, with dictation included.

Free plans and how far they stretch

Aqua Voice's free plan gives you 1,000 words in total. The pricing page says total, not per week or per month. Once the 1,000 words are gone, you need a paid plan to keep dictating. One long draft can use most of that allowance, so test with a short note first.

Willow Voice's free plan gives you 20 Scribe uses per week. The pricing page says so. The page does not say how long one use lasts, so you cannot turn it into a word count. A Product Hunt reviewer describes a different limit, 2,000 words per week. The two figures conflict, so check the limit inside the app before you rely on it.

Free and entry prices side by side

Paid plans and what the prices cover

Aqua Voice's Pro plan costs $10/month billed annually, or $12/month month-to-month. Pro includes unlimited words. Max costs $19/month billed annually, or $24/month month-to-month. It adds Realtime Mode, Voice Commands and Early Access. Students get 70% off Pro and Max with a school email.

Aqua's Business plan is $19 per seat per month billed annually, or $24 per seat month-to-month. It includes Zero Data Retention and SSO. If you buy for a team, compare that tier with Willow's Business plan, not with either Pro plan.

Willow Voice's Pro plan shows as 'Pro: $15 $12, user/mo' on its pricing page. The page gives unlimited Scribe usage and longer dictation on Pro. It does not say which figure is monthly and which is annual. Willow's App Store listing shows Pro monthly at $15.00 and annual at $143.99. The annual price lines up with the $12 figure, but confirm that on the pricing page before you pay.

Willow's Business plan shows as $35 $28, /mo, with privacy mode enforced. Enterprise pricing is custom. Ask Willow for a quote if you need more than the listed tiers.

Watch which store you buy from

Aqua's App Store in-app prices do not match its website. The App Store lists Pro at $12.99, Pro Annual at $119.00, Max at $39.99 and Max Annual at $374.99. Max Annual in the App Store sits far above the website's $19/month billed annually. Compare both prices before you buy, and pick the channel that costs less.

Privacy: what each app stores, and when

Aqua Voice's privacy policy, effective November 4, 2026, depends on one setting. With Privacy Mode disabled, Aqua stores dictation audio and transcript data on its servers to provide and improve the services. With Privacy Mode enabled, it does not store dictation audio or transcript data. The homepage says nothing is stored on its servers with Privacy Mode on.

The policy does not mention model training, and it gives no retention period. It says transcript retention is governed by your Privacy Mode setting. Aqua's terms of service were not checked for this page, so read them before you rely on any privacy claim.

Willow Voice's privacy policy, last updated August 5, 2026, makes Private Mode the default. In Private Mode, Willow says it does not retain dictated text or screen content. Audio is not retained or used for model training in that mode. Opt-in mode can keep anonymized recognized text, but not audio, and the policy gives no fixed period.

The homepage goes further. It claims SOC 2 Type II certification, HIPAA compliance, zero data retention and end-to-end encryption. Those are company claims. They do not fully match the opt-in retention language in the policy, so read both before you dictate client or patient details.

Lazur's stated approach is different in scope. It listens and looks at your screen only while you hold the shortcut. Audio and the screenshot go to AI providers to answer you, and they are not stored. Lazur says content is never used to train AI models. Those are Lazur's own stated facts as of 2026-11-05.

Questions to ask before you dictate sensitive text

• Which privacy setting is on right now, in the app you are using?
• Does your plan include the stricter terms? Aqua's Business plan includes Zero Data Retention, and Willow's Business plan enforces privacy mode.
• Has the policy changed since you last read it? Both policies carry recent dates.
• Would you be comfortable sending this text to an AI provider for processing?

Accuracy claims and how to test them yourself

Aqua Voice's homepage says its Avalon model scores 97.4% key-term accuracy on its AISpeak-10 benchmark. It gives Whisper Large v3 at 65.1% on the same test. The page also says dictation is 5x faster than typing and twice as accurate. Those are company claims on the company's own benchmark, and this page has not run that test.

Willow Voice's homepage claims 3x the accuracy of built-in dictation. I did not find a test method for that number. Treat it as a claim until you see a method you can check.

Product Hunt reviews lean positive. Aqua Voice averages 5.0 from 16 reviews, and Willow Voice averages 4.8 from 13. Reviewers praise speed and accuracy in both cases. Those samples are small, so read them as a mood, not a measurement.

A short test you can run this afternoon

1. Write a short paragraph with two surnames, one product name and one technical term.
2. Dictate that paragraph into Apple Notes in each app, in the same room, with the same microphone.
3. Count the words the app got wrong, and the punctuation you had to fix by hand.
4. Repeat the test several times, then compare the averages, not the best run.

Use Apple Dictation as a baseline. Turn it on in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation. It is free and already on your Mac. Measure both apps against that baseline, not against a vendor number.

Speed is a separate question. A 2016 study of English text entry on touchscreen phones measured speech at 153 words per minute, against 52 for a keyboard. The study did not test Aqua Voice or Willow Voice, and it used phones, not Macs. Treat it as a reason to try dictation, not as proof that either app is faster.

Platforms and where each app runs

Aqua Voice's homepage lists macOS, Windows, iPhone and Android. Its pricing page says Android is live through Google Play. Its App Store page covers the iPhone app only, and it needs iOS 26.0 or later. Product Hunt reviewers say it needs network access, asked for a Linux client, and crashed for some people now and then.

Willow Voice lists Mac, iOS and Windows. Android is marked coming soon. Its iPhone app needs iOS 18.0 or later. Its homepage names Slack, Gmail, Cursor, Notion and iMessage as apps it works in, and it claims an offline mode. Reviewers report iOS friction and ask for Android.

Lazur runs on macOS only, on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. Windows is planned, not available. Lazur is not a plugin or add-in for any app, so it works alongside the app you already have open. It does not operate other apps for you.

Getting clean results from dictation

Most dictation errors come from the setup, not the app. Sit close to the microphone, and keep fans and open windows away from it. Speak in full sentences, and check the text before you move on, so errors do not stack up.

Check the input level before your first test. Open System Settings > Sound > Input and watch the level bar while you talk. If it barely moves, pick the right microphone first. Then give each app access in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone. If that permission is off, the app hears nothing and looks broken.

Lazur has a personal dictionary, snippets and clipboard slots. Look for equivalent settings in the other two apps before you judge their accuracy on names and technical terms. Those are the words where dictation most often goes wrong.

Where Lazur fits next to these two

Lazur includes dictation. Hold fn to dictate clean, formatted text at the cursor in any app. Dictation is unlimited on both Pro and Power, so the word cap that shapes the free plans elsewhere does not apply here.

Hold ⌥⌘, which is Option and Command together, to ask about anything on screen. Lazur answers out loud. Ask where something is, and it draws a circle and a label around it. Ask how to do something, and it guides you one click at a time, waiting for each click. It does not click the button for you.

Lazur's Pro plan is $18/month, or $15/month billed annually, with 150 AI actions. Power is $120/month, or $96/month billed annually, with 1,000 AI actions. The three-day Pro trial needs no credit card, and it starts when you first open the app.

Lazur is a different tool from the other two. Both of them are built around speaking text. Lazur is built around asking about what is on your screen, and it dictates too. If you only need dictation, one of the two dictation apps is the more direct match.

A worked example for a week of writing

Say you dictate one long draft of around 1,000 words in a single sitting. That draft can use the whole free allowance on Aqua Voice. After that, you face the Pro price, $10/month billed annually, or the $12 month-to-month rate.

Now say you dictate short notes and replies many times a day. Willow's 20 Scribe uses per week may suit that pattern better than Aqua's total word count. The catch is that the page does not say how long one use lasts. The match is a guess until you test it.

Your own week matters more than either pricing page. Add up the words you dictate in a normal week. Compare that total with each free allowance, and with the paid tier that covers it. If you cannot tell how far one Scribe use goes, test Willow's free plan for a week and note when you hit the limit.

Mistakes people make when they choose

• Treating the two free plans as the same measure. Aqua counts total words. Willow counts Scribe uses per week.
• Leaving Privacy Mode off on Aqua without knowing that it changes what is stored.
• Paying through the App Store without checking the website price. The two lists do not match.
• Trusting a vendor's accuracy number. Run your own paragraph through both free plans first.
• Assuming the $12 Willow figure is monthly. The page does not label it, so confirm before you pay.
• Expecting Lazur to operate your apps. It answers, points, guides and drafts text. It does not click buttons for you.

Who should pick which app

Pick Aqua Voice if you want a dictation app with unlimited words on a paid plan. You will manage the Privacy Mode setting yourself. It is also the clearer choice if a team needs the Business tier with Zero Data Retention.

Pick Willow Voice if you want the stricter setting on by default, a free allowance to test first, or the same dictation app on iPhone and Mac. Its Business tier enforces privacy mode. Check the Pro price label on its pricing page before you pay.

Pick Lazur if you want a voice assistant on your Mac that can see your screen and answer out loud, with dictation included. Lazur does not run on Windows, so check that first if you switch between machines.

If you already use one of these apps, read the Aqua Voice alternatives page or the Willow Voice alternatives page before you decide to stay.

What to do next

1. Open each free plan and dictate the same paragraph into the same app.
2. Set the privacy control. On Aqua, check Privacy Mode. On Willow, confirm Private Mode is on.
3. Open Willow's pricing page and confirm which price is monthly and which is annual.
4. Give each app microphone access in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone.
5. If you want screen help too, start the three-day Lazur trial from the download page.

For a side-by-side with Lazur, read Lazur vs Aqua Voice or Lazur vs Willow Voice. Both show how screen help and dictation differ in daily use.