Does Windows have free dictation built in?

Yes. Press Win + H in any text box for voice typing. It uses Microsoft's online speech recognition, so it needs an internet connection. Windows 11 also has Voice Access, which works without the internet once set up.

What is a free Wispr Flow alternative for Windows?

Toolbay Flow. Hold Ctrl + Win, talk and let go, and cleaned-up text is pasted where your cursor is, like Wispr Flow. It is free with no word limit (Wispr Flow's free plan stops at 2,000 words a week) and runs on your PC.

Do I need a graphics card for local dictation?

No, but it helps. Toolbay Flow picks a model for your hardware: Whisper Large v3 Turbo on a recent NVIDIA GPU, a compact model that stays quick on the CPU otherwise. AMD and Intel GPUs fall back to the CPU for speech for now.

The best free dictation software for Windows

By the Toolbay team · Updated October 26, 2026

Windows already has two free ways to type with your voice. Neither removes filler words or fixes the sentence you restarted halfway through. For that you need an app with AI cleanup, and there are free, open-source ones that run on your PC. Here they all are, compared.

Compared

Checked October 26, 2026. GitHub stars rounded.
Feature	Win + H	Voice Access	Toolbay Flow	Handy	OpenWhispr
Price	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free (cloud plan optional)
Works offline	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, with local models
AI cleanup	No	No	Yes, local	Optional	Optional
Hold-to-talk hotkey	Toggle	Voice commands	Ctrl + Win	Yes	Yes
Voice-edit selected text	No	Voice commands	Yes (command mode)	No	See its site
Open source	No	No	MIT	MIT, ~34,800 stars	MIT, ~10,000 stars

The built-in options

Voice typing (Win + H) opens a small bar in any text box. It is quick to try but needs the internet, and you add punctuation by saying it or by turning on auto-punctuation. Voice Access (Windows 11 22H2 and later) controls the whole PC by voice and dictates offline, but it is built for hands-free use rather than fast writing.

Step by step: how to voice type on a PC and offline speech to text on Windows.

Toolbay Flow: free, local, with cleanup

Hold Ctrl + Winin any app, talk, let go. Whisper turns speech into text on your PC and a small local model removes “um”s, applies corrections (“6, no wait, 7” becomes “7”), punctuates and formats lists. It keeps your clipboard as it was and keeps dictations out of Windows clipboard history. No account, no telemetry.

Release-to-text time on Windows (median, with AI cleanup)

3 s of speech159 ms

10 s of speech303 ms

30 s of speech845 ms

Toolbay Flow on Windows 11 with an NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti, 20 runs per length (from the project's FEATURES.md). Slower on laptops without a dedicated GPU.

Which should you pick?

Try voice typing right now: Win + H.
Control the PC hands-free: Voice Access.
Write long text fast, offline, cleaned up: Toolbay Flow.
Minimal and also on Linux: Handy.

Questions people ask

Does Windows have free dictation built in?: Yes. Press Win + H in any text box for voice typing. It uses Microsoft's online speech recognition, so it needs an internet connection. Windows 11 also has Voice Access, which works without the internet once set up.
What is a free Wispr Flow alternative for Windows?: Toolbay Flow. Hold Ctrl + Win, talk and let go, and cleaned-up text is pasted where your cursor is, like Wispr Flow. It is free with no word limit (Wispr Flow's free plan stops at 2,000 words a week) and runs on your PC.
Do I need a graphics card for local dictation?: No, but it helps. Toolbay Flow picks a model for your hardware: Whisper Large v3 Turbo on a recent NVIDIA GPU, a compact model that stays quick on the CPU otherwise. AMD and Intel GPUs fall back to the CPU for speech for now.

Wispr Flow is a trademark of Wispr. Toolbay's tools are independent open-source projects, inspired by Wispr Flow, and are not affiliated with or endorsed by Wispr.