Amical
Open-source AI dictation that auto-formats your speech for whatever app you're in — Gmail, Slack, your code editor.
If your voice data staying on your laptop matters, Amical is the hardest deal to beat — full offline dictation for $0, and context-aware formatting that most paid rivals charge for. The $7/mo yearly Premium undercuts Aqua Voice and Typeless, though cloud dictation is metered at 2,000 words/week until you pay. Worth a download on local mode alone; upgrade only if you dictate heavily into the cloud.
Verified 9h ago · liveness 73/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/amical
- Privacy-conscious writers who want dictation that never leaves the machine
- Developers dictating code comments and refactor prompts by voice
- Multilingual users who mix languages mid-sentence
- Solo professionals who want context-aware formatting without a subscription
- Heavy cloud-dictation users who will burn through 2,000 words/week on Free
- Teams that need SSO/SAML or private model hosting without Enterprise pricing
- Mobile-first users — iOS and Android are still listed as coming soon on Free
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Skip Amical if you need enterprise identity controls like SSO/SAML on a low-cost plan, or if you dictate heavily through cloud models and won't pay for Premium — the Free tier caps cloud dictation at 2,000 words/week.
Cloud dictation on Free tops out at 2,000 words/week, so heavy cloud users either throttle their use or jump to Premium.
Amical's pricing fits individuals and small teams: Free is genuinely usable for local-only dictation on unlimited devices, and Premium at $7/mo yearly ($10/mo monthly) undercuts subscription dictation tools like Aqua Voice and Typeless. Enterprise is custom-priced for teams needing private model hosting, SSO/SAML, volume discounts and centralized billing — cheaper than most enterprise dictation contracts, but you lose team and identity features entirely until you get there.
In short
Amical — Open-source AI dictation that auto-formats your speech for whatever app you're in — Gmail, Slack, your code editor. Best for Privacy-conscious writers who want dictation that never leaves the machine, Developers dictating code comments and refactor prompts by voice, Multilingual users who mix languages mid-sentence. Free to start; paid plans from $7/mo.
What people actually say about Amical — is it worth it?
We scanned public community sources for Amical on Jul 5, 2026 and could not establish that the discussion we found is about this tool rather than something else sharing its name. Our own analysis of that scan says the posts were off-subject. Rather than publish a sentiment score built on the wrong subject, we publish nothing here and re-run the scan.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Amical? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Local AI dictation that runs entirely on-device
- Cloud AI dictation with fast models when signed in
- Context-aware formatting: professional for Gmail, casual for Instagram
- Grammar autocorrect, pronoun fixing and contextual emoji
- Custom vocabulary for jargon, proper nouns and product names
- Custom hotkeys: push-to-talk, hands-free toggle, paste last transcript
- Custom voice shortcuts and commands for hands-free control
- 100+ languages with auto-detection and mixed-language dictation
- Desktop floating widget for hands-free dictation
- Notes feature with export
- AI formatting with custom prompts
- Snippets for reusable text
- MCP integration for connecting AI tools
- Native desktop apps for macOS and Windows
- Mobile apps for iPhone and Android (beta)
About Amical
Amical is an open-source (MIT) AI dictation app that types your speech into whichever app has focus and cleans it up on the way in. You hold a hotkey or tap the floating desktop pill, talk, and the transcript lands as formatted text — a professional email in Gmail, a casual post on Instagram, a refactor request in your editor. It runs on macOS, Windows, iPhone and Android, and it transcribes in 100+ languages with auto-detection and mixed-language support. Two transcription paths sit side by side: local models for people who want nothing leaving the machine, or fast cloud models when you sign in. You can switch between them per session. Formatting is the part that separates Amical from plain OS dictation — it autocorrects grammar, fixes pronouns, inserts contextual emoji, and adapts tone to the app in front of you rather than emitting raw speech-to-text. Customization is unusually deep for a free tool: custom vocabulary for jargon and proper nouns, custom voice shortcuts and commands, snippets, custom prompts, a Notes feature with export, and an MCP integration for wiring in other AI tools. Pricing splits cleanly — Free gives unlimited local dictation, unlimited devices, and 2,000 words/week of cloud; Premium ($7/mo billed yearly at $84, or $10/mo monthly) makes cloud dictation unlimited and adds shared vocabulary, team management and early feature access; Enterprise adds private model hosting, custom models, ultra-low latency, SSO/SAML and volume pricing. Against Aqua Voice and Typeless, Amical's pitch is price and privacy: the local mode is free forever, the code is on GitHub, and the vendor states no data retention and no training on your data.
Behind the Verdict
Start with the free tier before you spend anything. Unlimited local dictation, unlimited devices, and the full formatting stack — vocabulary, shortcuts, 100+ languages, integrations — are all on Free. That's rare. Most dictation apps put context-aware formatting behind the paywall; Amical gives it away and charges for cloud throughput instead. The reason to pay is simple arithmetic. 2,000 words/week of cloud dictation is roughly a couple of long emails a day, and it runs out fast if you dictate meeting notes, drafts or code comments. Premium at $7/mo yearly ($84 up front) or $10/mo monthly removes that ceiling and adds shared vocabulary plus team management — both pointless for a solo user, both genuinely useful if your team argues about how to spell the same product names. Where local mode bites: it's slower than cloud and depends on your hardware, so an older MacBook will feel the difference on long dictations. If you want instant, cloud is the better default for you. Nothing in the sources says local quality matches cloud accuracy, and we wouldn't assume it does. Compare it to Aqua Voice and Typeless, the names that come up alongside Amical in user threads. Aqua Voice has fans who prefer its feel; Typeless gets dinged for over-aggressive formatting that rewrites more than you asked. Amical's differentiator is the free local path and the open MIT codebase — you can audit it, self-host pieces of it, or wire it into other AI tools through MCP. Mobile is the caveat. The pricing comparison lists iPhone and Android as coming soon on Free and included on Premium and Enterprise, so mobile-first users should check the current state before committing. And if you're a team that needs SSO/SAML, private model hosting or centralized billing, that's Enterprise only — the $7
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Amical actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Install Amical, grant permissions, and use the floating widget to dictate a draft email in Gmail without signing in, relying on Whisper for local transcription.
Outcome: Formatted, grammar-corrected email text appears in seconds with no cloud upload and no cost — useful for private client work.
Add custom vocabulary for stack terms like k8s, PostgreSQL and useMutation, bind a push-to-talk hotkey, and dictate commit messages and code comments hands-free.
Outcome: Technical terms transcribe correctly and land in the editor already formatted, cutting typing on repetitive code prose.
Use auto-detect language and mixed-language dictation to draft Slack messages and meeting notes across 100+ supported languages in the same day.
Outcome: One tool handles switching languages without changing settings, keeping tone appropriate for each app.
Use Cases
- Dictate a professional email in Gmail with automatic formatting and signature.
- Write code hands-free by speaking into your editor with custom vocabulary for terms like k8s or PostgreSQL.
- Capture meeting notes by dictating into the Amical notes feature.
- Compose a casual Slack message with automatic tone matching and emoji insertion.
- Transcribe multilingual conversations with auto-detection across 100+ languages.
- Reuse saved snippets and custom prompts to speed up recurring writing tasks.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-10-02
Limitations
- Cloud dictation on the Free plan is capped at 2,000 words/week, so anyone leaning on cloud models will hit the limit quickly.
- Enterprise-grade controls — private model hosting, custom models, ultra-low latency, SSO/SAML OAuth, SOC 2 (in progress), volume-discount pricing, centralized billing and seat-based licenses — are Enterprise-only with custom pricing.
- Local dictation requires setting up a local model before offline use works; the desktop app supports macOS and Windows, and mobile apps are listed as 'soon' in the plan comparison.
as of 2026-09-14
Verification history
We have re-verified Amical 8 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
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- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 8 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Amical tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Individuals who dictate locally and want privacy without a subscription, including casual users on unlimited devices.
What this tier adds
Free entry point: unlimited local dictation, unlimited devices, 2,000 words/week cloud dictation, AI formatting and 100+ languages.
Premium
$7/mo
Ideal for
Solo professionals and small teams who dictate heavily through cloud models or need shared vocabulary and team management.
What this tier adds
Adds unlimited cloud dictation plus shared vocabulary, team management and priority access to new features over Free.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Security- and scale-focused organizations that need identity controls, private models and centralized billing.
What this tier adds
Adds private model hosting, custom models, ultra-low latency, SSO/SAML OAuth, SOC 2 (in progress), volume-discount pricing, centralized billing and seat-based licenses.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Amical's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Amical's pricing fits individuals and small teams: Free is genuinely usable for local-only dictation on unlimited devices, and Premium at $7/mo yearly ($10/mo monthly) undercuts subscription dictation tools like Aqua Voice and Typeless. Enterprise is custom-priced for teams needing private model hosting, SSO/SAML, volume discounts and centralized billing — cheaper than most enterprise dictation contracts, but you lose team and identity features entirely until you get there.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Amical — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Individual users: install the desktop app, grant microphone and accessibility permissions, and take a first dictation in a few minutes — though offline local use needs a Whisper/Ollama model set up first. Developers: add custom vocabulary and rebind hotkeys in roughly 15–30 minutes for a tailored workflow. Teams: onboarding shared vocabulary and team management lives on Premium, so budget time
Switching to or from Amical
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From native Mac/Windows dictation: install Amical and route dictation through its push-to-talk or widget to gain context-aware formatting and 100+ language support.
- →From Aqua Voice or Typeless: install Amical, import your common terms as custom vocabulary, and use the free local mode to test before committing to Premium.
- →From a cloud-only dictation tool: start on Amical Free for local dictation, then move to Premium if you need unlimited cloud dictation and shared vocabulary.
- ↗To Aqua Voice: if you prefer its feel, export your Amical vocabulary list as plain terms and re-enter them in the new tool.
- ↗To Typeless: if you want a different UI/UX, copy your Amical custom vocabulary and snippets into the new app manually — there is no documented bulk export.
- ↗To native OS dictation: nothing to migrate, but you lose Amical's context-aware formatting, custom vocabulary and multi-language auto-detection.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Amical”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Amical” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Amical.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Amical
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Amical, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Voicebox
Voicebox is an open-source desktop AI voice cloning studio for local cloning, dictation, and agent speech — no account, no cloud, MIT
Openwhispr
Open-source voice-to-text dictation that runs local speech models offline or routes cloud transcription through your own API keys.
OmniVoice Studio
Open-source desktop studio for voice cloning, voice design, dubbing, dictation and audiobooks — runs on your own machine.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Amical vs Gem
These tools serve fundamentally different needs. Gem is a full-stack recruiting platform for talent teams, offering AI agents for sourcing, screening, and fraud detection. Amical is an open-source dictation app for individuals to type faster by voice. Choose based on whether you need to streamline hiring or accelerate personal typing—they are not competitors.
Amical vs Poke Interaction Co
Poke and Amical serve fundamentally different needs: Poke is a messaging-native AI assistant for managing email, calendar, and automations, while Amical is a dictation tool for faster typing across any app. If you need a personal assistant integrated into your chat apps and workflows, go with Poke. If you want to speed up text input via voice in any desktop app, Amical wins hands-down.
Amical vs Guesty
These products serve entirely different needs and are not direct competitors. Guesty is a full-stack property management system for vacation rental operators, while Amical is a desktop dictation tool for individuals. Your choice depends on whether you need to automate rental operations or speed up typing across apps. There is no overlap in use case.
Alternatives to Amical
View all
Voicebox
Voicebox is an open-source desktop AI voice cloning studio for local cloning, dictation, and agent speech — no account, no cloud, MIT
Openwhispr
Open-source voice-to-text dictation that runs local speech models offline or routes cloud transcription through your own API keys.
OmniVoice Studio
Open-source desktop studio for voice cloning, voice design, dubbing, dictation and audiobooks — runs on your own machine.
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