Willow Voice Review 2026: Pricing, Teams and Privacy

Willow is a dictation app for Mac, Windows and iPhone that learns how you write and adjusts what it types to match. Recognition runs in Willow’s cloud, and the company sells that cloud to companies with SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and single sign-on attached.

We build Kana, a Mac-only dictation app that keeps recognition on the machine. Willow and Kana solve overlapping problems for very different buyers, and the honest version of this comparison says so early.

Short answer: Willow is the right pick if you work across operating systems, if you want the app to learn your writing style, or if you need something your security team will actually approve. Kana is $9.99 once to dictate and makes no network call at all, and it has nothing whatsoever to offer an IT department.

What Willow actually is

Hold a key, speak, and Willow types the result into the app in front of you. The site puts the trigger plainly: a Mac keyboard with the fn key as the shortcut.

Source: Willow (willowvoice.com)

What separates it from a plain speech-to-text layer is what happens between the audio and the text. Willow’s site describes a system that “Learns how you write over time and adapts to your tone across email, Slack, docs, and technical tools”, an “Auto-learning dictionary” that “Remembers names, product terms, and abbreviations”, and smart formatting that “Removes filler words, fixes punctuation, and formats your writing automatically”. There is a whisper mode for open-plan offices and saved phrases behind shortcuts.

The published claims are “4x faster writing across every app” and “3x more accurate than built-in dictation, with text appearing in as little as 200ms”. Those are Willow’s figures. We have not measured them, and its own share card rounds the speed claim up to 5x, so read all of them as marketing rather than as a benchmark.

Language coverage is “100+“. Kana covers 26.

Pricing in 2026

Four surfaces, and the free one has changed shape recently, so check it rather than trusting an old comparison table.

Basic is free and gives you an “Unlimited weaker speech-to-text model (Frontier Mini)”, with “Limited personalization, 20 Scribe uses per week”.

Pro is $15 a month, or $12 per user a month billed annually, and swaps in the “Unlimited smartest speech-to-text model (Frontier Pro)” plus unlimited Scribe.

Business is $35 a month, or $28 annually, and adds “Enforced privacy mode (zero data retention)”, “Advanced admin and team controls”, “SOC 2 Type II compliance” and “Enforced HIPAA compliance”.

Enterprise is quoted, and adds “Single sign-on (SSO) / SAML”, invoice and PO billing, “Advanced usage dashboards and API”, an MSA and a DPA, and dedicated support.

The shape is worth reading carefully: the free plan is unlimited on the weaker model, and the good model is the paid product. That is a more generous free tier than a word cap, and a firmer wall.

Kana is $9.99 once for unlimited dictation on the same model every user gets, plus unlimited file transcription with SRT, VTT and Markdown export. AI rewriting is the one subscription: $4.90 a month or $49 a year, covering three Macs. Pricing is here.

The enterprise story Kana cannot tell

This section exists because pretending otherwise would be silly.

If you are buying dictation for forty people, you need an admin console, per-seat billing, SSO, a signed DPA, a retention policy you can point a regulator at, and an audit report from someone who is not the vendor. Willow’s security page states that audio is “processed” on “secure cloud infrastructure in the United States”, that “No audio is stored after transcription”, that transcripts are “not logged server-side or retained by default”, and that its certifications are “Independently certified, not just self-reported”.

Kana has none of that machinery. There is no account, no admin, no console, no SSO, no seat management and no contract vehicle. It answers the security question in a different and narrower way: when you dictate, the audio and the transcript never leave the Mac, and there is no server to have a retention policy about. That answer satisfies some procurement teams instantly and others not at all, because there is nothing to audit.

Willow also lists an offline mode, described on its site as “Offline when you need it”, which runs a local model on Mac and iOS. Treat that as a fallback when the connection drops rather than as the default path, because the models it sells are the cloud ones.

What Willow does better than Kana

It runs everywhere you do. Mac, Windows and iPhone under one account. Kana is Apple Silicon Mac only. If your day crosses two machines, this is over already.

It learns. Style adaptation and an auto-learning dictionary mean Willow gets closer to your writing the longer you use it. Kana has custom vocabulary you fill in by hand and no memory of anything else. Nothing in Kana improves with use.

It sells to teams. Business and Enterprise tiers, admin controls, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, SSO, zero data retention, an MSA and a DPA. Kana cannot be bought by a company in any structured way.

More languages. 100+ against 26.

Filler words go automatically. Willow’s smart formatting strips them by default. In Kana they stay in unless you pay for rewriting and ask for them to go.