# Speechnotes

> Free browser-based dictation notepad that needs no account or install, plus a free Chrome extension for voice typing across the web and $0.10/min file transcription.

Source: https://selfpublishingdirectory.com/writing-tools/speechnotes
Website: https://speechnotes.co
Category: Writing Tools (https://selfpublishingdirectory.com/writing-tools)
Pricing: freemium — $0–$2
AI-powered: yes
Tags: dictation, speech-to-text, free, browser-based, distraction-free, no-login, voice-typing, transcription, chrome-extension, subtitles, google-drive, pay-as-you-go
Last verified: 2026-08-20
Best For: Authors who want to try dictation with zero commitment — no account, no install, no trial clock — and don't need it to run offline
Collaboration: no
Platform: web, android, chromebook
Tool Type: dictation

Speechnotes is a dictation notepad that starts working the moment you click the microphone — no account, no download, no trial clock. For an author who wants to find out whether talking a scene out actually produces usable prose, that zero-friction start is the whole pitch. A separate pay-as-you-go product transcribes audio and video files you upload.

## What You Get

- **Dictation with no account:** Open the page, click the mic, speak. Text lands in a clean canvas and auto-saves to your browser's local storage — nothing to sign up for and nothing to lose if you close the tab.
- **A free Chrome extension:** Voice typing across other sites, included in the free tier. Premium upgrades the extension rather than unlocking it — a detail worth knowing before you pay.
- **Built-in voice commands:** Say "period", "new paragraph" or "smiley face" and Speechnotes inserts them. The set is fixed — you cannot define your own macros.
- **Google Drive export:** Optional and permission-gated, so the notepad only touches Drive if you connect it.
- **Separate file transcription:** Upload audio or video and get speaker labels (English only), timestamps, .srt captions, AI summaries and simultaneous translation, plus a REST API, webhooks and Zapier.

## Who It's For

- **Authors auditioning dictation:** Every serious competitor asks for an install or an email address first. This one does not, which makes it the cheapest way to learn whether you can think out loud at all.
- **Authors who need occasional transcription, not a subscription:** A single 40-minute interview costs $4 with nothing recurring attached.

**Pricing:** Free tier is ad-supported with unlimited dictation. Premium reads as "$1.9/month" but is charged as a **single annual payment of roughly $22.80 that does not auto-renew** — not a rolling monthly subscription. It removes ads, speeds loading, adds unlimited continuous dictation and, notably for authors, grants **commercial-use rights**. File transcription is priced separately at **$0.10/minute**, pay-as-you-go, with no subscription and no free minutes.

## Strengths

- **Commercial use is explicit:** Dictating a manuscript you intend to sell is commercial use. Speechnotes says so on the upgrade page and prices it at about $23 a year, which is unusually clear for this category.
- **Dictation audio never reaches Speechnotes' servers:** The notepad hands recognition to your browser's Web Speech API and stores only the resulting text locally. Uploaded transcription files do go to their servers, and are deleted after processing.
- **Cheapest per-minute transcription among the tools authors actually use:** $0.10/minute with no monthly floor.
- **Genuinely maintained:** The Android app was updated in November 2025 and sits at 4.0/5 from roughly 31,600 ratings on 5M+ installs — a real user base in a category where Dragon Anywhere was discontinued outright.

## Limitations

- **There is no Speechnotes app for iPhone.** The vendor's own mobile page sends iOS users to **TextHear**, a "sister app" built for captioning phone calls for hearing-impaired users — last updated in **2018**, rated **1.3/5 from 10 ratings**, and charging $8.99 per 30 minutes (three times the web rate). Treat Speechnotes as web and Android only.
- **Chrome or Edge in practice:** Firefox disables the Web Speech API by default and Safari's support is inconsistent. This is a browser limitation, not a Speechnotes choice, but the effect is the same.
- **No offline mode and no custom vocabulary:** Invented character and place names get mangled and there is no dictionary to teach it otherwise — a real cost in fantasy and SF drafting.
- **Recognition is generic cloud ASR:** Google's and Microsoft's engines, reached through the browser. Fine for conversational prose, behind Whisper-class local models on proper nouns and accents. And "not sent to Speechnotes" is not the same as private — the audio still transits Google's or Microsoft's cloud.
- **Almost no independent review record:** No Trustpilot profile, zero reviews on Capterra, two on TrustRadius. The Android store rating is the only sample large enough to mean anything.

## Alternatives

[MacWhisper](/writing-tools/macwhisper) is the better choice if manuscript audio must stay on your machine — Whisper runs locally, and its free tier covers transcription plus system-wide dictation. [Wispr Flow](/writing-tools/wispr-flow) cleans up and formats speech as you talk, which cuts the editing pass Speechnotes leaves you with. [Voice In](/writing-tools/voice-in) is the closest comparison for browser dictation specifically. Speechnotes wins on one axis only, and it is a real one: nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, nothing to cancel.