See the difference, live
Aqua Voice refines your words as you speak: punctuation, formatting, and technical terms landed in real time.
Aqua Voice vs Resonant summary
Resonant is a free, local-first dictation app for Apple Silicon Macs: it runs open, on-device speech models, works fully offline, and keeps your audio on your machine. Aqua Voice is a managed cloud app built around Avalon, its own proprietary model, which scored 97.4% on the AISpeak-10 benchmark and ranked #1 among proprietary systems on the public OpenASR leaderboard at its October 2025 debut. The honest tradeoff: Resonant wins on free unlimited local dictation and privacy, while Aqua offers published model results, real-time context, and Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android support. Notably, both charge the same for their paid tier, $8/month billed annually ($96/year), so this is a choice about approach, not price.
Choose Aqua Voice if accuracy is the priority, you dictate technical or domain-heavy content, you want real-time context and formatting on the desktop, or you need the same tool on Windows, iPhone, and Android as well as Mac. You'll need an internet connection, and Pro is $8/month billed annually ($96/year) after the free Starter tier.
Choose Resonant if you want free, unlimited dictation that runs entirely on your Apple Silicon Mac, you care most about privacy or working offline, and you don't need Windows, iPhone, Android, or the last few points of accuracy. Its Pro tier matches Aqua at $8/month billed annually, but its free local tier may be all you ever need.
What model does Resonant use?
Resonant is refreshingly open about its stack: it runs open, on-device speech models rather than a proprietary in-house engine, and it names them publicly. Its open-source edition lists NVIDIA Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR for local transcription, and its writing covers the broader open-model family that local apps draw from. Because these run entirely on your machine, they are chosen to be small and fast enough for the Neural Engine, which supports offline processing without establishing an app-to-app accuracy ranking.
Aqua takes a different path. Avalon is Aqua's own model, built and tuned for dictation rather than adapted from a general-purpose open checkpoint, and it runs in the cloud where it is not constrained by a laptop's memory or battery. That is why a purpose-built model matters: the same words spoken into an off-the-shelf local model and into Avalon can produce very different transcripts, especially on technical terms, proper nouns, and messy real-world audio.
We evaluated Avalon on AISpeak-10, our dataset of technical speech, against Whisper Large v3. The score is the percentage of clips with the key term transcribed correctly:
| Model | AISpeak-10 key-term accuracy |
|---|---|
| Avalon (ours) | 97.4% |
| Whisper Large v3 | 65.1% |
Aqua publishes this comparison as its core proof point: on the AISpeak-10 benchmark, Avalon scores 97.4% while Whisper Large v3, a widely used open model, scores 65.1%. Avalon also ranked #1 among proprietary systems on the public OpenASR leaderboard at its October 2025 debut. One honest caveat: Whisper is used here as a well-known reference for off-the-shelf open ASR, not as a stand-in for Resonant specifically. Resonant openly ships its own choice of open on-device models (such as NVIDIA Parakeet), so treat the 65.1% as a score for that specific reference model, not a score for Resonant or open models in general.
See the OpenASR leaderboard, or try Aqua Voice free.
AISpeak-10 is Aqua’s English technical-speech dataset. Avalon transcribed the key term correctly in 97.4% of clips, versus 65.1% for Whisper Large v3. This measures key-term recognition, not overall transcript accuracy or a head-to-head test of these apps. See the evaluation and results.
Aqua Voice vs Resonant: Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | Aqua Voice | Resonant |
|---|---|---|
| Speech model | Avalon (proprietary, cloud) | Open on-device models (Parakeet, Qwen3-ASR) |
| Cost | $8/mo ($96/yr), free tier (1,000 lifetime words) | $8/mo ($96/yr); free tier is unlimited local dictation |
| Public benchmark | 97.4% on AISpeak-10 | No published benchmark |
| Technical-term accuracy | High (Avalon + real-time context) | Depends on the local model; uses app and window context |
| Setup / Processing | Cloud; sign in and go | Local; downloads on-device models |
| Works offline | ❌ (needs internet) | ✅ (fully on-device) |
| Mac | ✅ | ✅ (Apple Silicon only) |
| Windows | ✅ | ⚠️ Beta |
| iPhone | ✅ | ❌ |
| Android | ✅ | ❌ |
| Real-time + screen context | ✅ | ✅ App, window, and URL context |
| Languages | 49 | 40 |
| Best for | Accuracy on technical, multi-device work | Free, private, offline Mac dictation |
Speech model
Cost
Public benchmark
Technical-term accuracy
Setup / Processing
Works offline
Mac
Windows
iPhone
Android
Real-time + screen context
Languages
Best for
Where Aqua Voice is better
Published model results
Avalon scored 97.4% on the AISpeak-10 benchmark and ranked #1 among proprietary systems on the public OpenASR leaderboard at its October 2025 debut. Resonant publishes no comparable benchmark, so we have not established which app is more accurate.
Real-time context awareness
Aqua reads live context from your screen to nail names, jargon, and formatting as you speak, and it corrects in real time. Resonant also uses context: it reads the active app, window title, and browser URL, and recognizes names it sees on screen.
Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android
Aqua runs the same on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android. Resonant is available on Apple Silicon Macs, with Windows in beta and no mobile app, so it can't follow you across devices the way Aqua can.
A developer API, too
Beyond the app, Aqua exposes Avalon through an OpenAI-compatible developer API at $0.39/hour, so teams can build the same accuracy into their own tools. Resonant also offers a local API and MCP server for querying its saved workspace; this differs from a hosted speech-model API.
Where Resonant wins
Free, unlimited local dictation. Resonant's free tier gives you unlimited on-device speech-to-text with no account and no word cap. Aqua's free Starter tier is capped at 1,000 lifetime words, so for basic, high-volume dictation that never needs the cloud, Resonant is simply the more generous starting point.
Privacy and offline by default. Because Resonant processes everything on your Mac, your audio never leaves the device, and dictation keeps working with no internet at all, whether on a plane or an air-gapped network. If your work is sensitive, regulated, or often offline, that local-only guarantee is hard to beat, and it is the main reason Resonant shows up on Reddit as a recommended private alternative.
One price note in Resonant's favor at the top of the funnel: you can do real work for $0 indefinitely. Aqua's free tier is meant as a trial rather than a permanent free plan, so if you never want to pay, Resonant is the better fit.
Cloud accuracy vs on-device privacy
Resonant is built on a simple, opinionated idea: dictation should be free, fast, and never leave your device. Everything runs locally on Apple Silicon, so it works in airplane mode, on air-gapped networks, and without an account. That design is why Reddit threads keep recommending it as a free, offline alternative to Wispr Flow and Superwhisper. Accuracy depends on the model and the speech you dictate; local processing alone does not establish its accuracy relative to Aqua.
Aqua Voice makes the opposite bet. It streams audio to Avalon, a proprietary model Aqua trained specifically for dictation, and uses live context from your screen to get names, jargon, and formatting right. That requires an internet connection, and your audio is processed in the cloud (Aqua has a SOC 2 Type II audit report). Aqua adds support for Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android. Resonant also has a Windows beta.
How to decide
Source: Resonant product information, checked September 30, 2026.
Aqua Voice is free to start, so you can compare it against Resonant on the words you actually dictate before paying anything.
Frequently asked questions
Is Resonant free?
Yes. Resonant's free tier includes unlimited local, on-device speech-to-text with no account required. Its paid Pro plan (cloud cleanup, rewrites, and summaries) is $8/month billed annually ($96/year), with a monthly option and a 7-day trial. Aqua's free Starter tier is capped at 1,000 lifetime words, and Aqua Pro is also $8/month billed annually.
Does Resonant use Whisper?
Resonant openly runs open, on-device speech models and names them publicly; its open-source edition lists NVIDIA Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR, and it discusses the wider open-model family, including Whisper. Aqua instead runs Avalon, its own proprietary model, in the cloud. Neither app hides its approach, they just make opposite choices.
Which is more accurate, Aqua Voice or Resonant?
Aqua publishes a 97.4% score on the AISpeak-10 benchmark and an October 2025 debut at #1 among proprietary systems on the public OpenASR leaderboard. Resonant publishes no benchmark, and we have not run a controlled app-to-app comparison. Test both apps with your vocabulary and preferred processing mode.
Does Aqua Voice work offline?
No. Aqua is a managed cloud app: it streams audio to Avalon and needs an internet connection. Resonant is the opposite, running fully on-device so it works in airplane mode and on air-gapped networks. If offline use is a hard requirement, Resonant is the better fit.
What platforms does each app support?
Aqua runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android and supports 49 languages. Resonant runs on Apple Silicon Macs, with a Windows beta and no mobile app, and supports around 40 languages. If you work across a Mac, a PC, and a phone, Aqua covers all three.
Is my audio private with each app?
Resonant keeps audio fully on your device by default; its paid cloud features send only transcript text to what it describes as zero-retention infrastructure. Aqua processes audio in the cloud and has a SOC 2 Type II audit report and is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR and HIPAA compliant. Both are defensible, but if you want audio to never leave your machine, Resonant's local-only model is the stronger privacy guarantee.
Do Aqua Voice and Resonant cost the same?
At the paid tier, yes: both Aqua Pro and Resonant Pro are $8/month billed annually ($96/year). The real difference is the free tier. Resonant's free plan is unlimited local dictation, while Aqua's free Starter tier is 1,000 lifetime words, so Resonant is cheaper if you never need cloud features.
