Speechnotes Review: Is the Free Dictation App Enough?

Speechnotes is a free dictation tool for the Chrome and Edge browsers and for Android phones. For personal notes, the free version is enough: Speechnotes lists unlimited dictation on its free plan, paid for by ads. It stops being enough in three cases. You dictate for work, you use an iPhone, or you want a meeting captured rather than your own voice typed.

The work case is the one most reviews miss. Speechnotes' upgrade page says Premium is "a must for business use", and that page covers the web tools. So a free tool can still be the wrong free tool for you.

This review is built from Speechnotes' website and docs, its Google Play and Chrome Web Store listings, and public user reports, all read on November 9, 2026. No hands-on test was run for this article, so no accuracy figure below is ours.

We make ParrotNotes, a phone app that records and summarizes conversations, so we have an interest. Every Speechnotes fact links to its source, and our product gets one short section near the end.

If you're here because you need to capture whole conversations rather than dictate, you can try ParrotNotes free alongside this review.

Speechnotes in short

Verdict: a good, cheap way to talk text into a notepad. It isn't a recorder, it isn't a keyboard, and its free tier isn't meant for business.

What the free Speechnotes app includes

Speechnotes is three products with one name, and the free version differs on each.

Speechnotes on the web: Windows, Chromebook and Mac

The online notepad needs no install, account or download. You click the mic, allow microphone access once, and talk. The docs ask for Chrome or Edge, and list a different browser as a common cause of failure. They name PCs, laptops and Chromebooks.

What you get free:

• Spoken punctuation: period, comma, question mark, colon, semicolon, exclamation mark, dash, new line, new paragraph and parentheses
• Auto-save in real time, with automatic capitalization
• Export to Google Drive, a .txt file or a Word .doc, plus email and print

One limit matters. Notes live in your browser's storage, so you can't reach them from another computer, and the docs warn that you can run out of space after a long run of notes. Clear your browser data and you may lose them, so export anything you want to keep.

The Speechnotes app on Android

The Play listing calls it a "non-stop speech-recognition notepad". Its main promise is that it doesn't stop listening when you pause to think. That's the reason to pick it over the keyboard mic.

The listing also describes:

• A built-in keyboard for tapping punctuation and symbols while you talk
• A home-screen widget that starts dictation in one tap
• 10 editable "cheat keys" that insert saved text, such as your email address
• Optional Google Drive backup, and notes saved as plain text files
• Offline support, "though better performance when connected"
• A "small" ad banner on the free version

Speechnotes for Android is a notepad, not a keyboard, so your words land in its own note and you copy them out. For typing into WhatsApp or Gmail, the company points to a separate app called Speechkeys. Our guide to voice to text on Android covers the options already on your phone.

Lena, a composite of the reader this app suits, drafts blog posts on her lunchtime walk with an Android phone in her hand. Her keyboard mic keeps cutting out when she stops to think.

A notepad built not to stop is a fair fix for her, and at $0 she can try it in five minutes. She pastes the text into her draft that evening.

Speechnotes on iPhone: there's no app

There's no Speechnotes iPhone app. The Play listing sends iOS users to speechnotes.co in Chrome, while the docs say you "might" hit issues on some phones and tablets. The home page offers TextHear for iPhone instead, but says it's a sister app with its own pricing, designed for people with hearing impairment. It isn't the same notepad.

On an iPhone, start with the dictation already on the keyboard, or see our guide to the dictation app for iPhone. App store names are crowded here too, so check that the developer says WellSource before you install anything called Speechnotes.

Speechnotes free vs Premium

From the pricing table and upgrade page, November 9, 2026:

Three details change the decision:

1. It's a yearly payment. $1.9 × 12 comes to $22.80, paid once. The upgrade page says it does not renew automatically, so nothing bills you next year by surprise.
2. Refunds are open. The upgrade page promises a full refund on request, and the Play listing offers one within the first month.
3. Web and Android are sold apart. The upgrade page covers the online notepad and Chrome extension. Android Premium goes through Google Play, which lists in-app purchases at $2.99 to $22.99 per item and doesn't say which item buys what. Premium on Android is per Google account, not per device. Don't assume one purchase covers both.

Tom, a composite Windows laptop user, is a consultant who dictates client proposals into the free notepad. The tool does everything he needs.

But those proposals are business use, so by the company's own wording he should pay. At under $23 a year, he has no reason to argue. He'd also lose the ads.

Speechnotes claim check: what the pages say against each other

We read Speechnotes' own pages next to its store listings. Most facts match across pages; these need a footnote.

Two dates are worth noting. The Android app was last updated on November 5, 2025, a year ago, and the extension over three and a half years ago. That doesn't mean they're broken, as both lean on Google's or the browser's speech engine. It does mean you shouldn't expect fast fixes.

What Android users report on Google Play

A few public reviews, as shown on the listing on November 9, 2026. These are single people's reports, not tests:

• August 2026, 119 people found it helpful: "The best free app I've found", still the favorite nearly 4 years later. The complaint: pausing the mic makes the volume plummet.
• March 2019, 62 helpful: useful, but the reviewer wanted a better option because of word choices that need editing, such as "lift" coming out as "Lyft".
• January 2019, 211 helpful: works without internet "although it does work better with one", accepts an external mic, and doesn't save a sound file.

That last point is the one to remember if you're choosing between dictation and recording. Which brings us to privacy.

Is Speechnotes private? What happens to your audio

For dictation, the home page says recording and recognition are handed to the browser or to Android, so "we never even have access to the recorded audio". Your notes stay in local storage. The Play listing agrees: data goes to Google's speech service through Android's recognizer.

So your speech does leave the device, only not to Speechnotes. The company says Chrome's, Edge's or Android's privacy policy applies, depending on what you use. Play's data safety section also says the app may share device or other IDs with third parties, which fits an ad-funded app, and that no data is collected.

File transcription is different, since files go to Speechnotes' servers. The company says recordings are deleted after transcription and that the service is HIPAA compliant. That's its statement, and we haven't verified it.

If you work in healthcare, ask for the paperwork first. ParrotNotes makes no HIPAA claim, so don't put patient details in it.

Speechnotes transcription: what recordings cost

Dictation is free, but transcribing files isn't. Speechnotes Transcription charges $0.1 a minute, pay as you go, with uploads or imports from Google Drive and YouTube. It adds timestamps, .srt captions, English speaker tagging, a REST API and Zapier. It says an hour of audio takes about 20 minutes.

The page also says "Start for free" and "AI summaries for free", but we couldn't confirm how many free minutes you get.

Here's the worked cost against a flat plan, using list prices on November 9, 2026:

The break-even sits near 200 minutes a month, or about 150 on ParrotNotes' annual billing at $14.99 a month. Under that, for long single files, Speechnotes is cheaper and we'd say so. It's also the better pick if you need .srt captions or an API, which aren't what ParrotNotes is for.

Speechnotes vs Gboard, Google Docs and ParrotNotes: which app for which job

For the wider field, including paid options, see our roundup of the best dictation app by job.

Where ParrotNotes fits, and where it doesn't

ParrotNotes isn't a dictation keyboard. It won't type live into Gmail, and it's a poor swap if all you want is words in a notepad. Speechnotes or Gboard will do that for free.

It fits when the thing you need to capture is a conversation. Mara, a composite, is an account manager who tried dictating her notes after a 40-minute site visit with a client. She got her memory of the meeting, typed.

It missed the delivery date the client had changed. Recording the visit on her Android phone with her client's OK would have kept the audio, and given her a transcript and a list of follow-ups.

That's the ParrotNotes job, on iPhone and Android:

• Free plan: 100 minutes of recording a month, up to 30 minutes per recording, an AI summary on every recording, and 5 AI-powered recordings a month (action items, key points). It has ads.
• Pro: $19.99 a month, or $14.99 a month billed annually, with 3,000 minutes a month and up to 3 hours per recording, plus email drafts, AI chat and speaker identification.

Transcription needs a connection, though recording itself works offline.

Always get people's OK before you record them; rules differ by place, and our guide to one-party consent states is general information, not legal advice. If that's your problem, download ParrotNotes and try it on your next meeting.

Verdict: is the free Speechnotes app enough?

Yes if you dictate personal notes on Android, or in Chrome or Edge on a computer, and don't mind ads. The web notepad doesn't even ask for an account.

No in these cases:

• Work use: budget $22.80 a year, by the company's own rule for the web tools
• iPhone: there's no app, so use what's on your phone
• Typing inside other apps on Android: use Gboard or the vendor's Speechkeys
• Recordings: dictation gives you text, not audio, and files cost $0.1 a minute
• Conversations: use a recorder that transcribes

Before you rely on it, run one real session of your own: 10 minutes, with your usual pauses, somewhere as noisy as your normal day. That'll tell you more about accuracy than any figure in this review, ours included, because we haven't got one.