Short answer: Aqua Voice is a polished Mac + Windows dictation app with a separate iOS SKU. AICHE runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, Chrome, Obsidian, and via a public REST API. If you only use a Mac or a PC, Aqua is a reasonable pick. If you live on more than two operating systems, want a Linux build, want to call dictation from your own scripts, or want voice on your wrist, AICHE is the layer that actually covers your stack. Pricing starts at $3.99/mo annual.
What Aqua Voice is selling
Aqua Voice leads with "We've typed for 150 years. It's time to speak." The page title backs that up with "Fast and Accurate Voice Dictation for Mac and Windows." It is pitched as a faster, more accurate replacement for what Apple's built-in dictation should have been, with the headline claim "5x faster than typing and twice as accurate" on the aquavoice.com homepage (verified May 2026).
The pitch in their own words: a real-time AI refinement engine (the "Avalon" model on Pro, branded on Aqua's homepage as "the world's most advanced transcription model") cleans text while you speak, on-screen context awareness helps it nail code syntax and technical writing, technical-vocabulary recognition handles frameworks and snake_case identifiers, a custom dictionary holds up to 800 terms, and the streaming mode fixes grammar live. They support 49 languages for voice input. Aqua won the Product Hunt Orbit Award for AI Dictation in 2026 and carries a 5.0/5 average across 14 Product Hunt reviews. 9to5Mac called it "what Apple's built-in dictation should be" and counted "seventeen errors versus one" in a side-by-side accuracy test against Apple Dictation.
Reviewer takeaway: a fast, polished cloud dictation app with a strong reputation among developers and writers on Mac and Windows. The flip side, also from reviewers, is the cloud-only architecture (no offline mode), occasional connectivity errors flagged in the 9to5Mac review and Product Hunt reviews, and a free tier capped at a one-time 1,000 words for the lifetime of the account.
The feature comparison
| AICHE | Aqua Voice | |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | Yes (global hotkey) | Yes (global hotkey) |
| Windows | Yes (global hotkey) | Yes (global hotkey) |
| Linux | Yes (.deb / .rpm / AppImage / Flatpak) | No |
| iPhone | Yes (App Store) | Yes (separate $119/yr App Store SKU, or bundled in Pro) |
| iPad | Yes (full tablet layout) | Via the iOS app |
| Apple Watch | Yes (record from wrist, syncs via WatchConnectivity) | No |
| Android | Yes (phone, tablet, home-screen widget) | No |
| Chrome extension | Yes (web text fields) | Not advertised |
| Obsidian plugin | Yes (Community Plugins) | No |
| Public REST API | Yes (Pro) | Not advertised on site or pricing page |
| Free tier | 7-day free trial, no credit card | 1,000-word lifetime cap (~8 minutes of speech) |
| Entry paid tier (annual) | Personal: $3.99/mo ($47.99/yr), 3 devices | Pro: $8/mo ($96/yr), Mac + Windows + iOS |
| Pro tier (annual) | Pro: $8.33/mo ($99.99/yr), 10 devices, API, dev profile, team | Same Pro plan above (no second consumer tier) |
| Team plan | $9.99/mo bundles seats, roles, admin, unified billing | $12/mo per seat (annual), Team tier |
| Enterprise | Same Pro/Team plan, no "contact sales" wall | Contact sales for SSO/SAML and zero-retention |
| Custom vocabulary | 50 entries, synced across all platforms | 5 entries free; 800 on Pro |
| Code-tuned recognition | Software Development profile (Pro): explicit toggle for code, CLI flags, library names | Avalon model + custom dictionary; no separate, named dev profile |
| AI cleanup | Removes filler, adds punctuation and paragraph breaks (post-hoc, ~3s for 15 minutes of audio) | Real-time refinement while you speak |
| Auto-translate to English | Yes, on every platform | 49-language input; translation behavior not the headline feature |
| Voice input languages | 99 | 49 advertised (Whisper engine covers ~99 the same way) |
| Mobile UI languages | 28 | Single-language UI on iOS |
| Cold start to recording | Sub-100ms (audio prewarm) | Sub-50ms per Voibe's Aqua-vs-Wispr-Flow write-up |
| Insert latency | ~3 seconds for 15 minutes of audio | ~450ms-1s per Voibe (real-time refinement model) |
| End-to-end encrypted sync | Yes, opt-in (AES-256-GCM, Argon2id passphrase) | Policy mentions "robust safeguards"; E2EE not specified |
| Audio retention | Zero retention by default, purged within seconds | Tied to a user-toggleable Privacy Mode; with it disabled, Aqua's privacy policy says they "may securely store transcript data on our servers" |
| Cloud processing | Yes (Groq, named provider, immediate audio purge) | Yes (third-party providers not named in policy) |
| Offline capture | Local encrypted queue (AES-256 on disk); auto-resume when network returns. Processing is cloud. | No; cloud-only. The 9to5Mac review and Product Hunt reviews flag the absent offline mode and connectivity errors. |
| Never-lose-recording guarantee | Recording survives network drop, app crash, server error, subscription lapse. Queued, encrypted, retried. | Not advertised; the 9to5Mac review reports retry-and-restart behavior on connectivity errors. |
Where Aqua Voice wins
We are not going to pretend Aqua has no edge. They have several.
Brand recognition and category presence. Aqua won the Product Hunt Orbit Award 2026 for AI Dictation. They have a 5.0/5 across 14 Product Hunt reviews and a positive 9to5Mac review with a real accuracy test. If you have already heard of one of these two products, it is probably Aqua.
Real-time refinement while you speak. The Avalon model rewrites text as you talk. AICHE's model is record-then-clean: the cleaned text lands a few seconds after you stop. For very short utterances, Aqua's live refinement feels snappier. For longer dictation (paragraphs, multi-sentence prompts), AICHE's batch model gives you 3-second turnaround on 15 minutes of audio, which is hard to beat. Different tradeoff, not strictly worse on either side.
Dictionary depth on Pro. 800 terms in the custom dictionary on Aqua Pro is on the high end. AICHE's custom vocabulary is 50 entries synced across all platforms. If you have hundreds of internal product names, library names, and people's names to teach the recognizer, Aqua wins this row on raw capacity.
Polish on macOS. Reviewers consistently call out Aqua's Mac polish: the 9to5Mac review frames Aqua as "what Apple's built-in dictation should be," and Voibe documents sub-50ms startup and 450ms-1s insert latency. AICHE is also fast (sub-100ms cold start, ~3s for 15 minutes), but Aqua has a real reputation here and it is earned.
Mac and Windows under one Pro plan. Aqua Pro at $8/mo annual gives you Mac + Windows + iOS on a single account. That is a fine deal if your stack is exactly Mac and Windows. AICHE Personal at $3.99/mo annual is cheaper but caps at 3 devices; AICHE Pro at $8.33/mo annual matches Aqua on headline price and adds Linux, Android, Apple Watch, Chrome, Obsidian, and the API.
That is the honest list. Now the parts where AICHE pulls ahead.
Where AICHE wins
1. Platform coverage
This is the headline. AICHE is on macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, Chrome, Obsidian, and via REST API. 9 platforms. Aqua Voice is on macOS, Windows, and iOS. Three surfaces.
The concrete consequences:
- Linux users. Aqua has no Linux build and has not announced one. AICHE ships .deb, .rpm, AppImage, and Flatpak. If your dev machine is Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, or anything in between, AICHE is the one that runs.
- Android users. Aqua does not ship Android. AICHE ships an Android app with a home-screen quick-record widget (one tap starts recording, another saves it).
- Apple Watch. Tap your wrist, talk, get a transcript on every other AICHE device via WatchConnectivity. Aqua does not have a Watch app.
- Chrome extension. Voice input into any web text field, including the AI chat boxes Aqua's desktop hotkey also reaches. AICHE gives you both.
- Obsidian plugin. If you live in Obsidian for notes and PKM, AICHE inserts voice notes directly inside it. Available via Obsidian Community Plugins.
If your stack is Mac + iPhone only, Aqua works. If your stack is "Mac at work, Linux at home, Android in pocket, Watch on wrist," AICHE is the only product on this list that covers it.
2. A real public REST API
AICHE Pro exposes a public REST API. You can call AICHE from a Python script, a shell command, a Make/Zapier-style automation, a custom CLI, or any service that can POST audio. This is one of the things very few voice-dictation apps actually expose.
Aqua Voice does not advertise a public API on its homepage or its pricing page (verified May 2026). If you want programmatic dictation, you cannot get it from Aqua's listed tiers.
For developers building voice into their own tools, this is not a small gap. It is the difference between "I use the app" and "I built voice into my own workflow."
3. Software Development profile
AICHE Pro has a dedicated, toggleable Software Development recognition profile. It is tuned for code identifiers, CLI flags, library names, snake_case, kebab-case, and the kind of jargon that wrecks general-purpose recognition (useEffect, kubectl, --no-verify, pnpm, tsconfig.json).
Aqua's approach is the Avalon model plus a custom dictionary. Reviewers consistently praise Aqua's technical-vocabulary recognition, and they deserve the credit. But there is no separate, named dev profile you can flip on. AICHE's profile is an explicit mode shift.
Practical translation: when you are dictating a prompt to Claude Code or Cursor that mentions five library names, three CLI flags, and a regex, AICHE's dev profile assumes you mean the technical reading. No retraining, no per-command dictionary entry.
4. Voice Code for AI coding agents
AICHE Pro includes Voice Code: pause-aware auto-send into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Antigravity. Stop speaking for a beat and your prompt ships to the agent. No Enter, no Send button. Voice confirmations let you approve or reject agent actions by voice when an agent asks to run something.
Aqua does not advertise an agent-loop integration of this kind. You can still use Aqua to dictate into a Claude Code window (any global-hotkey app can do that), but the pause-aware send, the explicit Voice Code mode, and the voice confirmations are not in Aqua's feature set.
5. A team plan that does not start with "Contact sales"
AICHE Pro at $9.99/mo (or $8.33/mo annual) bundles team management, seats, roles, and unified billing into the listed tier. The price is on the pricing page. Sign up.
Aqua's Team tier is $12/mo per seat (annual) per independent comparison write-ups verified May 2026, and SSO/SAML plus org-wide zero-retention enforcement are routed to the Enterprise "Contact sales" path per Aqua's FAQ. If you are a 5-person team that wants seats and shared vocabulary, AICHE quotes the price. Aqua quotes the price for seats but moves the security features behind an Enterprise conversation.
6. Pricing
| Plan | AICHE | Aqua Voice |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 7-day trial, no credit card | 1,000 lifetime words (~8 minutes) |
| Entry paid (annual) | $3.99/mo | $8/mo |
| Pro paid (annual) | $8.33/mo with API + dev profile + team + 10 devices | $8/mo, no API, no team |
| Team | $9.99/mo | $12/mo per seat |
| Enterprise | Same Pro/Team plan | Contact sales |
AICHE Personal at $3.99/mo is the cheapest sustained price in this comparison. AICHE Pro at $8.33/mo is at parity with Aqua Pro on headline price but ships with the API, the dev profile, the team plan, and seven additional platforms.
Aqua does offer a 70%-off student discount on annual plans (verified .edu email), which brings their Pro annual to ~$28.80/yr per Voibe's pricing summary (verified May 2026). That is a strong deal for students specifically. AICHE's 7-day free trial with no credit card is the broader free-evaluation path.
A note on privacy
Both products are cloud-based for transcription. Neither is local-only. Be careful with any vendor in this category that claims otherwise.
Where they differ in posture: AICHE names its cloud transcription provider (Groq), states audio is purged within seconds (zero retention by default for everyone), uses end-to-end encrypted sync (AES-256-GCM with an Argon2id passphrase-derived key) so the server cannot read synced notes, and uses modern TLS in transit, with certificate pinning on iOS and Android. Per Aqua's own privacy policy (verified May 2026), retention is gated to a user-toggleable "Privacy Mode" - with Privacy Mode off, the policy states "we may securely store transcript data on our servers to the extent necessary to improve the product." Voibe's independent review reports that Privacy Mode is off by default for individual Pro subscribers, with org-wide enforcement available on Team and Enterprise plans, and that Aqua carries a SOC 2 Type II attestation managed via a Vanta trust center.
If you are comparing voice apps on privacy, useful questions for any vendor:
- Is zero-retention the default, or do you have to opt in?
- Is the cloud transcription provider named?
- Is sync end-to-end encrypted, or just encrypted in transit?
- Is the data path single-vendor, or does your voice pass through several companies before the text comes back?
Read both privacy policies and decide for yourself.
Common questions
Q: I'm a Linux user. Which one works for me?
A: AICHE. Aqua Voice does not ship a Linux app. AICHE has .deb, .rpm, AppImage, and Flatpak builds. Global hotkey is Ctrl+Alt+R.
Q: I dictate into Cursor a lot. Which one handles snake_case and kebab-case better?
A: Both handle technical vocabulary well. Aqua's reputation for code identifiers is real and reviewers consistently praise it. AICHE Pro has a named Software Development profile you can toggle on, which is built for exactly this. If you want an explicit code mode (and Voice Code for pause-aware auto-send into Cursor/Claude Code/Codex), AICHE. If you want Aqua's real-time Avalon refinement on a Mac, Aqua.
Q: I want to call dictation from a Python script. Can either of them do that?
A: AICHE Pro has a public REST API. Aqua Voice does not advertise a public API on its site or pricing page (verified May 2026). For programmatic dictation, AICHE.
Q: I want voice on my Apple Watch. Which one?
A: AICHE. Tap your wrist, talk, transcript syncs to iPhone and every other AICHE app via WatchConnectivity. Aqua does not have a Watch app.
Q: Aqua's free tier is 1,000 lifetime words. AICHE's free trial is 7 days. Which is the better evaluation?
A: They are different. Aqua's free tier lets you try the product once and stops (~8 minutes of speech, then you pay). AICHE's 7-day trial is unlimited usage for a week with no credit card required, so you can dictate as much as you want and see if it fits your workflow. If you want a quick poke, Aqua's free tier works. If you want to actually use it for a week of real work, AICHE's trial.
Q: I'm a 5-person team. What does the math look like?
A: AICHE Pro at $8.33/mo annual per seat bundles team management, seats, roles, and unified billing. Aqua Team is $12/mo per seat (annual). Per seat per month, AICHE is the cheaper number, and the API and dev profile come included rather than being separate add-ons.
Q: Aqua Voice has 800 dictionary entries on Pro. AICHE has 50. Doesn't Aqua win on vocabulary?
A: On raw capacity, yes. 800 is more than 50, and we are not going to argue otherwise. In practice, most users teach a recognizer 10-30 names (their company, their product, their teammates, their stack). If you genuinely have hundreds of custom terms, Aqua's ceiling is higher. If you have a few dozen, AICHE's 50 is enough and the dev profile picks up most of the rest.
Result: Aqua Voice is a clean Mac/Windows dictation app with strong reviewer reputation, particularly on technical vocabulary and live refinement. AICHE is the layer that covers 9 platforms and includes API access, ships a real public API, ships an explicit dev profile, ships Voice Code for AI coding agents, and starts at $3.99/mo annual. If your stack is exactly Mac and Windows and you want live refinement on short utterances, try Aqua. If your stack is broader, or you want API access, a real team plan, or voice on Linux, Android, or Apple Watch, AICHE is built for that.
Try it now: download AICHE, press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux), and dictate one prompt you have been avoiding because typing it felt like too much keyboard time. 7-day free trial, no credit card. See pricing.