Short answer: Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a Windows-only desktop product at $699.99 one-time, with a separate $14.99/mo mobile app and no native Mac, Linux, public API, or modern AI cleanup. AICHE is $3.99/mo (Personal annual) and runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, Chrome, Obsidian, and via REST API. If you need deep macro automation inside Windows-bound legal or medical workflows, Dragon still has a real moat. If you need voice-to-text anywhere else, AICHE is the modern answer.
What Dragon NaturallySpeaking is selling
Dragon, now owned by Microsoft after the $19.7B Nuance acquisition closed in March 2022, pitches itself as the professional standard for speech recognition. The current marketing line on dragon.nuance.com is "Dragon means business - and it's better than ever," with the headline claim of "speech-to-text dictation 3x faster than typing with up to 99% accuracy," powered by their Deep Learning Technology.
The flagship is Dragon Professional Individual v16, a Windows desktop product sold as a one-time license at $699.99. It leans on twenty-five years of recognition engineering, deep voice-command and macro support (you can voice-trigger CRM field population, run multi-step application macros, populate templates), and Auto Transcribe Folder Agent for batch processing pre-recorded audio. Specialized SKUs like Dragon Legal and Dragon Medical One target verticals where tuned terminology and enterprise deployment matter most. Dragon Anywhere is a separate $14.99/mo iOS and Android app for mobile dictation.
The audience is professionals in regulated industries (law, medicine, accessibility-driven workflows for users with hand or wrist injury) and anyone who is already on Windows and willing to invest 20-30 minutes of initial voice training plus weeks of corrections to reach the headline accuracy figure. The Dragon for Mac product was discontinued in 2018. There is no Linux version. There is no public consumer REST API.
The feature comparison
| Feature | AICHE | Dragon NaturallySpeaking |
|---|---|---|
| macOS desktop | Native app, global hotkey ⌃+⌥+R |
Discontinued in 2018 (Dragon for Mac 6 was the last release) |
| Windows desktop | Native app, global hotkey Ctrl+Alt+R |
Yes, Dragon Professional v16 (Windows 11 optimized) |
| Linux desktop | Native app, .deb / .rpm / AppImage / Flatpak |
Not supported |
| iPhone | Native app, iOS 15+ | Dragon Anywhere (separate purchase) |
| iPad | Native app, full tablet layout | Dragon Anywhere (separate purchase) |
| Apple Watch | Native app, record from wrist | Not supported |
| Android | Native app + home-screen widget | Dragon Anywhere (separate purchase) |
| Chrome extension | Yes | No |
| Obsidian plugin | Yes (Community Plugins) | No |
| Public REST API | Yes (Pro tier) | No public consumer API |
| Team plan | Yes, $9.99/mo Pro includes seats, roles, unified billing | Enterprise SKUs only (Nuance Management Center, Medical One with $525/user implementation fee) |
| Free trial | 7 days, no credit card | Dragon Anywhere has a 1-week trial. Dragon Professional desktop has no published free trial. |
| Entry price | $3.99/mo (Personal annual, $47.99/yr) | $699.99 one-time (Dragon Professional v16, Windows desktop) |
| Top tier | $8.33/mo (Pro annual, $99.99/yr) | $79-$99/user/mo (Dragon Medical One, plus $525/user implementation) |
| Mobile pricing | Included in same plan | $14.99/mo or $149.99/yr (Dragon Anywhere, separate purchase) |
| AI cleanup (filler removal, punctuation, paragraphs) | Yes, default on | No - verbatim dictation with manual voice-command formatting |
| Custom vocabulary | Yes, 50 entries, synced across platforms | Yes, deep custom-word and macro support |
| Code-tuned recognition profile | Yes, Software Development profile (Pro) | No, vertical editions target legal and medical |
| Voice macros / command automation | No | Yes, mature and deep |
| Voice-to-AI-agent workflow (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) | Yes, Voice Code with pause-aware auto-send (Pro) | No |
| Auto-translation to English | Yes, all platforms | No |
| Voice input languages | 99 | English (US, UK, AU, CA, IN, SE Asia), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch (varies by edition) |
| Cold start to recording | Sub-100ms | Initial profile load, then ready |
| Transcription speed | ~3 seconds for 15 minutes of audio | Real-time transcription, no batch speed published for desktop |
| Setup time | Install, hotkey, speak | 20-30 minute initial voice training, then weeks of corrections to reach peak accuracy |
| Last major release | Continuous updates across all platforms | Dragon Professional v16 shipped 2023; no major desktop release since |
| Privacy posture | Audio streamed to Groq, discarded within 30s. Opt-in E2EE cloud sync (AES-256-GCM + Argon2id). No keystroke logging, no window-title transmission. | Per Nuance's published privacy policy: cloud products process audio on Nuance/Microsoft infrastructure; biometric data destroyed within 3 years of last interaction; snippets may be manually reviewed for product operation and tuning. |
Where Dragon wins
Dragon isn't a relic. There are specific jobs where, if you're already on Windows and committed to its workflow, Dragon is still the better tool. An honest comparison says so.
Voice macros and command automation. Dragon's command-and-macro system is the deepest in the category. You can voice-trigger multi-step actions, automate CRM field population, run application-specific macros, and script behavior that responds to spoken triggers. AICHE doesn't target that workflow at all. AICHE transcribes speech to text and inserts it at your cursor; if you need "say file new contract from template, watch the app open a new document with five fields pre-filled," Dragon does that and AICHE does not.
Legal and medical vertical depth. Dragon Medical One is the de facto standard in many hospital systems. Dragon Legal has tuned dictionaries for case law citation formats and legal phrasing. If you're a clinician dictating into Epic or a litigator dictating drafting language with specific citation conventions, those editions ship with vocabulary and integrations that AICHE's Software Development profile is not built to replace.
Trained-profile accuracy ceiling. After weeks of training a personal voice profile on a quality microphone, Dragon's per-user accuracy on specialized terminology reaches 97-99%. That ceiling, while it costs weeks of investment to reach, is real and remains respected in the industry.
Batch-file transcription. The Auto Transcribe Folder Agent processes folders of pre-recorded audio files into transcripts. It's a polished workflow for users who record interviews, depositions, or rounds and want to batch-process them later.
Enterprise deployment tooling. Nuance Management Center handles shared user profiles, role management, and centralized deployment in regulated environments. AICHE Pro has a team plan with seats and billing, but Dragon has full enterprise IT infrastructure with a 25-year track record in compliance-heavy industries.
If your job is one of those jobs, Dragon is genuinely the better fit. The rest of this article is about everything else.
Where AICHE wins
1. Platform breadth - 9 platforms vs Windows-only desktop
Dragon Professional v16 is Windows-only. Dragon for Mac was discontinued in 2018. Dragon has never shipped on Linux. The mobile story is Dragon Anywhere, a separately purchased iOS and Android app.
AICHE runs on:
- macOS (native, global hotkey
⌃+⌥+R) - Windows (native, global hotkey
Ctrl+Alt+R) - Linux (native,
.deb/.rpm/ AppImage / Flatpak) - iPhone (iOS 15+)
- iPad (full tablet layout)
- Apple Watch (record from your wrist, syncs to iPhone)
- Android (phone, tablet, home-screen widget)
- Chrome extension (voice input in web text fields)
- Obsidian plugin (voice notes inside Obsidian, Community Plugins listing)
- REST API (Pro tier, call from your own scripts)
That's 9 platforms access under one subscription. Dragon's equivalent story requires buying Dragon Professional v16 ($699.99) for Windows desktop and Dragon Anywhere ($14.99/mo or $149.99/yr) separately for mobile, and there is no answer for Mac, Linux, Chrome, Obsidian, or API access at any price.
If you switch devices during a workday - laptop to phone to tablet to a different OS - AICHE follows. Dragon does not.
2. A real public REST API
AICHE Pro exposes a REST API. You can call AICHE from your own scripts, internal tools, automation pipelines, or custom apps. The voice transcription engine is available programmatically as part of the $8.33/mo Pro plan.
Dragon does not expose a public consumer API. The enterprise Dragon Medical / Nuance Management Center products have programmatic surfaces for healthcare deployments, but those are sold under enterprise contracts with $525/user implementation fees. For an individual developer, a small team, or anyone wanting to script their own dictation workflow, Dragon offers nothing.
This matters more than it sounds. If you want voice-to-text inside a custom CLI tool, a Slack bot, a personal automation, a Raycast script, or any pipeline you're building yourself, AICHE is callable and Dragon is not.
3. A real team plan without "contact sales"
AICHE Pro at $9.99/mo (or $8.33/mo annual) includes team management: seats, roles, shared billing, admin panel. You sign up, you add seats, you get a unified bill.
Dragon's team-style features live inside enterprise SKUs. Nuance Management Center handles centralized deployment but is sold through enterprise contracts. Dragon Medical One is quote-based licensing at $79-$99/user/mo with a one-time $525/user implementation fee on top, locked into 1-3 year commitments. There is no self-service team plan for the Dragon Professional desktop product; teams either buy individual licenses one by one or enter enterprise procurement.
For a five-person startup, a fifteen-person legal practice, or a thirty-person consulting team, AICHE Pro's team plan is a self-service form. Dragon's equivalent is a sales call and a 12-month minimum.
4. Software-dev fit
AICHE Pro includes a Software Development recognition profile tuned for code identifiers, CLI flags, library names, snake_case, kebab-case, and developer jargon. Custom vocabulary adds another 50 entries per user, synced across all platforms - drop in your repo names, your internal service names, your team's lingo, and AICHE spells them right every time.
Dragon's vertical editions target legal and medical. There is no Dragon Software edition. If you dictate useEffect, kebab-case-flag, MyServiceClient.connect(), or npm install @scope/package-name into a generic Dragon profile, you'll spend time correcting it. Dragon's custom-vocabulary system is powerful, but it's built around stable terminology lists, not the constantly-shifting vocabulary of modern dev work.
On top of that, AICHE Pro ships Voice Code for AI coding agents: dictate straight into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Antigravity, with pause-aware auto-send (stop speaking for a beat and the prompt ships on its own) and voice confirmations for agent actions. Dragon predates this entire workflow.
5. Pricing - the order-of-magnitude gap
Dragon Professional Individual v16 is $699.99 one-time on Windows desktop. An upgrade from v15 still runs $299-$399. Dragon Anywhere on mobile is $14.99/mo or $149.99/yr on top. Dragon Medical One is $79-$99/user/mo plus the $525/user implementation fee. Buying one edition does not grant access to the others. Pricing reception in 2026 reviews (Capterra, Voibe, VoiceTypingTools) frequently flags the cost as one of the most-mentioned complaints.
AICHE Personal annual is $47.99/yr, an annual-equivalent of $3.99/mo. AICHE Pro annual is $99.99/yr, an annual-equivalent of $8.33/mo. Both tiers include every platform - desktop, mobile, watch, Chrome, Obsidian.
The math: one Dragon Professional desktop license at $699.99 buys roughly seven years of AICHE Pro at the annual rate. And during those seven years, AICHE ships updates across 9 platforms, with API access while Dragon Professional desktop has not had a major release since v16 in 2023.
See pricing for full details and the 7-day free trial (no credit card).
6. Speed, quality, and modern AI cleanup
Dragon does verbatim dictation. You speak, it transcribes literally what you said - including "um," "uh," repetitions, false starts, and any words you used while thinking. To get clean output you either speak with strict discipline (no filler, manual punctuation by voice command) or you edit afterwards.
AICHE's AI cleanup is on by default. Filler words removed. Stutters and repetitions collapsed. Punctuation and paragraph breaks added based on how you spoke. The transcript that lands at your cursor is the cleaned version, ready to send.
Technical specs that aren't adjectives:
- Cold start to recording: sub-100ms (audio prewarm running before you press the hotkey)
- Transcription speed: ~3 seconds for 15 minutes of audio
- Speaking speed reference: ~150 WPM average
- Typing speed reference: ~40 WPM keyboard, 10-20 WPM phone
- Voice input languages: 99 on every platform, with auto-translation to English available everywhere
Dragon Anywhere on mobile and Dragon Medical One are cloud-based; Dragon Professional desktop is primarily local-processing on Windows. AICHE is consistent: audio is streamed to Groq, transcribed in seconds, and discarded immediately after processing, within 1 second. No locally-trained profile to maintain, no per-machine voice profile to migrate, no weeks of corrections to "calibrate" the recognition.
Privacy
Dragon's privacy model varies by product. The Dragon Professional desktop product has historically positioned itself as primarily local-processing on Windows, with optional cloud features. Dragon Anywhere mobile and Dragon Medical One are explicitly cloud-based: per Nuance's public privacy documentation, the audio you dictate is captured and streamed via an encrypted data channel to Nuance's data center, then the translated text is returned to your device. Per the same privacy statement, snippets of voice data may be manually reviewed and transcribed into text for product operation, tuning, and enhancement, with de-identification steps applied where feasible. Voice biometric data is described as retained until the original purpose is satisfied or up to three years after a user's last interaction, whichever is sooner.
Two pieces of public-record context worth knowing for any organization procuring Dragon or Nuance services in healthcare or legal verticals:
- MOVEit data breach + $8.5M class action settlement. Per public reporting, Nuance Communications was among organizations affected by the Clop ransomware group's mass exploitation of the Progress MOVEit Transfer zero-day in May 2023. As a HIPAA business associate, Nuance carried sensitive medical-record file transfers through the MOVEit environment. The resulting consolidated class action in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts received preliminary approval of an $8.5M settlement, with a final approval hearing scheduled March 18, 2026. (The Register coverage, HIPAA Journal coverage, Top Class Actions.) Related: a separately-reported Geisinger Health x Nuance class settlement covered overlapping breach exposure.
- Cisneros v. Nuance Communications (BIPA). Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act class action alleging Nuance collected voiceprint biometrics without the informed written consent + retention/destruction policy that Illinois BIPA requires (Captain Compliance analysis). Voice-AI products that build speaker-identification or voice-biometric features are increasingly exposed to BIPA litigation in Illinois; this case is part of that broader pattern (see also Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp., December 2025, Central District of Illinois).
None of this is a finding of guilt; the MOVEit settlement is a class-action resolution and the BIPA case is litigation. But the procurement-friendly version of "Dragon has decades of healthcare deployment infrastructure" includes the fact that the largest healthcare voice-transcription incumbent has been subject to a major HIPAA-relevant data breach class action and ongoing biometric-privacy litigation. Worth a conversation with your compliance team before committing.
AICHE's posture, in our own words: audio is streamed to a named cloud provider (Groq), processed in seconds, and discarded immediately after processing, within 1 second (typically 2-3s during processing). Cloud sync is opt-in and end-to-end encrypted with AES-256-GCM and an Argon2id passphrase-derived key that only you hold. Transmission uses modern TLS, with certificate pinning on iOS and Android. Local storage is encrypted with platform-specific mechanisms, including hardware-bound AES-256-GCM storage on Mac. We don't log global keystrokes. We don't transmit window titles. We don't monitor the microphone outside of explicit recording. On desktop there is no automatic telemetry; diagnostics flow only on user-initiated action (the OS-level "share with developer" prompt after a crash, or a manual "Send Diagnostic Report" button). On mobile the only third-party telemetry is Firebase for ad attribution.
If you're comparing voice apps on privacy, here's what to look for in any of them: how long is audio retained, is voice biometric data stored or referenced separately, can samples be used for product tuning, is sync end-to-end encrypted with a user-held key, and how transparent is the vendor about which cloud providers actually touch your audio. Read the policy of whichever tool you pick.
Common questions
Q: I'm on Mac. Which one works for me?
A: AICHE. Dragon for Mac was discontinued in 2018 and there has been no native Dragon desktop product on macOS since. AICHE has a native macOS app with the global hotkey ⌃+⌥+R.
Q: I'm on Linux. Which one works for me?
A: AICHE. Dragon has never shipped on Linux. AICHE has a native Linux app available as .deb, .rpm, AppImage, or Flatpak, with Ctrl+Alt+R as the global hotkey.
Q: I'm a developer who dictates code identifiers and CLI flags. Which handles snake_case and kebab-case?
A: AICHE Pro's Software Development profile is tuned specifically for code, CLI flags, library names, and developer jargon. Drop your repo names and internal services into custom vocabulary (50 entries, synced across platforms) and they get spelled correctly every time. Dragon's tuned editions target legal and medical; there is no Dragon Software edition.
Q: I want to dictate into Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. Which one does that?
A: AICHE Pro. Voice Code mode speaks straight into AI coding agents with pause-aware auto-send: stop speaking for a beat, the prompt ships on its own. There's also voice confirmations for agent actions. Dragon predates this workflow entirely.
Q: I'm a clinician or attorney with specialized vocabulary needs. Should I just stay with Dragon?
A: Probably yes, if your workflow lives inside Windows-based EHR or legal software with deep macro automation. Dragon Medical One and Dragon Legal have decades of vocabulary tuning and enterprise deployment infrastructure that AICHE does not target. If you also want voice-to-text on a Mac, on mobile, in Chrome, or in your IDE, AICHE complements rather than replaces those workflows.
Q: I want to call voice transcription from my own code. Which has an API?
A: AICHE Pro includes a public REST API for programmatic dictation. Dragon does not expose a public consumer API; the enterprise programmatic surfaces are sold under healthcare contracts with implementation fees.
Q: What does this actually cost?
A: AICHE Personal is $3.99/mo annual ($47.99/yr) for 3 devices. AICHE Pro is $8.33/mo annual ($99.99/yr) for 10 devices, with the Software Development profile, REST API, team plan, and Voice Code. Both include a 7-day free trial with no credit card. Dragon Professional Individual v16 is $699.99 one-time on Windows desktop (Dragon Anywhere mobile is a separate $14.99/mo). One Dragon Professional license is roughly seven years of AICHE Pro at the annual rate.
Q: I'm worried about voice biometric retention. What does AICHE do with my audio?
A: Audio is streamed to Groq, processed, and discarded immediately after processing, within 1 second (typically 2-3 seconds during processing). No persistent audio storage. Transcripts live on your device by default; cloud sync is opt-in and end-to-end encrypted with a passphrase only you hold. See AICHE's privacy details on the pricing page.
Result: Dragon is still the right tool for Windows-bound macro-heavy legal and medical workflows where 25 years of vertical tuning and enterprise deployment matter most. For everything else - Mac, Linux, mobile, browser, Obsidian, AI coding agents, custom scripts, real teams, modern AI cleanup, and a monthly price that doesn't equal a used laptop - AICHE is the modern answer.
Try it now: download AICHE on whichever platform you're using right now, take the 7-day free trial, and dictate one real prompt or one real document. If you've never felt clean voice-to-text without weeks of training, this is what that feels like.