Cloudless Voice vs. Handy
Both free, local and open source. But where Handy stops at basic transcription, Cloudless Voice goes further with automatic filler word removal, formatting, and advanced punctuation, all inside a polished app that’s built to be used every day.
Feature comparison
Cloudless Voice meets the benchmark
Switching to Cloudless Voice doesn’t mean giving anything up. Here’s how the two stack up.
Feature
Cloudless Voice
Pricing
For unlimited words
Free
Free word limit
Dictation cap
Fully local
Your voice never leaves your mac
Works offline
Dictation available offline
AI editing
Improve or polish your transcript
Smart Cleanup
AI removes fillers, fixes formatting & punctuation
Personal statistics
View things like WPM and time saved
Accessible from the screen
Has clickable entry point (besides menu bar)
iOS app
Dictation on your iPhone
Windows app
Dictation on your PC
Open Source
Dictation on your iPhone
Learn vocabulary / Dictionary
Model adapts through corrections
Transcript history
View and manage past dictations
Multi-language support
25+ languages
Works in every app
Insert into any text field on your Mac
Custom hotkey
Hold key to start dictating
Hands-free mode
Double tap key to start dictating
Prioritized feature request
Request specific features
Smart Cleanup
Dictation that cleans itself up
Handy transcribes what you say and pastes it. That’s it. What you say is what you get (including the “um”s, the half-finished sentences).
Cloudless Voice adds a local AI cleanup layer on top of transcription. Before your text is pasted, Smart Cleanup quietly polishes it: removing filler words, fixing punctuation, formatting numbers and times, and structuring lists. It all happens locally on your Mac, same privacy guarantee, just with an extra step that makes the output actually usable.
What Smart Cleanup handles
Filler word removal ("uh," "um," "like," "you know")
Auto-punctuation and capitalisation
Number and time formatting ("three thirty pm" → 3:30 PM)
Email address formatting
List and structure formatting
and more…
Note: Both Handy and Cloudless Voice use Parakeet V3 for transcription, so base accuracy is similar. The difference is what Cloudless Voice does with the transcript before you see it.
The experience
Same values, different products.
Handy and Cloudless Voice share the same core belief: voice dictation should be free, local, and private. Both run entirely on your device, both work offline, and neither sends your audio anywhere.
Where they differ is in scope and intention. While both are open-source, Handy is designed to do one thing: transcribe speech and paste it. It’s minimal by design, and the GitHub readme says as much: it’s “trying to be the most forkable” app, not the most polished one. That’s a legitimate and admirable goal for a developer tool.
Cloudless Voice is built for the person who just wants dictation to work. With a polished UI, Smart Cleanup, personal stats, advanced transcript history, and ongoing product development. Cloudless Voice is perfect for those who want more advanced voice dictation out-of-the-box and a well-considered user experience.
Worth noting is that Cloudless Voice comes with vast range of configurations and advanced settings for those who like to get a little bit more technical and customize their experience further!
Decision guide
So, which one should you choose?
Choose Cloudless Voice if…
You want a Smart Cleanup layer to automatically remove filler words and fix formating.
You want a polished, designed app rather than a developer tool.
You want personal stats like WPM, time saved, word count etc.
You want a local dictation model that automatically improves as you use it.
You want a screen handle/clickable access point.
Choose Handy if…
You want the most minimal possible interface
You need Linux support
Raw transcription (no cleanup layer) is what you want
FAQ
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