SuperWhisper is a polished dictation app for your Mac. ThoughtMic is a different tool: a local voice layer for your Markdown vault that writes titled, tagged, linked notes into Obsidian or Logseq. Same local transcription. Different job.
No FUD. No marketing cherry-picks. Just an honest comparison.
Pick SuperWhisper if…
You write into Slack, Mail, Notion, your IDE, and you want fast local dictation with smart formatting and refined indie-app polish. You're not using a Markdown vault, or you're happy keeping your notes flow separate.
Pick ThoughtMic if…
You live in Obsidian, Logseq, Foam, or a plain Markdown folder, and you want spoken thoughts to land as titled, auto-tagged, backlinked notes, plus an inbox review surface that actually clears your #inbox. Pay for vault depth, not for dictation.
| SuperWhisper | ThoughtMic | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | macOS | macOS (iOS 6–8 weeks after launch) |
| Pricing | ~$8.50/mo or ~$89/year | $8/mo · $72/yr · $99 lifetime (200-slot cap) |
| Free tier | Limited free trial | Free forever up to 2,000 words/week |
| Transcription engine | Local, on-device | Local speech-to-text, Metal-accelerated |
| Privacy | Local default · cloud opt-in for some modes | Local-only voice + vault · ZDR cloud rephrase opt-in (text-only) |
| System-wide capture | ✓ Text at cursor anywhere | ✓ Text at cursor anywhere |
| Smart formatting | ✓ Modes for prompts, code, tone | ✓ Auto bullets, lists & paragraphs |
| Vault writing | × None | ✓ Native, vault-agnostic Markdown |
| Auto-titles | × Manual | ✓ Generated from content |
| Auto-tags & backlinks | × None | ✓ Suggested from your existing vault |
| Inbox review surface | × None | ✓ Keyboard-driven two-pane review for #inbox notes |
| MCP / queryable from AI tools | × None | ✓ Local MCP: query your vault from Claude Desktop or Cursor |
| Best for | Anyone who wants fast, polished dictation anywhere on Mac | Obsidian / Logseq / Markdown-vault users who want voice as input |
Here's an honest take on what each tool does well, so you pick the one that fits your workflow, not the one with the louder marketing.
#inbox notes. Discard, keep, promote, archive in five minutes.SuperWhisper stops at text. ThoughtMic doesn't.
Both apps press a hotkey, transcribe locally, and put text where you want it. That's where SuperWhisper's job ends. ThoughtMic adds a second job: the same voice capture also writes a structured note into your knowledge vault, with a generated title, suggested tags pulled from your existing tag taxonomy, and backlinks resolved against notes you already have.
If you live in Obsidian or Logseq, you've already invested in a tag system, folder hierarchy, and a personal lexicon of [[wikilinks]]. A pure dictation app (even a brilliant one) treats every dictation as a fresh string of text. ThoughtMic treats every dictation as a candidate note in your vault, structured the way you've already structured the rest of it.
Capturing thoughts is the easy part. The reason most voice-note workflows fall apart is the Collector's Fallacy: you accumulate hundreds of #inbox entries you never re-read. ThoughtMic ships a dedicated review surface: hit ⌥⇧ R, walk through every captured note, hit one of four keys (Discard / Keep / Promote / Archive). Five minutes clears the inbox. SuperWhisper has no opinion on what happens to your text after it lands; ThoughtMic does.
ThoughtMic ships a local Model Context Protocol server. Your vault becomes queryable from Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any other MCP-compatible AI tool, without leaving your machine, without uploading anything. SuperWhisper's text never persists into a queryable structure; once it's in the cursor, it's the cursor's problem.
Both apps transcribe locally on-device. Transcription quality is essentially identical. End-to-end latency is comparable (700–1500ms range on M-series Macs). If you want sub-300ms streaming, the only path right now is cloud-based dictation (Wispr Flow), and you'd be giving up the local-first guarantee both ThoughtMic and SuperWhisper hold to.
"SuperWhisper is a great pick if pure dictation is what you want. ThoughtMic is a local voice layer for your Markdown vault. Different tools for different jobs."
Yes. They use different keyboard shortcuts and don't conflict. Many early users keep SuperWhisper for free-form text-anywhere dictation and use ThoughtMic specifically for capturing into their Obsidian or Logseq vault. Different hotkeys, different output destinations, no overlap.
Both run open-source speech-to-text locally on Apple Silicon. Transcription quality is essentially identical. ThoughtMic ships local speech-to-text with Metal acceleration. If you can dictate cleanly into one, you can dictate cleanly into the other.
Comparable. Both are batch-style (record-then-transcribe), with end-to-end latency in the 700–1500ms range on M-series Macs. Neither is the streaming-fast experience Wispr Flow offers; that requires sending audio to the cloud, which both apps avoid by design.
Yes. Point it at any folder of Markdown files. Works with Obsidian, Logseq, Foam, VS Code, plain folders. We also provide a free starter vault with templates and a tag taxonomy if you want a ready-made structure.
Both are local-first by default. SuperWhisper offers cloud transcription as an opt-in for some use cases. ThoughtMic keeps voice and vault entirely on-device; the only optional cloud call is text-only rephrasing through a Zero-Data-Retention provider, never audio. Full privacy disclosure here.
Keep using it. SuperWhisper is a solid product, and they earned that subscription. If you also want vault-native voice capture, ThoughtMic is additive: free up to 2,000 words/week, $8/mo for unlimited, or $99 lifetime so you never pay again. Most users who run both eventually pick one based on which workflow they reach for more.
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Works with Obsidian · Logseq · Foam · VS Code · any .md folder
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