Here is a question we get asked more than almost any other, and it is a completely fair one. Windows already has voice typing built in. Press the Windows key and H, start talking, and your words appear. It is free, it is already on your machine, and it works. So why on earth would anyone pay for a separate dictation app?
It is a good question, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a sales pitch. The truth is that for some people, the built-in Windows tool is genuinely all they need, and we would rather tell you that than talk you into something you will not use. For a lot of others, though, the free option quietly runs into a wall, and that is where a dedicated app starts to make sense. This article walks through exactly where that line sits, so you can place yourself on the right side of it.
The short version: Windows Voice Typing (Win + H) is brilliant for quick, casual dictation and it costs nothing. A dedicated app like PeekoType pulls ahead on accuracy, privacy, offline use, punctuation and language support. If you dictate anything long, sensitive or specialist, the upgrade is worth it. PeekoType is £19.99 once, with a free 14-day trial.
First, credit where it is due
Let us be fair to Microsoft. Windows Voice Typing has come a long way. If you press Win + H on Windows 11 today and dictate a quick text message, a short note or a casual email, it does a decent job. It is right there, it costs nothing, and for low-stakes everyday scribbling it is perfectly serviceable. If that describes all the dictation you will ever do, you genuinely may not need anything else, and we are happy to say so.
The interesting part is what happens when you push past quick and casual. That is where the differences start to show, and there are four of them that matter.
Difference one: accuracy on real work
The built-in tool is tuned for short, conversational speech in a quiet room with a clear accent. Feed it a longer document, a regional accent, background noise, or any kind of specialist vocabulary, and the error rate climbs. Medical terms, legal phrasing, technical jargon, unusual names and place names tend to trip it up, and you end up spending the time you saved going back to fix mistakes.
PeekoType is built on OpenAI's Whisper model, which was trained on a vast and varied range of real-world speech. In practice that means it copes far better with accents, longer passages, background noise and specialist words. It is the same underlying technology that has reset expectations for dictation accuracy across the board. We put a whole field of tools through their paces in our round-up of voice-to-text apps, and the accuracy gap on serious work is the single biggest reason people move on from the built-in option.
Difference two: privacy and the cloud
This is the one most people never think about, and it is arguably the most important. To do its best work, Windows Voice Typing sends your audio to Microsoft's online speech recognition service. Your spoken words leave your computer, travel across the internet, and are processed on a server. For a shopping list, who cares. For a confidential client email, a medical note, a legal document or anything commercially sensitive, that is a genuine consideration.
PeekoType does every bit of its transcription on your own device. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account in the middle. For anyone handling personal or confidential information, that on-device approach makes the UK GDPR conversation dramatically simpler, because the data never leaves your control. We explain exactly why that matters in our guide to GDPR-compliant voice typing, and it is why professionals like solicitors and therapists and clinicians tend to rule out cloud dictation entirely.
Difference three: working offline
Because the built-in tool leans on the cloud, it needs a solid internet connection to perform well. Lose your connection, work somewhere with patchy wifi, or sit on a train through a tunnel, and the experience degrades or stops. A fully on-device app has no such problem. PeekoType works exactly the same on a plane, in a remote cottage or in a basement office with no signal at all, because it never needed the internet in the first place. If you have ever searched for why "windows voice typing is not working", a flaky connection is very often the culprit, and offline dictation sidesteps the whole issue.
Difference four: languages and the finer controls
Windows dictation supports a respectable list of languages, but switching between them can be clunky, and the recognition quality varies quite a bit from one language to the next. PeekoType supports more than ninety-nine languages with consistently strong accuracy, which matters enormously if you are bilingual, you translate, or you write for an international audience. Our guide to multilingual voice typing covers the full list. A dedicated app also tends to give you more control over punctuation, formatting and the small details that make dictated text usable without a heavy edit afterwards.
The comparison at a glance
| Feature | Windows Voice Typing (Win + H) | PeekoType |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | £19.99 once, no subscription |
| Accuracy on long or specialist text | Variable | Strong (Whisper-based) |
| Works fully offline | No, relies on the cloud | Yes, 100% on-device |
| Privacy of your audio | Sent to Microsoft's servers | Never leaves your computer |
| Languages | Limited list, mixed quality | 99+ languages, consistent accuracy |
| Best for | Quick, casual notes and messages | Long, sensitive or professional work |
So which one should you actually use?
We promised honesty, so here it is in plain terms.
Stick with the built-in Windows tool if your dictation is occasional and casual, you are happy for your audio to pass through Microsoft's cloud, you mainly work in English in a quiet room, and you rarely write anything long or sensitive. There is no shame in free, and for that profile it does the job.
Move to a dedicated app like PeekoType if you dictate for real chunks of your day, you handle anything confidential, you need it to work offline, you write in more than one language, or you have simply got tired of cleaning up errors in longer documents. That is the point at which the one-off £19.99 stops looking like a cost and starts looking like the obvious upgrade.
If you are weighing up the paid options more broadly, it is worth knowing how the modern tools compare with the old premium heavyweight. Our Dragon dictation alternative article covers why Whisper-based apps have matched products costing around £700, at a tiny fraction of the price.
The easiest way to decide
You do not have to take our word for any of this. The honest test is to try both on the same piece of real work and see for yourself.
- Press Win + H and dictate a proper paragraph of the kind of thing you actually write. Note how much you have to correct.
- Download the free trial of PeekoType. It takes about a minute and asks for no card.
- Dictate the very same paragraph and compare. The difference on longer or specialist text is usually obvious within a sentence or two.
If you have never dictated before and want a gentle introduction first, our voice typing for beginners guide walks you through everything from scratch. And if you are exploring dictation because typing has started to hurt, our wider guide to hands-free typing on Windows covers every option, free and paid.
The bottom line
Free is a great place to start, and the built-in Windows tool is a perfectly reasonable first taste of voice typing. But free has a ceiling, and you tend to hit it the moment your dictation gets long, sensitive, specialist or multilingual. At that point a dedicated, offline, Whisper-based app is not an indulgence. It is the thing that makes dictation reliable enough to lean on every day.
PeekoType is a single payment of £19.99, it keeps every word on your own machine, and there is a 14-day free trial with no card required so you can prove the difference to yourself before you spend anything. You can start it from our homepage in about a minute. If you would like to talk through whether it suits your particular use, email us at support@peekotype.com. We reply to every message, usually within the hour, and we will happily tell you if the free tool is all you need.