Dictation vs meeting transcription — which one do you actually need?
The two features sound alike and solve opposite problems. A field guide to which one you need, when you need both, and what each costs on Pithflow.
Dictation turns your voice into text, right where your cursor is — an email, a chat box, a document. Meeting transcription turns a conversation into a record — a transcript and notes of what several people said. They both begin with speech and end with text, which is why people search for one and land on the other, and why this site spent a year explaining that Pithflow was the first thing and not the second. Since version 1.34 it is both, so here is the honest field guide.
Both, in one app
Dictation into any Windows app, and meeting notes without a bot joining the call.
Windows 10 and 11 · 15-minute meetings free · no card
The one-question test
Who is talking, and where should the words go?
- You are talking, and the words should go into a field you are looking at. That is dictation. Hold a key, say the sentence, release, and the cleaned-up text lands in the box. The output is yours to send.
- Several people are talking, and the words should go into a record you read later. That is meeting transcription. Press record at the start, stop at the end, read the notes. The output is a document about the conversation.
Almost every confusion resolves on that question. "I want to write my CRM notes faster after a call" is dictation. "I want to remember what the client said on the call" is transcription. "I want to send a recap of the meeting" is transcription first and dictation second, and that order is the workflow.
What each one is, mechanically
Dictation
A hotkey app. You hold a key, speak, and let go. The recording is uploaded, transcribed, cleaned up — filler words removed, punctuation fixed, the tone you chose applied — and the finished sentence is pasted into whatever field has focus. On Pithflow the text lands after you release the key, in one block, not word by word while you talk. It works in any Windows app, including over Citrix and Remote Desktop, because nothing installs on the far side.
Meeting transcription
A recorder. You start it, it captures the conversation, and when you stop it produces a transcript and notes. The design choice that splits the category is how it captures: a bot that joins the call as a participant, or an app on your own computer recording your microphone and what the PC plays. Pithflow Meetings is the second kind. Nothing joins the call, the transcript is split into Me and Them on a video call, and the notes rank the key points by how many separate times each came up.
Side by side
| Dictation | Meeting transcription | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose voice | Yours | Everyone's |
| How long | A sentence to a few minutes | Fifteen minutes to hours |
| Where the text goes | Into the field under your cursor | Into a transcript and notes you open later |
| What the AI does | Cleans up your sentence in the tone you chose | Summarizes, ranks key points, extracts decisions and action items |
| When you use it | Whenever you would type | During a meeting, then after |
| Consent | Only your own voice — none needed | Tell the participants, every time |
| On Pithflow | Hold Ctrl + Space · free 2,000 words/week | Meetings tab · free 15-minute meetings |
When do you need both?
The reason both live in one app is that the second one usually creates a job for the first. The meeting ends, the notes say 4× — the pricing page is blocking the sales deck, and now somebody has to write the email that says so. That email is dictation: open the reply, hold the key, say it, release. The recording captured what the room said; the hotkey writes what you think about it. Two features, one app, and they hand off to each other a dozen times a week.
Where they do not overlap at all is in-between cases people ask about. Hands-free dictation — tap once, talk for up to twenty minutes — is still dictation: it is your voice, going into a field, with the cleanup applied. It is not a way to record a meeting, and it would produce a cleaned-up monologue of whatever the microphone heard, not a transcript with the speakers separated. Use the Meetings tab for the meeting.
Which tools do which job?
Bot-based notetakers — Otter, Fireflies — do transcription and not dictation. Windows voice typing, Wispr Flow and Dragon do dictation and not transcription. Granola does bot-free transcription and not dictation. Pithflow does dictation and bot-free transcription, on Windows only, and does not join calls or label individual speakers. Pick by which side of the one-question test your week falls on; if it falls on both, that is the case we built for.
Frequently asked questions
Is Otter a dictation app?
No. Otter transcribes meetings and produces notes inside its own app. It does not type into the field your cursor is in. If you want to write an email by voice, that is dictation, and Otter is the wrong tool for it.
Can a dictation app take meeting notes?
Not by itself. Dictation captures your voice for as long as you hold a key and types it where the cursor is; it has no idea a meeting is happening. Pithflow has a separate Meetings mode for that, which records the room or the call and writes notes when you stop.
Which one is free on Pithflow?
Both, within limits. Dictation is free up to 2,000 words a week. Meetings is free for a single meeting up to 15 minutes, counting toward the same weekly allowance. Pro at $9.99 USD a month removes the word cap and the per-meeting cap.
Try Pithflow free
Voice dictation that's faster than typing. Hold a key, speak, get clean text in any Windows app. Free tier: 2,000 words a week, no credit card.
