The Dragon alternative without the price tag
You are looking at Dragon Professional because it is the name everyone knows, and you have probably noticed what it costs to find out what it costs. Nuance's page for Dragon Professional v16 has no price on it, only a Contact us button, and the old online store address now just redirects to the Dragon site. Deixis is the other way round: the price is on this page, and for dictation it is zero.
Hold Ctrl+Win, say the sentence, let go. Clean, punctuated text lands where your cursor was, in
any app, with your clipboard put back. There is no voice profile to train, no licence to activate,
no account to make, and no runtime to install first. Speech recognition runs inside the app on your
own PC, so your audio never leaves the machine, under any setting, and the same engine runs on the
Mac, on Android and in an iPhone keyboard now in beta. Everything that runs locally is free, and stays free.
Dragon is a bigger program than Deixis and it does things Deixis does not: it drives Windows by voice, it transcribes recordings you hand it, and it manages users across an organisation from one console. This page says so plainly, further down. But if what you actually want is to stop typing, on your own PC, without a purchase order, Deixis is the tool, and the rest of the page shows why.
Dragon Professional is also searched for as “Dragon NaturallySpeaking” or “Nuance Dragon”.
Why switch
What you gain, and what you give up
Why Deixis
- The price is on the page. Free forever for everything that runs on your PC: dictation, hands-free notes, meetings, screenshots and screen recording, the dictionary and all five vocabulary packs. Pro, at $49 a year or $10 a month, adds the managed cloud extras. Nuance publishes no price for Dragon Professional v16 at all; the page says "Contact us".
- One tool, on every device you own. Windows, Mac and Android, and an iPhone keyboard in beta, with the same on-device speech recognition on each; your dictation audio never leaves any of them. On the iPhone it is a keyboard with a microphone key, on Android a floating microphone that dictates into any app. Dragon Professional v16 is a Windows program.
- Five minutes, not an afternoon. The Deixis installer is about 46 MB, installs per user without an admin prompt, and downloads a 142 MB speech model on first run. Nothing else to install. Dragon's v16 release notes list 12 GB of disk, 4 GB of RAM, .NET Framework 4.8 and the Visual C++ 2019 runtime, and its data sheet adds an internet connection for activation.
- No activation, no account, no telemetry. Dragon's data sheet calls activation "a quick anonymous process", but it is still a call home you cannot skip. Deixis never asks you to sign in for anything local and sends no usage data. It makes two calls on its own — an update check, and a check for an announcement from us when you open the Settings window — and both carry nothing but the request.
- Your audio stays here by design, not by setting. Dragon's own data collection is opt-in, and there are two switches to know about: Data Collection sends text from your dictation sessions to Nuance if you join it, User Experience Collection sends usage metrics, and since version 15.6 no audio is collected. Nuance's general privacy statement, which covers every Nuance product rather than Dragon in particular, still says it "may capture your voice and the words that you speak" when you use its voice recognition technology. Deixis has no such switch to get wrong: recognition is in-process, and the recording, the model and the transcript never leave the machine.
- Cleanup that knows the field, with nothing to buy. A commit message, a chat reply and a ticket are punctuated differently, and Deixis does that on its own, with rules on your PC and no provider or key, because it knows which app and which control the text is going into. If you want a language model to polish every sentence, one setting chooses between Deixis's cloud, a model running on your own machine, or your own key, and it tells you in plain words what will leave before you confirm. Only the names of the app and field ride along with a cleanup request; the window title and the screen never do.
- Meetings, screenshots and screen recording in the same key.
Ctrl+Win+Mrecords your microphone and what your speakers play, so both sides of a call are transcribed on your PC, with no bot in the call. The remote voices are told apart on the device and you can name them; a named voice is recognised again in later meetings, from a voiceprint that stays on your machine, is never uploaded and can be deleted per person.Sgrabs and annotates a region of the screen.Vrecords the screen. Dragon transcribes one speaker's recording after the fact. - Everything is a file you own. Notes, transcripts, screenshots, recordings and every setting live in one folder as ordinary files. Back it up, search it, or uninstall Deixis tomorrow and it is all still readable.
Where Dragon Professional still wins
- It controls the computer, not just the cursor. Dragon's data sheet lists custom voice commands, macros that automate multi-step workflows, a mouse grid across several monitors, and "command & control" built with accessibility requirements in mind. Deixis types what you say; it does not click, open or navigate by voice.
- It transcribes recordings you give it. Dragon can "transcribe recorded notes or voice files of another single speaker", and its Auto Transcribe Folder Agent does that in batches. Deixis transcribes only what it records itself: dictation, meetings and screen recordings.
- A profile that learns your voice. Nuance says Dragon "learns a single speaker's voice", and claims up to 99% accuracy from first use. Deixis uses general English models and improves through your dictionary and vocabulary packs rather than by training on you.
- Enterprise management. The Nuance Management Center tracks usage, redistributes licences and shares custom words, commands and auto-texts across an organisation, and between its PC and mobile clients, and Dragon deploys on Citrix. Deixis has teams and seats for paying, but no console that pushes words to everyone.
- It plays your dictation back. "Play that back" reads your dictated text in your own voice, for checking what you said. Deixis keeps a history and a transcript, not the audio of an utterance.
What you get
More than dictation. One key, and everything behind it.
Hold the key and press a letter: free mode, a grab, a meeting, a recording, a translation, your own buttons. All of it on your own device, all of it free, none of it behind an account.
Dictation, where your cursor is
Hold a key, speak, release. Clean, punctuated text lands in whatever has focus, on your PC, your Mac and your phone, with your clipboard handed back.
Free mode: talk and point
Narrate for as long as you like while you grab a region, pick a button on screen or take a selection. One note, what you said interleaved with what you pointed at, pasted where you finish and saved as Markdown.
Screen grabs, annotated
Freeze every screen at the keypress, drag a region, add arrows, boxes, text and numbered steps, and pixelate what is private. Saved as a PNG that stays editable.
Screen recording, shared as a link
Record the screen with your narration. The recording writes itself up with a title, chapters and a summary, and from your Deixis account it shares as a link anyone can open without one. The Loom you can stop paying for.
Meetings, no bot, names included
Your microphone and the other side, transcribed on your machine while the call runs. Deixis tells the voices apart and remembers the ones you name, and never uploads a voice.
Your own buttons and workflows
Add a button to the palette: it gets the note on stdin and types back whatever it prints. Send finished notes to any URL you own. Chain steps: read the text off a screenshot, translate it, summarise it, post it.
Side by side
Dragon Professional and Deixis, side by side
| Row | Deixis | Dragon Professional |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit, on an Intel or AMD processor with AVX2: 2013 and later; no build for Windows on ARM), Mac (Apple Silicon) and Android (a dictation bubble in any app, plus meetings), with an iPhone keyboard in beta on TestFlight and not yet in the App Store. Meetings run on Windows and Android. One engine on all of them, and dictation audio never leaves the device. | Windows 10 and 11, Windows Server 2016, 2019 and 2022 |
| Speech recognition happens | On your own device, inside the app, on every platform. Dictation audio never leaves it; a meeting's, only if you turn on cloud processing on Android. | On your device |
| AI cleanup happens | On your device, with no provider at all. Or, if you want more, Deixis's cloud, your own Ollama, or your own key. Your choice, in one setting. | None |
| Leaves your machine | Text, and only once you switch a cloud feature on, plus, on Windows, one key you press to check your own Claude plan, and, on Android, a meeting's audio if you turn on cloud processing for meetings. Never a dictation's audio, never screenshots, never window titles. | Nothing |
| Account needed | None, ever, for anything that runs on your device. The cloud extras have a seven-day trial you start with an email code. No card. | not documented |
| Price | Free forever for everything local, meetings included. Pro is $49 a year for the cloud extras with nothing to set up. | No published price: sold through a Contact us button; no price on nuance.com, and the old online store address now redirects to the Dragon site |
| Your transcripts live | In plain files, in one folder you own and can back up. Uninstall Deixis and every note is still readable. | not documented |
| Make it yours | Add your own buttons that run a script, send finished notes to any URL you own, and switch on vocabulary packs for your field. | Custom voice commands and macros, custom words and word lists shared across a user community, batch transcription of audio files, and the Nuance Management Center for enterprise deployment |
Dragon Professional facts from dragon.nuance.com, its privacy policy, datasheet, requirements, data_collection and release_notes_156, read on 5 September 2026. “Not documented” means those pages did not say.
Dragon Professional v16 is installed on the PC and recognises speech there; Nuance's data sheet calls it locally installed, unlike its cloud-native Anywhere edition. Activating it needs a connection. Sharing dictation data with Nuance is opt-in, and its release notes say audio collection was discontinued; a separate opt-in sends usage metrics through Google Analytics.
What leaves your machine, and what leaves theirs
Deixis publishes every byte it sends, as a table, because there is so little of it. Here is that table beside what Dragon Professional's own pages say.
| What | Deixis | Dragon Professional |
|---|---|---|
| Audio | A dictation's, never: recognition happens inside the app on your device, and the recording, the model and the transcript stay there. A meeting's, only if you turn on Deixis cloud processing for meetings on Android: its audio, in pieces, each its own request, and Deixis stores and logs none of itapi.deixis-voice.com, then Whisper on Cloudflare Workers AI · only on Android, after a meeting ends, with cloud processing switched on in Settings › Meetings — on Wi-Fi, or on mobile data only if you choose | Nothing for recognition: v16 is the 'locally installed' Dragon, and the 15.6 release notes say 'audio data collection has been discontinued'. Nuance's general privacy statement, which is not specific to Dragon, still says it 'may capture your voice and the words that you speak' when you use its voice recognition technology, and that 'snippets of your voice data may be manually reviewed'.Nuance, where it applies · not stated for this product |
| The dictated text | The sentence you just dictated, your vocabulary, and your previous sentence in that fieldthe endpoint you chose · only with a cloud endpoint set, and by default only when the local rules are not enough | Up to 500 MB of 'data and text from your dictation sessions', only if you opt in to Data Collection; 'No personal information is ever sent to Nuance'Nuance · only if you opted in, during profile setup or later in Options |
| Context around the text | The names of the app and the field the text is going into. Never the window title, never a screenshot.the same endpoint · with that request | not documented |
| Telemetry and analytics | None. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reports. | Google Analytics metrics 'on how you use Dragon', if you switch on User Experience Collection; 'No personal information is ever collected, and you can stop participating at any time'Google Analytics, for Nuance · only if you opted in |
| Update check | Nothing but the request; the version check happens on your PCapi.deixis-voice.com · every launch, and when you ask in Settings | not documented |
| Model download | Nothing but the requesthuggingface.co · once, when you press Download on first run | not documented |
| Account and sign-in | An email address, only if you choose to start the trial, plus the partner tag from a partner download link and the first partner website that connected to Deixis on this computer, if there are anythe Deixis endpoint · when you start the trial | A product activation, 'a quick anonymous process' that needs an internet connection; managed deployments also connect to the Nuance Management CenterNuance · at activation, and for managed deployments whenever the client connects |
| Integrations | The finished note, and for a screenshot its file name, never the imagea URL you added yourself · on finish, only for destinations you added | User customisations such as auto-texts, custom words and commands, synchronised between Dragon clients on PC, iOS and Androidthe Nuance Management Center · in enterprise deployments that use the Management Center |
Before you switch
Before you switch
Who should not switch
If you rely on Dragon to run Windows by voice, because of an injury, a disability or simply because you have built a hundred commands over the years, stay: Deixis is a dictation tool and does not control the computer. If your work is turning other people's recordings into text, keep a transcription product, because Deixis will not take a file you hand it. Deixis dictates in English only, its speech models are English models, and on a PC it needs Windows 10 or 11 on an Intel or AMD processor with AVX2, from 2013 or later, with no build for Windows on ARM. And if your IT department needs one console to manage every user's vocabulary and commands, that is Nuance's Management Center and nothing in Deixis replaces it.
Making the switch
Dragon users arrive with habits. Here is what maps to what, and what does not.
Dictating
Dragon listens while its microphone is on and you talk in commands and sentences. Deixis listens
only while you hold Ctrl+Win: hold, speak, release, and the text appears at the caret. Double-tap
the chord instead and it keeps recording until you double-tap again, then pastes the finished note
where you are and saves a copy. The chord can be changed in Settings if another one suits your
hands.
Punctuation and formatting
You do not say "comma" and "new paragraph" to Deixis. Cleanup adds punctuation and structure from how you spoke and where the text is going, and if you ask for a transform, "make this a bullet list", it does that. Settings → Cleanup chooses how often a language model gets involved: When it helps, Every time, or Never, and with no endpoint set all three run as rules on your PC.
Custom commands and macros
Dragon's voice commands have no direct equivalent, because Deixis does not act on speech. What it has instead are custom buttons: your own actions on the mode palette and the session toolbar that run a script or post to a URL you own, and can type their result back at the caret. A button that files a ticket from a dictated note is a few lines in the settings file, and the first run asks your permission before anything executes.
Vocabulary
Where Dragon has custom words and word lists, Deixis has a dictionary you edit without leaving what
you are doing: select the word, press Ctrl+Win+D. Five packs ship in the box, for software,
finance, business, medicine and law; switch one on for your field in one click. Corrections for
words it mishears go in as replacements, and there is no limit on those.
Transcribing recordings
There is no folder agent. Deixis transcribes what it records: press Ctrl+Win+M before a meeting
or a call, and both sides land as a timestamped transcript in a folder on your PC. Notes and action
items are the one optional step that needs an endpoint you configure.
Before you ask
Questions people search for
Is there a free alternative to Dragon for Windows?
Yes. Deixis is free forever for everything that runs on your PC: dictation into any app, hands-free notes, meeting recording and transcription, screenshots, screen recording, the dictionary and all five vocabulary packs, with no account. The paid tier only covers cloud extras, and even those are free if you bring your own provider key.
How much does Dragon Professional cost?
Nuance does not say. When we checked, the Dragon Professional v16 page carried a Contact us button and no price, and the old online store address redirected to the Dragon site. Deixis costs nothing for dictation, and $49 a year or $10 a month for the managed cloud extras.
Does Deixis work offline like Dragon?
Completely. Dictation, hands-free mode, meeting transcription and screen capture all run with no network at all, on Windows, on the Mac and on your phone, and there is no activation step. A fresh install makes two calls on its own — an update check, and a check for an announcement from us when you open the Settings window — and neither sends anything but the request.
Can Deixis control my computer by voice?
No: Dragon is a voice-control system and Deixis is a dictation tool. It puts what you say into whatever field has focus, and it can run your own buttons, but it does not open programs, click or navigate by voice. If that is what you need, stay on Dragon or look at Talon.
Do I have to train Deixis to my voice?
No: there is no profile and no enrolment, just install, press Download for the speech model, and dictate. Accuracy comes from the model plus your dictionary, and the biggest single improvement is adding the names and terms you use, which takes one keypress each. A larger, more accurate model is one click away in Settings.
Does Deixis send my audio anywhere?
Not a dictation's, under any setting, because speech recognition happens inside the app, on your PC, your Mac or your phone. A meeting's audio stays on the device too, unless you turn on Deixis cloud processing for meetings on Android, which sends a finished meeting's audio to be transcribed in the cloud, and Deixis keeps none of it. Otherwise the only content that can ever leave is text, and only once you switch a cloud feature on. One key press is the exception that carries no content at all: Claude usage reads the sign-in Claude Code has already stored on your machine and asks Anthropic what is left of that plan. The full list, every byte, is one page long and linked at the bottom of this one.
Keep reading
Related pages
Best dictation software for Windows
Fifteen Windows dictation tools compared, every fact dated from the maker's own pages — including what our own tool cannot do. Read the disclosure.
Offline dictation on Windows
Dictation that works with no internet: speech recognition on your own device, free, no account. Which Windows speech-to-text tools genuinely run offline.
The Talon alternative, if all you want is to dictate
Talon is hands-free control of the whole computer, and right if you need that. If you only want to dictate, Deixis needs no scripts and no learning.
The Otter.ai alternative without the bot
Otter puts a bot in your call and your audio in its cloud, with minute limits. Deixis records both sides locally, names the voices, free, no account.
The Whisperstream alternative that is free, and does more than dictate
Both dictate on your PC, no upload, no account. Deixis is free, knows which field you are in, records meetings and the screen, and runs on Mac and phone.
The Handy alternative that does more than fill a text box
Handy and Deixis both dictate on your own computer, free, with no account. Deixis also knows the field you type in, records meetings and runs on Android.
Hold a key. Speak. Keep working.
Deixis is free, needs no account, and runs on your own device. Everything on this page is in the current release.
v1.3.2 · 64‑bit Windows 10/11 on Intel or AMD · macOS 13 on Apple silicon · 51 MB · nothing else to install · also for Windows · Android on Google Play
Facts about Dragon Professional checked on against dragon.nuance.com. Deixis facts are from its documentation for the current release. Something out of date? Tell us.