Alternatives/Flit vs Aside
Flit vs Aside
Flit dictates finished text in about 0.7 seconds, with no AI to set up.
The short answer
Flit and Aside both keep your voice on your Mac, so this is a question of scope rather than trust. Aside is a meeting recorder that also dictates: no bot joins the call, transcription runs on your machine, speakers are separated afterwards, and every note lands as Markdown in a folder you choose, for $8 a month or $79 once. Flit dictates and transcribes recordings you already have, and spends most of its effort on the dictation: formatting fixed by rules rather than decided by a model, tone that follows the app you are in, and a local index of your open project so spoken file names come out spelled right. If your problem is that meetings disappear, buy Aside. If your problem is that typing is slower than thinking, Flit is $15 once and never asks you to pick an AI provider.
Flit vs Aside, side by side
Flit Aside From Aside’s own published information, checked September 2026. “Not stated” means they do not publish that detail. Prices change, so confirm before you buy.
Why people pick Flit
- Dictation is the main product rather than the second half of one, and finished text lands about 0.7 seconds after you let go.
- No model to choose, no API key to buy, no Ollama to install. Aside’s notes need an AI: theirs inside the $8, yours at your provider’s prices, or a local model you run and update yourself.
- $15 once against $79 once, and nothing recurring on either side after that.
- Times, prices, spoken punctuation, snippets and dictionary words are fixed by rules, so the same sentence comes out the same way every time.
- It indexes your open project, so file and folder names you say out loud are spelled right.
- Per-app tone: a commit message and a client email do not arrive in the same register.
Where Aside differs
- Records meetings from system audio and microphone, no bot, speakers separated on your Mac.
- Notes land as Markdown in a folder you pick.
- An MCP server, so a coding agent can read a meeting in progress.
- Licensed per person, so it covers every Mac you own.
Two products, one split
Aside's dictation uses the same on-device model that transcribes its meetings, bound to a hold-to-talk key, with a seven-day trial of its own. If you already want the meeting half, the dictation is close to free. What you do not get is the layer Flit spends its whole existence on, because Aside spends its effort on the call instead: streaming text, deterministic formatting, per-app tone, and a project index. Meeting recording is on Flit's roadmap, and it will run on your Mac like everything else. Until then the two apps cover different halves of the day.
What the $8 and the $79 actually buy
Aside's pricing page draws the line this way. The $8 a month includes the model that writes your notes and stops when you stop paying: new recordings and dictation stop, though everything already recorded stays readable. The $79 is the app itself and never stops, but the model behind the notes is then yours to supply, either through your own API key or locally with Ollama. Flit has no equivalent decision, because there is no note to write and no model to rent: $15 buys the app, and the formatting runs on your Mac.
The verdict
Flit
Choose Flit if dictation is the job, and you would rather not choose an AI provider to finish a sentence.
7 days free · $15 once, for one Mac
AAside
Choose Aside if your meetings need to become notes you own, or you want one app covering the call and the cursor.
Questions
Does Aside dictate, or only record meetings?
Both. Hold fn, speak, and the text is typed where your cursor is, using the same on-device model that transcribes the meetings. Its dictation is free for seven days after setup and then part of the paid plan.
Which is cheaper?
Flit. It is $15 once for one Mac. Aside is $79 once for every Mac you own, with your own AI behind the notes, or $8 a month with theirs included.
Does Aside work offline?
Transcription does, for both meetings and dictation: the speech model runs on your Mac. Writing the meeting note goes online unless you point Aside at a local model with Ollama. Flit is offline end to end because there is no note-writing step.
Do I need both?
For writing, no: Flit types what you say into any app. Flit does not record calls today. Meeting recording is on Flit's roadmap, and it will run on your Mac like everything else.
