Vito vs Handy

Handy is the closest thing to a sibling on this page: free, MIT-licensed, cross-platform, and it runs on Linux. Nearly 27,000 people have starred it on GitHub, which is a lot, and deserved. The difference between us is one decision — Handy runs the speech model on your computer, Vito sends the audio to a provider — and almost everything else follows from it.

At a glance

Checked against handy.computer and their repository in July 2026.

Where Handy is the better choice

Nothing leaves your computer, ever

"Your voice stays on your computer," as they put it, and it is literally true — there is no provider in the picture at all. For confidential work, for a machine with no internet, or simply as a matter of principle, that is a stronger guarantee than Vito can make. Vito minimises who sees your audio; Handy removes the question.

It is free with no asterisk

No provider account, no balance, no fifteen cents an hour. Vito's app is free but its running cost is not zero, and Handy's is.

Nothing to set up

Download, pick a model, dictate. No API keys, no payment method, no accounts anywhere. Vito asks for two keys before it does anything.

macOS today

Handy runs on macOS, on both Intel and Apple Silicon. Vito does not, yet.

Where Vito is the better choice

Your computer does not have to be fast

This is the honest trade and it is worth being specific about. Handy's Whisper models want a GPU — their own requirements list "Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA GPU" on Windows and Linux. Their CPU-friendly option, Parakeet V3, asks for at least an Intel Skylake-generation processor. Meet those comfortably and it flies; sit near the line and dictation gets slow, and on an older machine it may not be usable at all.

Vito's answer is that the hard part happens elsewhere. An eight-year-old laptop gets exactly the same speed and accuracy as a new workstation, your processor stays free while you dictate, and the fan stays quiet. The price is about fifteen cents an hour and a connection.

The text comes out finished, not just accurate

Handy transcribes. Vito transcribes and then runs the result through a second AI pass that removes the hesitations, restructures the sentence you rambled, adds the line breaks you asked for and turns "thumbs up" into 👍. That is a different product decision rather than a better one, and it is the main reason Vito needs a second key.

The interface speaks your language

Vito's own interface is available in 60 languages, not just its dictation. Handy does not state a figure for its interface.

It is quite good fun

A small thing, and we are not going to pretend it decides anything. Vito keeps count: words dictated, sentences cleaned up, hours of typing you did not have to do, a chart of your week. There are 44 achievements to unlock along the way, some of them silly, one or two hidden.

It turns out to matter more than it sounds like it should. Dictating instead of typing is a habit you have to build, and the first week is the awkward part — seeing "1 h 38 m of typing saved" is a nudge to keep going that a blank window does not give you. If that sounds like a gimmick to you, ignore it entirely; nothing depends on it.

What they both do

Both are open source, both free to download, both run on Windows and Linux, and both work the same way: a hotkey, you talk, text lands where your cursor is. Both are young, actively developed in public, and you can read every line of either one. If you like the idea of Vito but not the cloud, Handy is the project we would point you at — and this comparison exists to help you pick, not to talk you out of it.

So which one

• Audio must never leave the machine? Handy.
• No internet, or an unreliable connection? Handy.
• Older or lower-powered computer? Vito.
• Want the text to arrive already tidied up? Vito.
• On a Mac right now? Handy. Vito isn't there yet.
• Want it to cost literally nothing? Handy.