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. Both can keep speech recognition on your computer: Handy focuses on local Whisper, while Vito manages local Parakeet and also lets you choose OpenAI-compatible local or remote endpoints.

At a glance

Checked against handy.computer and their repository and their troubleshooting page 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 strong guarantee. Vito matches it by running managed Parakeet STT and the cleanup model locally. Handy remains the more focused local transcriber; Vito adds a managed engine, cleanup styles and optional provider choice.

It is free with no asterisk

Neither tool needs a provider account or usage payment when run locally. Handy does that by design; Vito combines local Parakeet with an optional local cleanup model, and still lets you choose remote providers when lower system load or broader language support matters.

Nothing to set up

Download, pick a model, dictate. No API keys, payment method or accounts. Vito's managed Parakeet route works the same way, though its optional cleanup and endpoint choices add more settings.

Where Vito is the better choice

You want local processing with more control over the result

Vito installs and manages local Parakeet STT in 25 languages, or connects to any local or remote OpenAI-compatible transcription endpoint. Its AI cleanup offers five built-in styles — including Business, Verbatim and Notes — and lets you write the prompt yourself. A local cleanup model keeps that step private too.

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. Vito lets you choose that cloud route, or accept the higher local system load for privacy and zero usage fees.

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. Cleanup needs a model, which can be a local OpenAI-compatible model rather than requiring a second key.

Whether it works well is not really up to you

Running the model locally is Handy's best feature and also its hardest part, and their own documentation is candid about it. The troubleshooting page covers Whisper crashing, transcription being slow, the microphone not being found, models failing to download, a missing vulkan-1.dll on Windows, a blank window on Linux, an overlay that steals focus, Wayland needing extra configuration, and a GLIBC error from the AppImage. Under known issues they write plainly that Whisper "may crash on older CPUs or specific GPU configurations" and suggest Parakeet V3 instead.

None of that is carelessness — it is what shipping local inference across three operating systems actually looks like, and the fact that they document it this openly says good things about the project. But it does mean the experience varies from machine to machine, and finding the combination of model, drivers and settings that runs nicely on your computer can be a bit of a search. With Vito there is nothing to find: the model does not run on your machine, so it behaves the same everywhere.

The interface speaks your language

Vito's own interface is available in 60 languages, not just its dictation. Handy ships 24, which is a lot more than most projects of its size bother with.

Ask the AI by voice — Handy only transcribes

Handy turns speech into text and stops there. Vito's Vito Assist turns speech into an instruction: "Vito, translate this to German", "Vito, what's the capital of France?", "Vito, 15% of 240?" — translations, answers, maths and definitions, spoken as easily as dictation and returned in place. If you want your dictation app to also answer questions, Handy does not, and Vito does.

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 50+ achievements to unlock along the way, some of them silly, several of them 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, macOS 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? Either — decide on the trade above, not the platform.
• Want it to cost literally nothing? Either; both can run locally with no usage fees.