WhipScribe replaces live Dragon dictation with dictate-then-upload: record on your phone or a dictation recorder, upload the file, and a typed transcript comes back as DOCX in about 2 minutes per hour of audio, so a five-minute letter is usually ready in under a minute. It costs $19 a month on Workspace or from $4 for 500 minutes, against the $99 per user per month that Microsoft's marketplace lists for Dragon Medical One with PowerMic Mobile.
Who this is for
Clinicians dictating referral letters and discharge summaries, lawyers dictating attendance notes and memos, consultants and writers who think out loud: what they want is the typed document, without a per-user licence or a typist queue.
Dragon does one job very well: it types into the application in front of you as you speak, and lets you drive the computer by voice. If you sit at a workstation and dictate straight into an electronic record, that is still the right tool. But a large share of dictation is not done that way. It is done into a phone between patients, into a Philips or Olympus recorder in the car, or into Voice Memos after a meeting. For that work, a live licence is paying for something you do not use.
WhipScribe takes the recording instead, and gives you back a Word document you can correct, format and sign.
How it works
What you get back
Punctuated text with a timestamp on every line, downloadable as DOCX, TXT, SRT, VTT or JSON. Edit lines in the browser before you export.
A brief of what was said, chapters with timestamps, and the names, numbers and dates you mentioned, so you can check a long dictation at a glance. Speakers are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters.
Every dictation stays in your library. Search all of them at once for a name or a phrase; with Workspace, ask a question across a folder or the whole library.
About 99 languages, detected automatically. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Honest comparison
They solve different problems. Pick by how you dictate, not by price alone.
| Dragon Medical One | Apple Dictation | WhipScribe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it works | Live: types into the application as you speak | Live: types into the text field on your iPhone | Recording first: upload, then read the transcript |
| Listed price | $99 per user per month with PowerMic Mobile; $123 for the user licence alone; one-year term | Built into iPhone at no charge | $19 a month (Workspace), or packs from $4 for 500 minutes |
| Per-user licence | Yes | No | No seat fees |
| Voice commands and EHR control | Yes; works with Epic, MEDITECH and Oracle Cerner | Editing commands in the text field | No |
| Takes an existing recording | Built for live dictation | No | Yes, up to 10 hours or 5 GB a file |
| Word file and library | Text goes where your cursor is | Text goes where your cursor is | DOCX export; every dictation searchable in a library |
| How to buy | Email Microsoft to verify eligibility before purchase | Turn it on in Settings | Online, in minutes |
Dragon Medical One prices: Microsoft's marketplace listing (Nuance), checked 4 Oct 2026, billed monthly on a one-year subscription. Nuance's Dragon Professional pages showed no list price that day and direct buyers to contact sales. Apple details: Apple's iPhone User Guide, same day.
If you dictate live into an EHR or case-management system all day, use voice to move around the chart, or your organisation already licenses Dragon centrally, stay with it. WhipScribe does not type into other software as you speak.
When you dictate away from a desk, have a backlog of recordings, or need a Word document rather than text in a field. Lawyers dictating to a recorder will find more on the legal transcription page; practices should read the medical page first.
What it costs
The summary of any recording is free to read; a pack or Workspace opens the full transcript. A recording uses minutes by its length.
| Option | Price | Audio covered | Per audio hour | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4 pack | 500 minutes | 8 h 20 min | $0.48 | Trying it on your own dictations |
| $8 pack | 1,000 minutes | 16 h 40 min | $0.48 | Occasional dictation; credits never expire |
| $12 pack | 2,000 minutes | 33 h 20 min | $0.36 | About a month of daily letters for one person |
| $24 pack | 5,000 minutes | 83 h 20 min | $0.29 | A heavy dictator or a busy month of letters |
| Workspace | $19 a month | fair use 700 h | $0.19 at 100 h | Dictating every day, with every recording kept and searchable |
Prices in US dollars from our pricing page, checked 4 Oct 2026. No seat fees; credits never expire.
Say you dictate 20 letters a day at about four minutes each, on 22 working days a month. That is 1,760 minutes, a little over 29 hours of audio. One $12 pack of 2,000 minutes covers it with minutes to spare, and anything unused carries over because credits never expire. If you dictate more than that, or want one flat bill, Workspace is $19 a month with fair use of 700 hours per billing period. Either way there is no one-year term to sign.
The same arithmetic holds for a law firm: a fee-earner dictating an hour of attendance notes and letters a day uses about 22 hours a month, which fits one $12 pack.
Before you switch
FAQ
For dictate-then-review work, yes: you record, upload, and read a typed transcript a minute later. It is not a replacement for live dictation into an EHR. WhipScribe does not type into Epic or any other system as you speak, and it has no voice commands for navigating a chart. If that is how you work today, keep Dragon for it.
Microsoft's marketplace listing for Dragon Medical One, checked 4 October 2026, shows $99 per user per month with PowerMic Mobile, or $123 per user per month for the user licence alone, each on a one-year term and only after Microsoft verifies eligibility. WhipScribe Workspace is $19 a month with fair use of 700 hours, and packs start at $4 for 500 minutes with credits that never expire.
Apple Dictation is built into iPhone and types what you say into the text field you are in, processed on the phone in many languages. It is live, like Dragon, and free. It does not take a recording you have already made, keep a library of your dictations or export a Word file. WhipScribe works on recordings: dictate into Voice Memos or a recorder, upload, and export DOCX.
About 2 minutes of processing per hour of audio. A five-minute letter is usually ready in under a minute, and a day's batch of letters sent at the end of clinic is ready before you have closed the laptop.
It handles everyday clinical and legal vocabulary, but drug names, doses, rare conditions and case names are where any general transcription is weakest. Read every one of those before you sign. The summary of any recording is free to read, so try one of your own dictations before you buy anything.
We make no HIPAA or other compliance claim and do not sign business associate agreements. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training, and you can delete a recording and its transcript at any time. Whether that is enough for patient audio is a decision for your own compliance review.
Phone recordings (M4A from iPhone Voice Memos, most Android recorder apps), MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG, MP4 and more, up to 10 hours or 5 GB per file. From a Philips or Olympus dictation recorder, export DSS or DS2 to MP3 or WAV in the recorder software, then upload that.
No. There are no seat fees. You pay by minutes of audio with a pack, or a flat $19 a month for Workspace, however many letters you dictate within its 700-hour fair use.
Related
About 2 minutes per audio hour, DOCX out. Workspace $19 a month, or packs from $4 with credits that never expire.
If you are deciding between several services: see how the best transcription services compare and cheap transcription services and the real cost per hour.