Comparison
Golos vs Dragon Naturally Speaking
Dragon Naturally Speaking (now Nuance Dragon) has been the gold standard in dictation software for decades. But it's expensive, Windows-focused, and overkill for many users. Golos is a free, open-source alternative for macOS that gets the job done.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Golos | Dragon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $200-500 (one-time) |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| macOS support | Yes | Dragon Dictate (discontinued) |
| Windows support | No | Yes |
| Push-to-talk | Yes | Yes |
| Paste to any app | Yes | Yes |
| Custom dictionary | Yes | Yes |
| Setup time | ~1 minute | 30+ minutes |
| Voice training required | No | Yes |
| CLI interface | Yes | No |
| Voice commands / macros | No | Yes |
| Medical vocabulary | No | Yes |
Why choose Golos over Dragon?
Actually works on macOS
Nuance discontinued Dragon Dictate for Mac years ago. If you're on macOS, Dragon isn't even an option anymore. Golos is built for macOS from the ground up.
Free and open source
Dragon Professional costs $500. Golos is free. You bring your own Deepgram API key (free tier available), and the code is fully open on GitHub.
No voice training
Dragon requires you to read passages aloud to train its model. Golos works immediately with Deepgram's Nova-3 engine — no training, no calibration.
Install in 60 seconds
One curl command and you're ready. No installers, no license keys, no account creation, no registration.
Built for developers
Golos is a CLI tool. Pipe output to stdout, run it as a background daemon, configure via TOML, and integrate it into your terminal workflow with Cursor, Claude Code, or any editor.
When Dragon might be better
Dragon is still the best choice for specialized professional use cases — particularly medical and legal dictation with industry-specific vocabulary. It also has deep voice command and macro support that lets you control your computer by voice. If you're on Windows and need enterprise-grade dictation with compliance certifications, Dragon is hard to beat.
Try Golos for free
Install in one command and start dictating in under a minute:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/basilysf1709/golos/main/install.sh | bash