Wavenote as a Dragon alternative
The software most people mean when they say dictation software. Dragon Professional is still sold for Windows. Dragon Dictate for Mac was discontinued in 2018 and never replaced, and Dragon Anywhere for mobile shut down on 1 July 2026.
What Dragon does better
On Windows, Dragon is still ahead of everything on this site at the things it was built for: spoken correction, voice commands that drive the whole machine, recorded macros, and professional vocabularies for law and medicine built over decades. Wavenote has none of that, and Wavenote has no Windows version. If your work runs on a Dragon macro set, nothing here replaces it.
Where Wavenote is different
- Wavenote is a current Mac app on Apple Silicon, against a Mac product that stopped shipping in 2018.
- Transcription runs on device, and the whole app is $4.90 once.
- Setup is choosing a hotkey. There is no voice profile to train first.
Side by side
| Wavenote | Dragon | |
|---|---|---|
| Available for Mac | Yes | No, discontinued in 2018 |
| Voice commands and macros | No | Yes, on Windows |
| Specialist vocabularies | No | Yes |
| Price | $4.90 once | About $700 on Windows |
Dragon pricing: Windows only. Nuance publishes no price and asks you to contact them; resellers list Dragon Professional v16 around $700. Checked against dragon.nuance.com on 7 August 2026.
Nuance's own purchase page carries a contact form and no figure, and the old storefront now redirects to it, so the $700 comes from resellers rather than from the maker. The 1 July 2026 end of Dragon Anywhere sales is stated on Nuance's App Store listing, not on nuance.com.
Want more detail? The full Dragon review works through it feature by feature.