How to migrate from Aqua Voice to VoiceGem (2026)
Aqua Voice's expanded custom dictionary is a paid feature with no documented export, so a long project vocabulary is copied out by hand before cancelling. VoiceGem then takes about an hour to set up, and its dictionary exports afterwards so the retyping only happens once.
Cancelling Aqua Voice Pro saves $96 a year on annual billing, and cancelling Max saves $288. (aquavoice.com/pricing, checked September 4, 2026)
Competitor pricing and features last verified September 4, 2026. Every claim links to its source.
| What you would move | Out of Aqua Voice | Into VoiceGem |
|---|---|---|
| Transcripts and historysource | Unverified | Imported from a backup file |
| Personal dictionarysource | Unverified | Rebuilt by hand, then exported and version-controlled |
| Per-app behavioursource | Unverified | Modes with per-app and per-website triggers |
| Licence or subscriptionsource | Cancel to stop billing | $25-$159 once, 14-day refund |
Choose Aqua Voice if…
- Students get 70% off Aqua Voice, which brings Pro to $2.40 a month — cheaper over a three-year degree than most one-time licences, and VoiceGem has no student rate at all.
- Aqua Voice runs its own Avalon model and sells it as an API, so anyone who has tuned a workflow around that model specifically is giving up something VoiceGem cannot reproduce.
- Realtime Mode has no marketed VoiceGem equivalent, so a workflow that depends on text appearing as you speak should be tested carefully before cancelling.
Swapping a stronger model for a shorter code path
Aqua Voice's approach to difficult words is Avalon plus a custom dictionary. VoiceGem's approach is a choice of local models — Parakeet, eight Whisper variants, Apple Speech — plus a personal dictionary and word replacement, all stored on the Mac.
The change that matters for code is the Deterministic Pass, which removes the model from the text-to-code step entirely. 78 spoken phrases become 40 symbols through a lookup table, so the same sentence produces the same line every run.
A migration that trades a strong hosted model for a local one is only worth making if what you needed was reproducibility or locality rather than raw recognition quality.
The migration itself, step by step
First, copy your custom dictionary out of Aqua Voice by hand, since no export is documented and it is a paid feature you have already invested in. Second, note your renewal date. Third, install VoiceGem, grant accessibility permission and download a local model. Fourth, retype the dictionary as VoiceGem dictionary entries and word replacements. Fifth, enable Developer Mode for your editor.
Allow an hour. VoiceGem exports its own dictionary afterwards, so this is the last time the list is rebuilt manually.
What Aqua Voice lets you take with you
Nothing automatically. The custom dictionary that Pro and Max unlock has no documented export, so it is copied by hand while the subscription is active.
For anyone with a long project vocabulary, that list is the single most valuable thing in the account and the easiest to lose by cancelling first and thinking afterwards.
How the student discount changes the decision
70% off brings Aqua Voice Pro to $2.40 a month on annual billing, which is $86.40 over three years. A single-Mac VoiceGem licence is $25 once, so VoiceGem is still cheaper, but the gap is small enough that features rather than price should decide it.
For a student whose dictation is prose rather than code, staying with Aqua Voice at $2.40 a month is a defensible choice and this page will not pretend otherwise.
What to test before cancelling
Test three things during the overlap: whether your technical vocabulary survives a local model with VoiceGem's dictionary, whether the absence of Realtime Mode changes how you work, and whether deterministic symbol conversion actually saves you time in an editor.
VoiceGem's free tier allows 15 minutes of recorded audio a day, which is enough for all three tests across a fortnight without paying anything.
What people ask before switching
“Moving my dictionary and settings across will eat a weekend.”
VoiceGem imports and exports its own settings, so the VoiceGem side is minutes. The real question is whether your current app exports at all, and for most of this category the documented answer is no — which means the honest estimate is retyping your word list once.
The import and export service →“When the connection is poor it stalls, spirals, or loses what I dictated.”
A hosted dictation service has a round trip to fail. VoiceGem's default engine runs on the Mac and the Deterministic Pass is a pure function, so there is no request to time out and no queue to spiral — dictation behaves the same on hotel wifi as at a desk.
Which models run on the device →“My employer's code cannot go to a third-party server, so cloud dictation is out.”
VoiceGem's default engine runs on the Mac and the Deterministic Pass never leaves it. Cloud AI providers are opt-in and use your own key, held in the macOS Keychain. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you switch it on and supply the key yourself.
Which models run locally →Also comparing: the head-to-head against Aqua Voice, Aqua Voice pricing, tier by tier, or every Aqua Voice alternative worth the switch.
Common questions
No export is documented for the custom dictionary, which is a paid feature on Pro and Max. Copy the list manually before cancelling, since access ends with the subscription.
VoiceGem has streaming transcription in the app but does not market a realtime tier the way Aqua Voice markets Max. Anyone relying on text appearing as they speak should test the overlap carefully.
No published benchmark compares Avalon with VoiceGem's local models on identical audio, so neither claim can be made honestly. Rebuild your dictionary early in the trial, because that is what closes most of the gap either way.
Marginally. Aqua Voice Pro at 70% off is $2.40 a month, which is $86.40 over three years, against $25 once for a single-Mac VoiceGem licence. At that gap, features should decide rather than price.
About an hour, most of it retyping the dictionary. Installation and accessibility permission take ten minutes and a local model download a few more.
After the overlap, near the end of a paid term. Cancelling stops the next renewal rather than refunding the current one, and VoiceGem's free tier costs nothing while both are running.
15 free minutes of audio a day, then $25 once for one Mac.
VoiceGem is released under GPL-3.0, a derivative of VoiceInk by Prakash Joshi Pax.