SpeakFlow: price and payment from Russia

Potok transcribes Russian speech; this site has been translated into English for convenience.

SpeakFlow is free for 30 minutes of dictation a month forever, and its paid tier is one unlimited plan paid directly in rubles, with no international providers. The legal entity is a self-employed person registered in Russia. Potok (potok.now), for comparison, is 2500 words per week free and also takes payment by a Russian bank card directly.

How much does SpeakFlow really cost if thirty free minutes a month are enough for a couple of emails but not for a whole working day? The service has a surprisingly simple price list, one paid plan with no volume tiers, and this simplicity has its advantages and some not entirely obvious details.

How to pay from Russia and where the catch is

Payment is accepted directly in rubles, with no international payment systems and no conversion at an exchange rate. For a user from Russia this is the simplest scenario possible, with no question of whether the card will go through at all.

The legal entity you actually sign the agreement with is a self-employed person registered in Russia under their own INN (taxpayer number). It is not a limited liability company and not a sole proprietor in the usual sense, but a separate tax status: self-employed people can issue a receipt through the “My Tax” app, but do not always draw up a full contract the way a company does. For a personal subscription this usually creates no difficulty, but for booking it as an organization's expense you should ask the developer which documents it is ready to provide.

The catch, if there is one at all, is not in the payment itself but in the price structure. SpeakFlow has only one paid plan with no gradation by dictation volume: there is no separate “light” plan for those who need a little more than thirty free minutes but not unlimited. Moving from the free plan straight to the unlimited one means there is no in-between option by price.

The location of the servers where the audio is physically processed is not disclosed on the website; all that is known is that recognition runs in the cloud. For most personal tasks this is not critical, but for those who care about the country of the data center it remains an open question.

Separately, pay attention to the translation feature: SpeakFlow states Russian as its main language and, separately, the ability to insert a translation into English right while dictating in Russian. This feature does not affect the subscription price directly, but it widens the set of tasks you can cover with one plan without buying a separate translation service.

Sources: speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · blog.speakflow.ru

How much it comes to per year

SpeakFlow has no annual payment with a prepayment discount: there is only a monthly payment for the unlimited plan, and multiplying by twelve months gives the total yearly amount without any discounts for subscription length. This sets SpeakFlow apart from services where the annual payment is noticeably cheaper than the monthly one.

For those who fit into thirty free minutes a month, there are no yearly costs at all: the limit is not one-time but renews every month, and with economical use there is nothing to pay for until the dictation volume grows.

It is worth estimating the real yearly load from your own practice, not from a formal calculation: if thirty minutes are almost always enough and the limit is exceeded once every few months, it may turn out cheaper to stay on the free plan and put up with rare restrictions than to move to unlimited for a reserve you use only occasionally. And the other way round: for those who dictate every day and for long stretches, the cost of a monthly subscription without a discount accumulated over a year is still predictable: the amount does not change from month to month, unlike services with several plan levels, where you have to decide each time whether it is time to move up to a higher plan.

When paying more is justified

Moving to the paid SpeakFlow plan is justified when thirty minutes a month are systematically not enough: with regular overruns it is simpler to take out an unlimited subscription once than to watch the remaining time every month and cut off dictation mid-word.

A comparison with Potok is appropriate here too: its free limit is 2500 words per week, and the unlimited paid plan is needed by those who dictate all day on a permanent basis.

And most important: Potok is a cloud service, recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work at all without the internet. SpeakFlow recognition is also in the cloud, but the country of the servers is not disclosed; the only difference is in what is known about where data is processed, not in the fact of depending on the network. A similar analysis is in the article GigaType or Potok, and a broader overview is in the section voice input programs.

Frequently asked questions

Primary sources: speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · blog.speakflow.ru