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Willow Frontier Pro - The fastest, most accurate dictation model in the world

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Willow is launching two new voice AI models: Willow Frontier Pro and Willow Frontier Mini. Frontier Pro is our most powerful dictation model. It is built for people who want fast, accurate, and polished writing anywhere they work. Frontier mini is lightweight and completely free to use. On our free plan, users get unlimited access to this model. It's faster and more accurate than other AI dictation tools.

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Maker
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Today, we are making AI dictation free for everyone. You might be wondering why, and also how. No, you are not becoming the product. Willow is a voice dictation app that lets you speak anywhere you write. You can use it for emails, Slack messages, docs, notes, AI prompts, and more. Just hold a hotkey, speak naturally, and Willow turns your words into clean text. Today, we are launching two new voice AI models: Willow Frontier Mini and Willow Frontier Pro. Frontier Mini is our fast and lightweight dictation model. It is completely free to use, with unlimited access on our free plan. Frontier Pro is our most powerful dictation model. It is available on our Pro plan for people who want the highest accuracy, better formatting, and more polished writing. Our Pro plan also includes Scribe, our voice AI writing assistant for turning rough spoken ideas into finished drafts. For a long time, good voice dictation has either been too slow, too awkward, not accurate enough, or locked behind a paywall. We do not think speaking to your computer should be a premium feature. That's why now nobody has an excuse to not talk to their computer with our free plan! Would love for you to try it and share any feedback.
I think most of us are just over having to wait for the latency of network/cloud models. Or when they stop working when in rough network conditions (I work on the go frequently). I’m still waiting for a company like Willow to allow their models to run locally.
Maker

 Great question. On our Pro plan, we actually do support local models, so you can run Willow offline without relying on a network connection!

Nice. I assume that’s not Frontier Pro though and just third-party models?
Maker

   Yeah! It's just a local quantized model

@lawrence single speaker is the right beachhead. the accuracy bar there is already hard enough. group call attribution is a whole other product. shipping the sharp version first is the harder discipline. good launch.

Are you mainly aiming at general text dictation, or does the product handle developer-y dictation too, like punctuation-heavy sentences, variable names, or speaking edits into a coding workflow?

Maker

 You bet. Willow is integrated really well with AI IDEs. It handles developer language naturally, including variable names and technical jargon. It can even recognize and tag file names correctly, so those workflows feel seamless.

No, you are not becoming the product" is a smart line :)

voice dictation feels like one of those habits that is still weird for a few days, then suddenly typing everything starts to feel slow. I've been using voice more and more for rough ideas, messages, and prompts, and the biggest difference is whether the output feels clean enough to use immediately. making unlimited dictation free is a pretty strong move. if Frontier Mini is genuinely fast and accurate, I can see a lot of people trying voice for the first time without overthinking it.

curious how Willow handles different writing contexts. does it adapt formatting differently for Slack, emails, docs, and AI prompts, or is the cleanup mostly the same everywhere?

Maker

 Yeah, exactly! We adapt formatting based on the context. Slack, email, docs, AI prompts, and more all have very different writing styles, so the formatting isn't the same across surfaces. If you use Scribe, for example, you'll notice it behaves differently in emails versus ChatGPT.

For ChatGPT, we'll often automatically optimize the prompt to help you get better results. The same idea applies to dictation in general. Willow is designed to be highly context aware, so it adjusts both formatting and rewriting based on where you're writing.

"you are not becoming the product" is a bold line to open with, and it made me curious rather than reassured. one review here specifically calls out a competitor for holding privacy certifications and not using dictation data for training, as a differentiator. now that Frontier Mini is free and unlimited, what's the actual model for staying sustainable on that tier, is voice data from free users used to improve future models, and if so is that opt-in or just disclosed in the terms somewhere. genuinely asking because unlimited free dictation has to be paid for by something

Maker

 For us, what we actually monetize is Willow Scribe!

When you onboard, you'll see two modes: normal dictation and Scribe. Scribe is our intent-to-text product that helps with phrasing and other situations where raw voice dictation isn't the right fit. On the free tier, you get 20 Scribes, and that's what we're monetizing today.

One interesting thing we've noticed is that people who use Scribe are much more likely to activate, convert, and refer friends, so giving everyone unlimited dictation has actually been a pretty good top-of-funnel strategy :)

 makes sense on the funnel side, appreciate the numbers. the part I was actually asking about is separate though: is free-tier voice data used to train or improve future models, opt-in or just in the terms? that's the thing that actually determines whether unlimited free dictation is subsidized by conversions or by the data itself

Maker

 It's opt-in. You'll see this during onboarding. If you choose Privacy Mode, we collect zero data, ever. We only collect data if you explicitly opt in during onboarding. There's no hidden opt-in in the free tier or buried clause in the terms. We wouldn't do that

 that's a clean answer, appreciate you actually addressing it instead of talking around it. zero data by default with an explicit opt-in is the right default, most voice tools bury this in the terms instead. good luck with the launch

Been using it for a couple days and the filler word removal actually works well, my rambling thoughts come out pretty clean. Way faster than typing for long slack messages.

Maker

 That's awesome. Have you tried using Scribe for the longer Slack messages? It's a lot easier when you're rambling, and it cleans it up.

I've always felt that typing is the bottleneck for a lot of knowledge work. If Frontier Pro can make dictation fast enough and accurate enough that people stop thinking about the tool entirely, that's a huge shift. Also love the decision to make it free for everyone. Excited to try it out. 🚀

Maker

 We wppreciate that! What's been your favorite part?

"prompting AI tools" by voice is an underrated use case here. typing out long prompts for claude or chatgpt is friction most people don't notice until they see someone doing it by voice. 1.3K followers and a winter 2025 award suggests this has actual retention, which is rare for dictation tools. curious how it handles technical vocabulary and product names that aren't in standard training data, does it let you add a custom dictionary?

Speed + accuracy is the right pair to obsess over — most dictation tools nail one and butcher the other. In my world (voice agents) the make-or-break is proper nouns and numbers: a model that writes beautiful prose but drops a digit in a phone number is useless in a real workflow. Curious where Frontier Pro lands there — is the accuracy jump mostly on natural speech, or does it hold up on names, addresses, and long strings of numbers where most models fall apart? That's the part I'd pay for. Congrats on shipping 🚀

Maker

 Appreciate it, David!

Voice tools are only useful when they feel fast and natural. Curious to try this for messy thoughts and longer writing sessions.

Maker

 We're great for that! We specifically train our model to deal with messy thoughts and longer five-minute sessions

Maker

 It's not just fast, it's blazingly fast, natural, and accurate. Tell us what you think when you try it!

giving away Frontier Mini unlimited and free is a strong move given how many dictation apps gate accuracy behind a paywall. removing filler words automatically is the detail that actually matters day to day, half the pain of dictation tools is the cleanup afterward not the transcription itself

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