Letterly vs Hedy: Dictation App or Meeting Assistant?

The short answer: Use Letterly to dictate emails and notes; use Hedy to capture and understand meetings. Hedy scores 4.7 out of 5 in our rankings and Letterly 3.4, but they solve different jobs, and some people use both.

Letterly and Hedy start with the same input: your voice. Letterly is a voice-to-text app that turns spoken thoughts into polished written content. Hedy is a meeting assistant that turns conversations into structured notes, action items and live coaching, with speech recognition that runs on your device. Which one you want depends on what you do with your recordings.

What each tool does

Letterly captures your voice and rewrites it. Speak a rambling thought and it returns a clean email, a structured note, a post or a to-do list, using 25+ rewrite formats and custom templates. The pitch is simple: talk instead of type.

Hedy captures meeting audio and turns it into meeting intelligence. It transcribes live, names speakers, extracts action items, summarizes decisions, offers live coaching during the conversation, and connects context across your meetings through its Topics feature. The pitch is deeper: make every meeting more productive and every follow-up more reliable.

Transcription and languages

Letterly supports 90+ languages with automatic detection, among the broadest in any voice app. The focus is getting your words into text quickly.

Hedy supports 30+ languages. Speech recognition runs on your device (NVIDIA Nemotron since June 2026, with Whisper still an option), and since Hedy 3.12 speaker diarization runs on-device on iPhone and Mac once a session ends. Transcripts carry speaker names. Letterly’s multi-speaker mode labels Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on without naming people.

Verdict: Letterly wins on language breadth. Hedy wins on meeting accuracy with named speakers.

AI features

Letterly’s AI rewrites. It takes your transcript and reformats it into a chosen style. It does not know who you were talking to, what was decided or what happens next.

Hedy’s AI analyzes the meeting: structured summaries with topic breakdowns, action items attributed to participants, decisions, real-time coaching and cross-meeting context. Over time it builds a searchable record of your conversations and can draft prep notes before your next call.

Verdict: Different jobs. Letterly’s rewriting is better for content creation; Hedy’s analysis is better for meetings.

Privacy and data handling

Letterly records offline, but transcription and AI rewriting run in the cloud, so your spoken content is sent to its servers. It states that your words are never used to train AI. It publishes no compliance certifications, with no SOC 2 and no HIPAA BAA.

Hedy keeps speech recognition on your device. With Local AI on supported hardware (Apple Silicon Macs, capable Windows GPUs, iPhone 15 Pro and newer, recent iPads, and Android phones with a supported GPU), summaries, notes and coaching run there too, so nothing has to leave your machine. Otherwise the AI step runs in Hedy’s EU or US cloud, and you choose the region. Hedy never trains on your data, holds SOC 2 Type I, and offers a HIPAA BAA on Enterprise (200-seat minimum).

Verdict: Both say they do not train on your content. Hedy wins on architecture and certifications. See our privacy guide for how we judge this.

Platforms and offline use

Letterly runs on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and web, and records through a phone, computer or Apple Watch mic. The Windows app arrived in August 2026, and since 8 October 2026 it can record meeting audio. In-person recordings are limited to 90 minutes each. Recording works offline, but transcription and AI need a connection.

Hedy runs on Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Android, web and Apple Watch, with no bot on desktop. Transcription works offline, and with Local AI the full pipeline does too.

Verdict: Platform coverage is close. Hedy offers more complete offline functionality.

Integrations

Letterly connects through Zapier, custom webhooks and an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Hedy offers Zapier (7,000+ apps), a verified n8n node, a REST API with US and EU endpoints, signed webhooks and an MCP server, and sends structured meeting data rather than plain text.

Verdict: Both integrate well for their category; Hedy’s options are broader and more structured.

Pricing

Letterly is free to start, with limits it does not publish. Pro is $19.99 a month in the US App Store, with cheaper yearly plans.

Hedy has a free plan with 5 hours a month (live coaching for the first 30 minutes of each session), Pro at $12.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and a $299 lifetime license.

Verdict: Hedy Pro costs less per month than Letterly Pro, and Hedy adds an annual price and a lifetime option.

Quick comparison

Who should choose what

Choose Letterly if:

• You mostly need voice-to-text for emails, notes and content
• You dictate more than you attend meetings
• You need 90+ languages
• You want one-tap capture with output already formatted

Choose Hedy if:

• You attend meetings regularly and want summaries, action items and decisions extracted automatically
• You want audio to stay on your device, or need EU data residency and compliance paperwork
• You want live coaching, named speakers and cross-meeting context
• You need to work offline, or capture without a bot

The bottom line

Letterly is a dictation tool: speak freely, get polished text. Hedy is a meeting assistant: attend the meeting, get structured insight, and keep the processing on your own hardware if you choose. Letterly scores a point higher on ease of use, and for quick dictation it is the simpler tool. For meetings, Hedy is the one built for the job.

Many professionals use both, Letterly for dictation through the day and Hedy for every meeting. If you have to pick one, the question is whether you are mostly dictating or mostly meeting. See also why we ranked Hedy first and best AI note takers for in-person meetings.