Braina vs Serenade

Braina is a voice dictation and AI assistant available on Windows, Android, iOS and macOS. It supports voice commands and custom vocabulary, with dictation in 90 languages. The Pro plan includes unlimited online and offline dictation in software or websites, and the product can transcribe audio and video files offline on the user’s computer. Braina works with software and sites including MS Word, WordPress, Gmail and Visual Studio, and integrates with OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Mistral and Meta Llama. Its Android and iOS apps can act as wireless microphones to control a PC over Wi-Fi. Braina describes its privacy model as hybrid, with most data stored locally. The free Lite plan has no dictation, 300 advanced AI credits and 30 free Gemini Pro messages per day; advanced AI features use credits after free daily quotas run out. Pro costs $99 a year for one Windows PC. Pro Plus is $199 a year and Pro Ultra is $299 a year.

Serenade is an open-source voice assistant for developers who want to write and edit code using natural speech. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and supports Chrome. Commands can add, insert, change, and delete code, as well as navigate, copy, and paste. Developers can set custom vocabulary and create voice commands or plugins through Serenade’s open protocol, which uses JSON over WebSockets to connect plugins with the desktop app. Listed integrations and supported tools include VS Code, Chrome, Hyper, Slack, IntelliJ, Jupyter, and GitHub. Speech recognition can use a cloud service or run locally. In cloud mode, audio and the file being edited are sent to Serenade servers; the maker says they are not stored unless the user opts in to sharing. With local processing, audio and code stay on the device unless sharing is enabled. Users can change data-sharing settings in the app. Windows local processing requires WSL with Ubuntu. Serenade is free and licensed under Apache 2.0.