Speed
Talking is faster than typing. Here is where that holds.
Ceylo exists because most people speak several times faster than they type, which is the whole argument for dictation and only half the story. The wait after you stop talking counts too, and so does how much fixing the text needs. Ceylo is built to keep both small: the speech model runs on your own machine, so nothing is uploaded and nothing queues behind other people's work, and the finished text arrives in one paste.
Free plan included · No account, no card · Windows 10/11
Updated
How the finished text arrives
Ceylo, normally: one paste
Send them the revised figures before lunch.
The whole block lands at once, so a hundred word paragraph arrives as fast as a five word one and autocomplete has no gaps to interleave with.
The fallback: keystroke by keystroke
Send them the revised fig…
Only when the clipboard or the paste is unavailable, which an app that claims Ctrl+V as its own shortcut can cause.
How much faster is dictating, really?
Ceylo has never published a speed benchmark, and this page will not invent one. The comparison people mean is how fast a person talks against how fast the same person types, which is a fact about humans rather than a measurement of one tool against another. What is reliably true is the shape: the gap is widest on prose you already know how to say, and it closes on anything needing symbols, structure or heavy revision.
What decides how long you wait after you stop talking?
Ceylo transcribes on your own machine, so the wait is your processor and the speech model you picked rather than an upload and a queue. Ceylo's recommended model is about 1.6 GB and sits deliberately in the middle: smaller models in the same picker finish sooner and get more wrong, larger ones are slower and more accurate. A network outage changes none of it, because there was never a round trip to lose.
The models in the picker, and what each one trades
- Smallerfinishes sooner, gets more wrong
- Recommendedabout 1.6 GB
- Largerslower, more accurate
Every one of them runs on your own processor, so there is no upload and no queue to wait behind, and a network outage changes none of it.
Why does the finished text appear all at once?
Ceylo pastes the whole transcript into the focused window in one shot rather than replaying it as keystrokes. A hundred word paragraph lands as fast as a five word one, and an editor with autocomplete has no gaps to interfere with. That is the difference between waiting for a dictation and waiting for a dictation and then watching it type itself out.
Does Ceylo ever type something you did not say?
Ceylo checks a recording for genuine speech before it types anything, because speech models fill silence and that is the expensive failure in a dictation workflow: deleting an invented sentence costs more time than typing the real one would have. So a dictation that caught only a keyboard, a chair or room tone produces nothing at all, and an attempt that produced no text does not spend a free-plan dictation either.
You said something
Send them the revised figures before lunch.
Typed into the focused window. Spends one free-plan dictation.
A keyboard, a chair, room tone
Nothing typed.
Speech models fill silence, and deleting an invented sentence costs more time than typing the real one. An attempt that produced no text spends nothing.
What makes dictation slower rather than faster?
Ceylo loses its advantage the moment you start editing. A sentence dictated and then rewritten twice was slower than typing it once, so dictation pays best where you already know what you want to say: a first draft, a long message, notes straight after a call. Ceylo raises the odds of getting it right the first time through a personal term list and vocabulary packs for six fields, which is time saved at the only point that matters.
When typing is still faster
Dictation is not a general speed-up, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon:
- Anything symbol-heavy. Code, spreadsheet formulas and precise punctuation are faster typed.
- Short bursts. Two words are quicker to type than to hold a key for.
- A room where you cannot talk. Dictation has an obvious social cost that typing does not.
- Editing something that already exists. Ceylo inserts text; it does not select, replace or move it.
- A slow machine with a large model. The wait after you release is real, and the only lever is picking a smaller model, which trades accuracy for it.
- A machine that is not running Windows 10 or 11. Ceylo has no macOS, Linux, web or phone build, so none of this applies there yet.
Find out on your own first draft.
The free plan includes 15 dictations a month, no time limit, with no card and no account.