By Vivek Kumar Verma
I type a lot. Code, messages, emails, blog posts like this one. At some point I noticed that my thoughts move faster than my fingers, and that the gap between "I know what I want to say" and "it's on the screen" is where most of my energy leaks out.
Voice dictation is supposed to fix that. The built-in tools never did it for me. They write down every "um", every false start, every sentence I changed my mind about halfway through, and then I spend more time cleaning up than I would have spent typing.
Then I tried Wispr Flow, and it was the first dictation tool that felt like a real step up. It also made me ask a slightly annoying question: why does something this useful need a subscription, and why can't I just run it with the API access I already have?
So I'm building my own. It's called Murmr.
Murmr is a voice dictation app that works the way Wispr Flow does, with one big difference in how it's run. It's free, and you bring your own Groq API key.
That's the whole deal. No account to create with me, no subscription, no word limit that I set. You paste in your own key, you press a shortcut, you talk, and clean text lands wherever your cursor is. Your usage is between you and Groq, which has a generous free tier and is very fast.
I like this setup for a few reasons. I don't have to run servers that process your voice. You can see exactly what you're using and what it costs you, which for most people will be close to nothing. And I can spend my time making the app better instead of figuring out pricing tiers.
The best part of a tool like this is that it stays out of your way, so most of what I'm building is about making the text come out right on the first try.
And it keeps growing. I have a long list of things I want to add, and since it's built in the open way I like to work, you'll see it move quickly.
I'm a student in Delhi. I know what it's like to look at a useful tool and then look at the monthly price in dollars. A lot of people who would benefit most from dictation, like students, people with hand and wrist strain, and people writing in a second language, are exactly the people who can't comfortably add another subscription.
Wispr Flow is a good product, and I'm not here to say otherwise. But a free tier with a weekly word cap and a paid plan on top is a business decision. I wanted to see what happens when the tool is simply yours, with your own key.
If you write a lot and wish you could just say it, Murmr is for you. If you're a developer who dictates long prompts and messages to AI tools, even more so. Speaking a rambling, detailed explanation is much faster than typing one, and the extra context tends to get you better answers.
Murmr is still being built, and some of what I described above is more polished than the rest. I'd rather tell you that than pretend it's finished. If you try it and something feels off, I want to hear about it, because the rough edges are the part I can't see by myself.
Grab a free Groq API key, set up Murmr, and give it a real day of use instead of a quick demo. Then tell me what annoyed you. That's the most useful feedback I can get.
If you want to follow along as it develops, I'll keep sharing updates on LinkedIn and on my channels.
