Comparison

Transcribe vs Personal LLM

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Transcribe

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Transcribe is a powerful audio transcription app that turns your speech into text with remarkable accuracy - all while keeping your data completely private. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, Transcribe processes everything on your device, ensuring your sensitive conversations never leave your phone. Key Features: - Complete Privacy: All transcription happens on your device - no internet connection required. - Good Quality Transcription: Powered by advanced Whisper AI technology with CoreML acceleration for lightning-fast results. - Record or Import: Capture audio directly through your device's microphone or import existing audio files. - Intuitive Playback Controls: Review your recordings with precision using skip forward/backward controls and waveform visualization. - Smart Organization: Save, favorite, and categorize your transcriptions for quick reference. - Seamless Sharing: Share your transcripts instantly via message, email, or your favorite apps. Perfect For: - Students capturing lectures and study notes - Journalists recording interviews - Professionals documenting meetings - Researchers collecting verbal data - Content creators transcribing podcasts or videos - Anyone who prefers speaking over typing We have a generous free tier limit for non premium users and a free 3 day trial to test out all the premium features. Unlimited transcription and uploads would need a premium upgrade. Terms of use: https://rigorous-flamingo-539.notion.site/Transcribe-app-EULA-20280b4a5c4d80389ea6e497c10a1025 Privacy policy : https://rigorous-flamingo-539.notion.site/Transcribe-app-Privacy-Policy-20180b4a5c4d80efbd4ac2e98bd74a26

About

Personal LLM

Features
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Chat with an AI that has nowhere to send your data. Personal LLM is a private, offline AI chat app: open AI models run entirely on your phone — no server, no account, and after a one-time model download no internet at all. YOUR AI, YOUR DEVICE Cloud chatbots send every word you type to a data centre. Personal LLM computes the answer on your phone's own chip: your chats, your photos and the models themselves stay with you. Uninstall it and everything is gone — nothing was ever anywhere else. WORKS COMPLETELY OFFLINE Download a model once, then chat anywhere: • On flights, subways and trips abroad • In dead zones and on unreliable connections • Whenever you want answers that stay private Switch on airplane mode if you like — the app won't notice. THE LATEST OPEN MODELS, PHONE-SIZED • Qwen 3.5 (0.8B, 4B, 9B) — fast, smart and multilingual • Google Gemma 4 (E2B, E4B) — mobile-first quality, 140+ languages • GLM 4.6V Flash — flagship-class vision for high-end phones • Ministral 3 — compact, with a 256k context window • Bring your own: load any GGUF model by URL (Hugging Face links work) Models are 0.8–6 GB downloads. A "Fits your device" badge reads your phone's RAM so you know what will run well before you download, the catalog is searchable and filterable, and interrupted downloads resume where they stopped. BENCHMARK IT ON YOUR OWN PHONE Run the built-in benchmark on any downloaded model to see exactly how fast it loads and generates on your hardware — tokens per second, GPU or CPU — and pick the model that fits. CHAT WITH YOUR DOCUMENTS Attach a PDF, text or Markdown file to any chat and ask about it: the text is extracted and searched on your phone, the model answers from the matching passages and tells you which ones it used. Contracts, papers, manuals, notes — none of it leaves the device. UNDERSTANDS IMAGES Every model in the catalog supports vision. Add the optional image-support file, then snap a photo or pick one from your gallery: read documents, translate signs, decode menus, describe scenes. WATCH IT THINK Turn on thinking mode and reasoning models show their step-by-step working in a collapsible panel above the answer — great for math, code and anything worth double-checking. A REAL CHAT APP • Markdown that renders: code blocks with one-tap copy, tables and lists • Streaming answers with a live tokens-per-second readout • Switch models mid-conversation from the chat header • A system prompt per chat, plus Creative / Balanced / Precise / Thinking presets • Edit, regenerate, copy, select text — or have any answer read aloud (on-device TTS) • Search your chats, pin favourites, light and dark themes • Back up every chat and setting to a single JSON file, and restore anywhere PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Conversations and photos never leave your device • No account, no sign-up, no server • GPU-accelerated by llama.cpp — Metal on iPhone, OpenCL on Snapdragon Adreno • Free to use, supported by ads — ads never interrupt an answer, and offline none can load Your questions are yours. Keep them that way.

Screenshots

Transcribe4 screens
Personal LLM4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Personal LLM at none against Transcribe's 3. Personal LLM also leads on update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 3 months). Transcribe's advantage is ads (none vs shown). On price, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Transcribe sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per 7 days. Personal LLM asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Transcribe ships an update every 3 months, Personal LLM every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 11, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
Transcribe versus Personal LLM: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTranscribePersonal LLM
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 6 weeks — better
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size236 MB67 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperKrishna Sangeeth KSNelson Lai

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Transcribe

Subscriptions2
  • Privy Weekly subscription3 Days trial$9.997 Days
  • Privy Yearly Subscription$49.991 Year
One-time1
  • Privy Lifetime$99.99
None

Personal LLM

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Transcribe free?
Transcribe is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Personal LLM free?
Personal LLM is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Transcribe or Personal LLM have ads?
Personal LLM shows ads; Transcribe does not.
Which is updated more often, Transcribe or Personal LLM?
Transcribe ships an update every 3 months, and Personal LLM every 6 weeks. Most recently, Transcribe was updated on September 11, 2026 and Personal LLM on September 23, 2026.

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