BYOAIK — Bring Your Own AI Key: a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.

MacWhisper

Local Whisper transcription for Mac with bring-your-own-key cloud STT and LLM cleanup

Website Source code

Category:

Voice and Transcription Tools

Pricing:

Free

Open source:

No

Self-hostable:

No

Local-first:

Yes

Platforms:

Desktop, Mobile, Web

AI providers (bring your own key):

OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Ollama, xAI Grok, DeepSeek, Azure OpenAI, Custom / OpenAI-compatible, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Mistral, Fireworks

API key storage:

Stored locally on device

Key risk level:

LOW

Trust score:

86/100

MacWhisper (by Jordi Bruin / Good Snooze) is a popular paid macOS transcription app that runs OpenAI's Whisper models locally for private, offline transcription of audio, meetings, and YouTube videos. Beyond local transcription, it offers optional cloud speech-to-text and LLM post-processing using the end user's own API keys. For cloud transcription, users can plug in keys for OpenAI, Groq, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, or any custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. For AI cleanup, summarization, and translation of transcripts and dictation, users supply their own keys for OpenAI/ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Groq, Ollama (local), xAI, DeepSeek, Azure AI, and custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Official docs explicitly state users must "fill in your OpenAI API key." It is closed-source and sold as a one-time purchase (with an optional hosted Assistant subscription that does not require keys). The app is widely used (220k+ sales, 4.8/5 on Product Hunt across ~1,900 ratings) and actively maintained.

How your API key is handled

Your API key is stored locally on your device. Requests are sent directly to the AI provider.

Setup

Open settings, paste your provider API key, choose a model, and start — the key stays on your device.