Rimbalo

Dictation that runs on your phone, with every radio off.

It is free, with no account and no limit. For attorneys, paralegals and law firms, the Legal pack turns what you said into the finished file note, signed on the phone. For RIAs, financial advisors and insurance agents, the Financial Advisor pack writes the client meeting note.

What you pay

Dictation costs nothing, with no account, no minute limit, and no connection needed once the speech model is on the phone. A year is $149.99, and dictation is not part of it: that stays free, with no account and no limit. The year buys your own words, spoken corrections, search across everything you have dictated, and files out. It renews at $149.99. If you stop paying, what it adds stops at the end of the year you paid for, and your dictations stay on your phone to read and share as text.

InstalledOne Year — $149.99Each pack — $439.99
Dictation with no limit, on the phone
“Scratch that”, “Cap that”, “New paragraph”
Your dictations kept on the phone, until you delete them
Share a dictation as text
Your word list, with written and spoken forms
The names from your client list or case captions, added to it
“Select” and a few words, by voice
Snippets, put in by saying “Insert”
Start and stop with a headset’s or a car’s play button
Search across everything you have dictated
Share as PDF or DOCX
The pack’s documents, each section taken from your words
Its terms written as you type them
Every date, amount, number and name confirmed before you sign, on the phone
Matters or clients, each with its signed documents
Deadlines to your calendar
A hash on each signed document, and a log of what you sign and share

A pack is one price, $439.99 a year, and includes everything in One Year; the app stays free without either. Both are yearly subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, which show the price where you live.

What each pack writes

Each section is taken from your words by fixed rules. Nothing is written for you: every sentence is one you dictated.

Legal

For attorneys, paralegals and law firms. The file note, and after a first meeting the intake note, with the names for your conflict check shared as a list. Cites written as you type them, a privilege line on every page, and your firm’s letterhead. The Legal pack.

Financial Advisor

For RIAs, financial advisors and insurance agents. The client meeting note: who was there, objectives, time horizon and risk tolerance, recommendation and rationale, follow-ups, beneficiaries, amounts and allocations. The call note, dictated in half a minute after the call. A signed note’s follow-ups stay on the client’s file until you mark them done, and a change in risk tolerance, horizon or allocation since the client’s last note is flagged. Plans, forms and tickers are written as you type them, such as 401(k), Form 5498 and VTI. The Financial Advisor pack.

Coming from Dragon Anywhere?

Dragon Anywhere was $149.99 a year. Here dictation costs nothing, and the $149.99 buys back the other half: the word list you spent years training, the spoken corrections, search across your own archive, and files out. Same number. Half the product is now free.

How the two compare

Dragon AnywhereRimbalo
Where speech becomes textOn Nuance’s servers. It needs an internet connection to dictateOn the phone. It dictates in airplane mode
On saleNot since July 1, 2026, and subscriptions can no longer be renewedYes
AccountAn email address and a passwordNone
What dictation costs$14.99 a month or $149.99 a year, after a one-week trialNothing, with no limit
Limit on length or timeNoneNone
Your words, with written and spoken formsYesYes, with One Year
Words imported from desktop DragonYesYes, with One Year
Your words exported from the appNot in its guideYes, as wordlist.txt
Words kept in step with desktop DragonYesNo
Where your words are keptOn Nuance’s serverOn the phone, and in its backup if you turn that on
“Scratch that” and “Select …” by voiceYesYes; “Select” with One Year
Bold, italic and underline by voiceYesNo: the pack sets the document’s form
Text put in by saying its nameYes, with fields to fill in by voiceSnippets, without fields, with One Year
SearchBy title, in Dropbox and EvernoteAcross everything you have dictated, with One Year
Files outRTF, DOCX or text, by email or to Dropbox, Box or EvernoteText, or PDF and DOCX with One Year, to any app through the share sheet
Bluetooth microphoneYesYes
A finished documentForms you build from named blocks of textA pack’s documents, every date, amount, number and name confirmed before you sign
LanguagesEnglish (US, Canada, UK), French and GermanEnglish and 24 more
What your audio and text are used forNuance’s terms say they are used to improve its recognitionThe app keeps no audio, and we wrote no code that can send your audio or your documents anywhere

Dragon Anywhere’s side is from Nuance’s own product page, its user guide (2021), its terms of service and the app’s store listings, read in October 2026.

Bring your words with you

In desktop Dragon, export your custom words and phrases (Vocabulary, then Export custom word and phrase list), and import the file in Rimbalo’s Words. Dragon Anywhere has no export of its own, so bring a desktop export.

One thing it does not do

It writes a sentence at a time, not a word at a time: the text appears each time you pause, not as you speak.

Where the work happens

Speech is turned into text on the phone. Turn on airplane mode and dictate: the text appears just the same. That shows where the work happens; it does not, on its own, show where anything goes later.

We wrote no code that can send your audio or your documents anywhere, and on Android the operating system enforces it.

What you can check yourself lists each check, and where on your phone to look.

Questions

Do I need a connection?

Once, after you install it: the speech model downloads through the App Store or Google Play, about 140 MB for English. From then on dictation works without a connection.

Which languages?

English, and Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. The other languages share a larger model, downloaded the first time you choose one.

What happens when my year ends?

What it adds stops at the end of the year you paid for, with 14 days allowed for a renewal to reach a phone that has been offline. Dictation stays free, and everything you dictated stays on your phone, to read and to share as text. We cannot promise that Apple or Google will still run this version in 2031. Nobody can. So the word list format is published, below, and the words you taught it outlive the app.

Is there something cheaper?

Mentalyc starts at $14.99 a month on an annual plan and it is cheaper than a pack. So does Upheal, and Scribenote’s free plan is genuinely unlimited. They all send the session to a server. If a server is acceptable in your practice, buy the cheaper one — we are not going to pretend it isn’t cheaper. This is for the practices where a server is not acceptable.

Prices from each company’s own pricing page, October 2026.

The word list format

Rimbalo shares your word list as wordlist.txt, and reads one back. It is UTF-8 text, one entry per line: the written form, or the written form, a tab, and the spoken form. Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored, and a written form listed twice keeps its last entry.

# Word list. One entry per line: written form, or written form<TAB>spoken form.
Abernathy
voir dire	vwahr deer
§ 1983	section nineteen eighty-three