Privacy Policy

The short version

• On-device models keep everything local. When you transcribe with a local model, your audio and text never leave your computer, and we never receive them.
• Freestyle Transcribe Cloud is zero-retention. When you use our cloud service, your audio is transcribed, returned to you, and then discarded. We don't keep your recordings or transcripts.
• You sign in with a free account. An account lets us secure your access, sync your preferences across devices, and manage your plan. It's about your identity, not your words.
• We collect limited diagnostics. Crash reports and basic product analytics help us fix bugs and improve Freestyle. They never include your dictated audio or transcripts, and you can turn analytics off.
• We never sell your personal data.

On-device transcription

When you choose a local model, such as whisper.cpp or Qwen3 ASR, transcription runs entirely on your machine. Your audio is processed on your device and the resulting text lands at your cursor. None of it is sent to Freestyle or anyone else, and it works offline. This is the most private way to use the app.

Freestyle Transcribe (Cloud)

If you'd rather not run a model locally, or you want our most accurate transcription and cleanup, you can use Freestyle Transcribe Cloud. Your audio is sent over an encrypted connection to our service, transcribed (and optionally cleaned up, formatted, or matched against your custom vocabulary), and the text is returned to you.

We run this service with zero data retention. By default, your audio and transcripts are processed transiently and are not written to long-term storage; once your text is returned, the audio is discarded. Settings that make Freestyle feel like yours, like your dictionary, vocabulary, and tone, are saved to your account so they follow you across devices. The words you dictate are not.

Your account

Using the cloud service and syncing across devices requires a free Freestyle account. When you sign in (for example with Google or GitHub), we receive your name and email address from that provider so we can identify you and secure your account. If you use Freestyle with a team or organization, we also store your organization and role so the right people have access. For paid plans, our payment processor handles your billing details; we don't store full card numbers.

Diagnostics and analytics

To keep Freestyle stable and understand which features are worth investing in, we collect a limited amount of diagnostic data: crash and error reports so we can find and fix problems, and basic product analytics such as which features are used and how the app performs.

This data is about the app, not your content. It does not include your dictated audio or your transcripts. You can opt out of product analytics in the app's settings. We use established providers, such as Sentry for error reporting and PostHog for product analytics, to process this on our behalf.

Usage and plan limits

For cloud transcription, we count your usage, for example the amount of speech transcribed, to apply your plan's limits and, on paid plans, to bill accurately. This is a count of activity, not a record of what you said.

Bring your own provider

Freestyle also lets you connect a third-party model with your own API key, such as OpenAI, Groq, Deepgram, or ElevenLabs. When you do, your audio goes directly from your device to that provider under their terms and privacy policy. We don't proxy, see, or store it.

This website

When you visit our website, our hosting provider processes standard request data (such as your IP address and browser type) to serve pages and protect against abuse. We use essential cookies plus limited, privacy-respecting analytics to understand traffic. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

How we share data

We do not sell your personal data, and we never share it for advertising. We share the limited data above only with service providers that help us run Freestyle, such as our hosting, authentication, analytics, crash-reporting, and payment vendors, and only so they can do that work for us. We may also disclose information if the law requires it. We do not share your recordings or transcripts, because by default we don't have them.

How long we keep data

• Recordings and transcripts: not retained. Cloud transcription is zero-retention by default, and local transcription is never sent to us at all.
• Account and settings: kept while your account is active, and removed when you close it or ask us to.
• Diagnostics: kept for a limited period and then deleted or aggregated.

Security and compliance

We protect data in transit with encryption and apply reasonable technical and organizational safeguards. Keeping transcription on-device, and running our cloud service with zero retention, means there is very little sensitive data to protect in the first place.

We are pursuing SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliance, and zero data retention is available on every plan. For teams with stricter requirements, we can offer isolated or self-hosted deployment and a Business Associate Agreement. No system is ever perfectly secure, but we design Freestyle to hold as little of your data as possible.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete the personal data we hold about you, or to object to certain processing. Because we hold so little, most requests are quick to honor. Email us and we'll help.

Children

Freestyle is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

Changes to this policy

As Freestyle grows, we may update this policy. When we make a meaningful change, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, let you know in the app or on our website.