MacWhisper
What is not verified
The headline figure of about US$100,000 in total revenue rests on one source: the startups.email newsletter by Dimi, published on 26 August 2023. The newsletter cites no founder statement, no screenshot and no payment data, only "our database", and the startups.email site now shows a domain-for-sale page, so the database cannot be checked. In every source read for this page the founder, Jordi Bruin, gives prices, features and download numbers but no revenue, and TrustMRR has no profile for the app. What outside data confirms is smaller: Gumroad's own counter showed 57,430 orders on 25 August 2023, close to the newsletter's 57,574 downloads, but that counter includes free downloads. A reader could look for a payment-processor-verified profile (TrustMRR or Gumroad), a talk or interview in which the founder gives revenue, or the annual accounts of his business in the Dutch company register. The headline number is grade D: one claim or one estimate, with no second source. Aiolum shows it because the story is useful, and marks it so that it is not mistaken for a verified figure.
MacWhisper is a transcription app for the Mac. Transcription means turning recorded speech into written text. The app runs Whisper, a speech-recognition model that OpenAI released with open weights, which means anyone may download the trained model and run it on their own computer without paying OpenAI. MacWhisper runs it on-device, on the user's own Mac, so the audio is never uploaded and the developer pays nothing per minute of audio. Later versions added other open models, Nvidia's Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR, and optional cloud services for users who bring their own API keys.
Jordi Bruin, an indie developer in the Netherlands who works under the name Good Snooze, released it in January 2023, according to the startups.email newsletter, and sells it mainly through Gumroad. On 5 February 2023 the Gumroad page data showed 7,160 orders, with Pro listed at €10. On 25 August 2023 it showed 57,430 orders, with Pro listed at €25. The next day, 26 August 2023, the startups.email newsletter reported that MacWhisper had made about US$100,000 in revenue and had been downloaded 57,574 times. By October 2026 the counter stood at 619,325 and Pro was listed at €65.
The revenue figure is the weak point of this page, so the page carries the badge "Reported, not verified" and evidence grade D. The newsletter does not say where the figure comes from: it names no founder statement, no screenshot and no payment data, only "our database", and that database is no longer online. In every source read for this page, the founder gives prices, version notes and download figures but no revenue. The download counter is Gumroad's own data, but it also counts free downloads of the free version, so it cannot be turned into a revenue figure.
The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue, August 2023 | about US$100,000 | D | Reported by the startups.email newsletter (author Dimi) on 26 August 2023, which says the app launched in January 2023 and calls it a one-time purchase product. The newsletter cites no source: no founder statement, no screenshot, only "our database". No second source. | [1] |
| Downloads reported with the revenue figure | 57,574 | D | Same newsletter, 26 August 2023. It agrees with Gumroad's own counter a day earlier (next row), which suggests the newsletter read the Gumroad page for this number. | [1, 2] |
| Orders on the Gumroad page, 25 August 2023 | 57,430 | C | The sales counter in the page data of a Wayback Machine copy. It counts every order, and the free version is a €0 order on the same page, so it is not a count of paying customers. The page had 854 ratings. | [2] |
| Orders on the Gumroad page, 5 February 2023 | 7,160 | C | Wayback Machine copy, about three weeks after launch. 135 ratings. | [4] |
| Orders on the Gumroad page, 14 June 2024 and 14 June 2025 | 117,604 and 226,001 | C | Wayback Machine copies of the same page. | [5, 6] |
| Orders on the Gumroad page, 24 October 2026 | 619,325 | C | Live page data. 2,803 ratings with an average of 4.5 of 5; the seller is shown as Jordi Bruin, verified, with 29 products. | [3] |
| Price of one Pro license on Gumroad | €10 (February 2023), €25 (August 2023), €30 (June 2024), €59 (June 2025), €65 (October 2026) | C | Read from the license options in the Gumroad page data on each date. 9to5Mac also gave €10 in February 2023. | [4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 9] |
| Revenue figure computed from orders and prices | not possible | calc | Calculated: the counter mixes free and paid orders and the page does not split them, so multiplying it by the Pro price gives no revenue figure. This page does not attempt one. | [2, 3] |
| App Store version | Whisper Transcription, for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision | C | United States store page read 24 October 2026: seller Jordi Bruin, developer Good Snooze, 171 ratings with an average of 3.9. The oldest review shown is dated 4 May 2023. | [8] |
| Hacker News front-page post, 22 August 2023 | 240 points and 93 comments | C | Posted by a user, not by the founder, four days before the newsletter. Read through the Algolia Hacker News API. | [11] |
| Apple's own marketing, 29 October 2024 | MacWhisper used as a benchmark in Apple's Mac mini announcement | C | Apple wrote that the M4 Mac mini transcribes with on-device AI speech-to-text up to 2x faster in MacWhisper than the M1 model. | [12] |
| The founder's other work | more than 20 apps over two years, seven of them featured on the App Store | C | Speaker biography on the Appdevcon conference page, undated, with talks from June 2022. | [15] |
| Team | 1 founder | C | The App Store lists Jordi Bruin as seller; the Gumroad page writes in the first person ("I'll try to email you back"). In 2026 the website footer says "Built by Jordi Bruin and friends at Good Snooze in the Netherlands", without a headcount. | [8, 3, 7] |
| TrustMRR profile | none | C | The profile address returned "Not found" on 24 October 2026, and the local cache of profiles has no entry. | [18] |
| Outside funding | none reported | D | No source read for this page mentions an investor or a funding round. | [1, 15] |
| Time from launch to the August 2023 figure | 7 months | calc | Calculated: January 2023 to August 2023. | [1] |
How to read this table: a grade D value comes from one source with no second source, here a third-party newsletter. A grade C value comes from the company's own pages, from the data of the Gumroad or App Store page read directly or in a Wayback Machine copy on the date given, or from a press article. A "calc" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| MacWhisper Free (Gumroad) | 0 | 0 | smaller Whisper models, no license needed |
| MacWhisper Pro, 1 license (Gumroad) | 72.83 one-time | €65; personal use, lifetime updates | |
| Pro, 5 licenses (Gumroad) | 301.39 one-time | €269, listed as €54 per license | |
| Pro, 10 licenses (Gumroad) | 549.00 one-time | €490, listed as €49 per license | |
| Pro, 20 licenses (Gumroad) | 1,007.24 one-time | €899, listed as €45 per license | |
| Pro, 50 licenses (Gumroad) | 2,463.76 one-time | €2,199, listed as €44 per license | |
| Whisper Transcription Pro Lifetime (App Store) | 89.99 or 99.99 one-time | two lifetime prices listed | |
| Whisper Transcription Assistant (App Store) | 7.50 | 9.99 | US$89.99 a year; also US$5.99 a week; Pro & Assistant US$12.99 |
Gumroad is the main shop. The free version is a €0 order on the same page. Pro is a one-time license with lifetime updates; the Gumroad page lists €65 for one license and lower prices per license in packs of 5 to 50, while the official website showed €64 on the same day. The Gumroad page offers 25% off to journalists, students and non-profits who write to support, and a refund within 7 days. The App Store version, Whisper Transcription, sells lifetime Pro unlocks and an Assistant subscription for cloud transcription; the store page lists the prices below without naming which unlock belongs to which platform.
The timeline
From a free Mac app on Gumroad to more than 600,000 orders on the same page, in under four years. Each entry carries its grade.
- June 2022CBruin speaks at Appdevcon in the Netherlands on shipping side projects in "2-2-2 easy steps". His undated conference biography says he shipped more than 20 apps in two years. [15]
- January 2023DMacWhisper appears on Gumroad: a free Mac app that runs Whisper locally, with the larger models as a paid upgrade. The month comes from the startups.email newsletter. [1]
- 3 February 2023C9to5Mac reviews it: drag and drop, local processing, four model sizes, export to SRT and VTT subtitles, and Pro at €10 for the Medium and Large models. [9]
- 5 February 2023CThe Gumroad page data shows 7,160 orders and 135 ratings. [4]
- May 2023CThe App Store version, Whisper Transcription, is on sale; its oldest review shown is dated 4 May 2023. [8]
- 19 June 2023CThe writer Om Malik publishes "Why I love MacWhisper" and writes that he cancelled his Otter subscription, which he said cost him about US$100 a year. [10]
- 22 August 2023CA user posts the Gumroad page to Hacker News; it gets 240 points. [11]
- 25 August 2023CThe Gumroad page data shows 57,430 orders, 854 ratings, and Pro at €25. [2]
- 26 August 2023DThe startups.email newsletter reports about US$100,000 in revenue and 57,574 downloads, with no source named. [1]
- 8 March 2024CBruin is the guest on Slices, the Deep Dish Swift podcast, described as an indie dev at Good Snooze building MacWhisper, Navi, Posture Pal and Vivid. [16]
- 14 June 2024C117,604 orders on the Gumroad page; Pro at €30. [5]
- 29 October 2024CApple's Mac mini announcement uses MacWhisper as one of its speed benchmarks. [12]
- 6 December 2024CMacWhisper 11 adds a redesign and system-wide dictation from the menu bar, 9to5Mac reports. [13]
- 14 June 2025C226,001 orders on the Gumroad page; Pro at €59. [6]
- 14 July 2026CMacWhisper 14 ships with a new transcript editor; 9to5Mac calls Bruin a prolific indie developer and notes support for Nvidia's Parakeet models. [14]
- 24 October 2026CVersion 15.2 on Gumroad, 619,325 orders, 2,803 ratings, Pro at €65. No revenue figure from the founder or a payment processor has been found. [3]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
A free app as the shop window
The basic app costs nothing and runs the smaller models. The larger, more accurate models and the work features (batch transcription, speaker recognition, meeting recording, dictation clean-up) need the one-time Pro license. Gumroad's counter went from 7,160 orders in February 2023 to 57,430 in August 2023, but it counts free and paid orders together, so the share of buyers is unknown.
The customer's computer does the work
Whisper's weights are free, and the transcription runs on the user's Mac, so each extra minute of audio costs the developer nothing. That is what makes a one-time price workable, and it is also what reviewers praised: 9to5Mac stressed that files never leave the Mac, and Om Malik wrote in June 2023 that he cancelled a transcription subscription that he said cost about US$100 a year.
Prices that rise with the product
The Gumroad page data shows Pro at €10 in February 2023, €25 in August 2023, €30 in June 2024, €59 in June 2025 and €65 in October 2026. Over the same period the page added new models and features, and it promises Pro owners all current and future updates.
Every new open model is a new version
When new open speech models appeared, the app added them: WhisperKit, distilled Whisper models, Nvidia Parakeet, Qwen3-ASR and Nemotron diarization. Each version got its own coverage in 9to5Mac, and Apple itself used the app as a benchmark in October 2024.
How it was built
These details come from the Gumroad page, the official website, the App Store page and press articles. They are grade C, except the whisper.cpp detail, which only the newsletter gives. [3, 7, 8, 1, 9]
- A native macOS app. Transcription runs locally with OpenAI's open Whisper models, from Tiny to Large V3, with Metal and GPU support for up to about 30 times real time, the Gumroad page says.
- Pro adds Nvidia Parakeet v2 and v3 (up to 300 times real time on M-series Macs, per the Gumroad page), Qwen3-ASR, WhisperKit and distilled models, and speaker diarization with NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Diarization.
- The startups.email newsletter wrote that the app is based on Whisper and whisper.cpp, the open C++ version of Whisper.
- Optional cloud features use the customer's own API keys: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Groq, xAI, Deepseek, Azure and OpenRouter for summaries and prompts; OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Groq and Gladia for cloud transcription; Ollama and LM Studio for local AI models.
- Sold through Gumroad, which issues the license keys, and through the App Store as Whisper Transcription with in-app purchases. The App Store version's Assistant cloud transcription runs on Mistral's Voxtral model, with ElevenLabs Scribe for larger files, the September 2026 release notes say.
- Business features: deployment across organisations through MDM tools such as Jamf, a command-line interface, watched folders, and automatic upload to Notion, Zapier, Obsidian, n8n, Make.com or a webhook.
- The website is built with Framer and the documentation is hosted on Help Scout Docs, as the page source shows. Customers can join a Gumroad affiliate program.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Four companies in the Loot Drop database offered a voice service or a better utility, and lost when large platforms offered the same thing for free or at a loss. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Tellme
The promiseInformation and services by voice over the phone, before smartphones.
Why it diedUsers moved to apps with screens, and Google and Amazon built voice assistants with far more data. Microsoft bought it.
Petalite
The promiseA privacy-first voice assistant that runs locally on the device.
Why it diedAmazon and Google sold their devices at or below cost and had more training data; privacy alone did not win buyers.
Xmarks
The promiseSync bookmarks and tabs across browsers.
Why it diedChrome, Firefox and Safari built sync in, for free.
Readability
The promiseClutter-free reading of any web article.
Why it diedBrowsers added a reader mode for free, and too few readers paid.
What changed
Tellme and Petalite had to build or license their own speech technology and run it on servers or hardware they paid for, and both met platform owners who could give the same service away. Xmarks and Readability built small, useful utilities that the browser makers then copied for free. MacWhisper is exposed to both risks: speech recognition is a feature that Apple, Google, Microsoft or OpenAI can add to their own products.
What differs is cost. OpenAI gave away the model, and the customer's Mac supplies the computing power, so the product has no cost per user and one developer could ship it, sell it once and still profit, if the reported figure is right. The startups.email newsletter reported about US$100,000 of revenue in the first seven months. The defense is speed and breadth: the app keeps adding new open models and work features, such as batch jobs, meeting recording, MDM deployment and a command line, that a free built-in feature is unlikely to match.
Can one person copy it now?
The method, yes. The number, unverified.
The method is clear and public: take a strong open model, wrap it in a native app that is simple to use, run it on the customer's own hardware so there is no usage cost, give the basic version away and sell a one-time upgrade. The size of the result is not known: the only revenue figure, which a newsletter reported in August 2023, has no stated source.
Where it is still open: Other open models that still lack a simple, private desktop app: image upscaling, OCR of scanned documents, translation, music separation and local search over a person's own files.
- 1Watch for open-weight model releases that solve a task people now pay a subscription for.
- 2Build a native, offline app around the model, so the customer's hardware pays for the computing.
- 3Give away the version with the small model and charge once for the larger models and the work features.
- 4Raise the price as features arrive, and keep existing buyers on free updates.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
What is not verified
The headline figure of about US$100,000 in total revenue rests on one source: the startups.email newsletter by Dimi, published on 26 August 2023. The newsletter cites no founder statement, no screenshot and no payment data, only "our database", and the startups.email site now shows a domain-for-sale page, so the database cannot be checked. In every source read for this page the founder, Jordi Bruin, gives prices, features and download numbers but no revenue, and TrustMRR has no profile for the app. What outside data confirms is smaller: Gumroad's own counter showed 57,430 orders on 25 August 2023, close to the newsletter's 57,574 downloads, but that counter includes free downloads. A reader could look for a payment-processor-verified profile (TrustMRR or Gumroad), a talk or interview in which the founder gives revenue, or the annual accounts of his business in the Dutch company register.
Downloads are not sales
Gumroad's counter passed 619,325 in October 2026, but the free version is a €0 order on the same page, and the page does not show how many orders were paid Pro licenses. The App Store version has 171 ratings in the United States store, a small number next to the Gumroad page.
Platforms can build it in
The model is free for anyone, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, and each can add transcription to its own products. Every predecessor on this page lost to a platform that offered the same thing for free.
Meeting recording without a bot
The website says the app records Zoom, Teams, Webex, Skype and Discord calls in the background, with "No bots joining". This is the one borderline feature: other people in the call get no notice from a bot, and in many places recording a call needs the consent of everyone in it. The legal duty sits with the user, and one App Store reviewer describes recording meetings "with permission".
One person, many apps
Bruin has shipped more than 20 apps, and the website now says "Jordi Bruin and friends". No source gives the size of the team or how much of his time MacWhisper takes, so how well it would survive his absence is unknown.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- D startups.email newsletter (Dimi), 26 August 2023: ~$100,000 Revenue with a simple Mac appRead in full. Source for the revenue figure, the 57,574 downloads, the January 2023 launch month and the whisper.cpp detail. It names no source for any figure beyond "our database".
- C Gumroad product page for MacWhisper, Wayback Machine copy of 25 August 2023Read the page data: the sales counter (57,430), the rating counts and the license options with their prices in euros.
- C Gumroad product page for MacWhisper (Good Snooze), read 24 October 2026Read the full description and the page data. Source for the current prices, the 619,325 counter, the 2,803 ratings, the models, the feature list and the first-person support text.
- C Gumroad product page for MacWhisper, Wayback Machine copy of 5 February 2023Read the page data: 7,160 orders, 135 ratings, Pro at €10.
- C Gumroad product page for MacWhisper, Wayback Machine copy of 14 June 2024Read the page data: 117,604 orders, Pro at €30.
- C Gumroad product page for MacWhisper, Wayback Machine copy of 14 June 2025Read the page data: 226,001 orders, Pro at €59.
- C MacWhisper official website, read 24 October 2026Read the page and its source. Source for the feature list, the €64 Pro price, the meeting recording text, the footer naming Jordi Bruin and friends at Good Snooze in the Netherlands, Framer and Help Scout Docs. The FAQ answers load by script and could not be read.
- C Apple App Store, United States: Whisper Transcription (id1668083311), read 24 October 2026Read in full. Source for the seller Jordi Bruin, the developer Good Snooze, the 171 ratings, the in-app purchase prices, the reviews and the release notes naming Mistral's Voxtral and ElevenLabs Scribe.
- C 9to5Mac (Filipe Espósito), 3 February 2023: MacWhisper is a macOS app that uses OpenAI to transcribe audio files into textRead in full. Source for the first version's features and the €10 Pro price.
- C Om Malik, On my Om, 19 June 2023: Why I love MacWhisperRead in full, with comments. A user's review naming the independent developer Jordi Bruin.
- C Hacker News, 22 August 2023: MacWhisper: Transcribe audio files on your MacRead the full thread through the Algolia Hacker News API (hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/37228821). The founder did not comment and no comment gives revenue.
- C Apple Newsroom, 29 October 2024: Apple's new Mac mini is more mighty, more mini, and built for Apple IntelligenceRead the sections that name MacWhisper as a benchmark.
- C 9to5Mac (Zac Hall), 6 December 2024: MacWhisper 11 brings a friendly redesign to the best AI-powered transcription appRead in full. Source for the dictation feature and the local AI services.
- C 9to5Mac (Marcus Mendes), 14 July 2026: MacWhisper 14 launches with a new transcript editor, faster performance, moreRead in full. Source for version 14, the Parakeet models and the description of Bruin as a prolific indie developer.
- C Appdevcon speaker page: Jordi Bruin, indie developer at Good SnoozeRead in full. Source for the count of apps and the June 2022 talks. Undated biography.
- C Slices: The Deep Dish Swift Podcast, 8 March 2024: Jordi Bruin (Apple Podcasts episode page)Read the episode page. No transcript was available, so only the description and date are used.
- C Product Hunt: MacWhisper product page, read 24 October 2026Read the page: launched in 2023, two launches, 318 followers, 7 reviews. No revenue.
- C TrustMRR markdown profile address for macwhisper, checked 24 October 2026Fetched once; the reply was "Not found", so no verified profile exists. The local cache of 570 profiles has no MacWhisper entry either.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.