Cloud vs Local
2026-01-25 · 3 min
Cloud mode (Pro)
Uses Groq for transcription (whisper-large-v3-turbo) and OpenAI GPT-4o-mini for cleanup. Ultra-fast (< 1s) but requires an internet connection and a Pro subscription.
- Transcription: Groq (whisper-large-v3-turbo) — < 500ms
- Cleanup: OpenAI GPT-4o-mini — intelligent text cleanup
- Requires: internet connection + Pro subscription
Local mode (Free)
Uses faster-whisper for transcription and Ollama (gemma3:4b) for cleanup. Slower but 100% private — no data ever leaves your machine.
🔒
In local mode, no audio or text data travels over the internet. Ideal for sensitive or confidential environments.
Hybrid mode (default)
The default mode. VoxWave uses the cloud when available and automatically falls back to local when connectivity drops, thanks to the built-in circuit breaker.
💡
The circuit breaker automatically detects cloud failures (3 consecutive errors) and switches to local for 60 seconds before retrying.