Pace vs Cursor Voice

Choosing between Pace and Cursor Voice?

Cursor Voice runs in the cloud, and it's open source under a MIT license. It calls itself "Native macOS voice assistant next to your cursor, powered by OpenAI Realtime API.".

Where Pace differs: Pace is fully on-device; Cursor Voice round-trips every turn through OpenAI's Realtime API. Cursor Voice has barge-in and wake word — both things Pace lacks. Pace wins on privacy and zero per-turn cost.

The full breakdown is below — what Cursor Voice is genuinely good at, its stack, and the honest line on where Pace diverges, including where Pace is behind. For the whole field in one place, see every macOS voice agent compared.

Cursor Voice

github.com/cursorvoice/cursor-voice

Native macOS voice assistant next to your cursor, powered by OpenAI Realtime API. — cursorvoice

STT · OpenAI Realtime API Reasoner · OpenAI Realtime API (gpt-realtime) TTS · OpenAI Realtime API (built-in voices) Screen · yes

What it's good at

  • Barge-in with echo rejection — interrupt the AI mid-response by talking over it.
  • On-device wake word ("Hey Cursor") via SFSpeechRecognizer, then cloud Realtime API for the conversation.
  • Built-in web_search tool without requiring an API key.

Where Pace differs

Pace is fully on-device; Cursor Voice round-trips every turn through OpenAI's Realtime API. Cursor Voice has barge-in and wake word — both things Pace lacks. Pace wins on privacy and zero per-turn cost.

Rechecked June 2026.
If Cursor Voice shipped something I missed or got cheaper since, email me and I'll update this page.

Pace is $29 once, fully on-device, and free to try on Apple Intelligence.

Get Pace

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