Pace vs Dottie

Choosing between Pace and Dottie?

Dottie is local-by-default, cloud when you ask, and it's closed source under a Proprietary license. It calls itself "Free AI voice assistant — talk to your Mac, watch it work.".

Where Pace differs: Dottie ships 134 tools and a wake word — both ahead of Pace. The desktop app source is not public (only the dotbot SDK engine is MIT). Pace is fully open source with a tier picker and trust surfaces Dottie doesn't surface.

The full breakdown is below — what Dottie 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.

Dottie

www.dottie.ai

Free AI voice assistant — talk to your Mac, watch it work. — stevederico

STT · Local (MLX-based) Reasoner · Local MLX (3,800+ models) or cloud (OpenAI / Anthropic / xAI / Ollama) TTS · MLX Kokoro with premium AI voices Screen · yes

What it's good at

  • 134 built-in system tools for email, calendar, iMessage, music, and files.
  • Bundled inference stack with zero external dependencies — local Agent API on localhost.
  • "Hey Dottie" wake word + hold-to-dictate (Fn key).

Where Pace differs

Dottie ships 134 tools and a wake word — both ahead of Pace. The desktop app source is not public (only the dotbot SDK engine is MIT). Pace is fully open source with a tier picker and trust surfaces Dottie doesn't surface.

Rechecked June 2026.
If Dottie 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

← Back to the full comparison