The 2026 Mac Autocomplete Map, Drawn Honestly
Two years ago you could not buy this. There was one app that typed ahead of you, a handful of open-source experiments, and a lot of people retyping the same sentences. Today there are enough options that the category has its own confusion, so let me draw the map. I make one of these apps, which is exactly why I am going to be careful about the drawing.
A quick disclosure before the lines: I built WriteAmp, and it appears on this map. I am not going to rank it first, because the honest answer is that the right choice depends on which trade you want to make. What follows is the landscape as I see it, with prices that were public when I wrote this.
The shape of the category
Every serious option in this space converged on the same interaction, because the interaction turned out to be right. Ghost text at the cursor. Tab to accept. Keep typing to ignore. The differences are not in the habit. They are in four dimensions: where the words are processed, what the app costs over time, how wide its app coverage goes, and how much it tells you about what it learned.
- Bigger models, often better phrasing
- Your drafts travel to make a suggestion
- Subscription, usually, to pay for that server
- Smaller models, tuned for one job
- Nothing leaves the machine
- Often a one-time price
That first dimension, cloud versus on-device, is the one that separates the map into two halves, and it is the one most buyers do not realize they are choosing. A sentence you type into a cloud autocomplete is a sentence you just sent to a server to have finished.
The on-device apps
WriteAmp is the one I know from the inside, so I will be precise and let you judge. It runs suggestions on a local model, three tiers of it, and on macOS 26 it can also route through Apple's on-device engine. It costs $29 once for up to three Macs with a 30-day trial, it publishes its benchmark numbers, and it shows you the exact phrases it has learned. Where it is not the best answer: if you want the biggest possible model doing the thinking, or if you need Windows, this is not it. The full comparison, including where it loses, lives here.
MacAutocomplete is another one-time-priced on-device option, positioned at a higher price point, and it is the closest thing to a direct paid rival on the local side. It has been around longer than most of the field and its coverage is mature.
Cotabby and TabType and the other open-source projects sit on the same side of the line. They are free, local, and genuinely useful, and the trade is support and polish. I have a lot of respect for them, and I would rather name what a paid app has to add on top of free than pretend they do not exist. They are also, honestly, where I would tell a tinkerer to start, because $0 and readable code is a hard price to beat.
The subscription incumbent
Cotypist is the app that made this category visible, and it is still the most mature product in it. It is also a subscription, roughly $72 to $108 a year depending on how many Macs you cover, with a free tier that stops after a daily word count. If you want the incumbent with the longest track record and you are comfortable with a recurring bill, it is a legitimate choice, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The math that matters is what that subscription costs over five years when you set it against a one-time price, and I put the full spread of that comparison in the writeup below.
The chat-wrapper imports
The most interesting recent arrivals are the general AI assistants bolting autocomplete onto their existing chat products. They bring big models and big budgets, and they process your typing wherever their cloud runs. If you already live inside one of those ecosystems, the convenience is real. The trade is that your keystrokes become part of their product, which is a different privacy equation than a local model offers, and the privacy page lays out how WriteAmp handles that difference.
How to pick
Ignore the branding and ask four questions.
The trial is the real test
Every serious option here offers a free trial, and the trials are the honest test, because this category is felt more than described. Install two, type normally for a week, and keep the one whose suggestions you stop noticing. That is the entire evaluation. The homepage has a download and a 30-day trial if you want to start with mine, and the benchmarks have the numbers if you want to compare before you install anything.
Prices change and apps ship, so treat this map as a snapshot, not a verdict. The category is young enough that the map next year will look different, and that is a good thing for everyone who types.
Sources
- Cotypist: the subscription pricing and free-tier word limit quoted above, accessed September 2026
- Cotabby: the free open-source local option on the map
- WriteAmp compare page: where WriteAmp wins and loses against the field
- Daring Fireball: coverage of the system-wide autocomplete category on the Mac
On macOS 26+ Macs, Apple Intelligence mode stays free even after the trial ends — you always keep a working path to suggestions.
Written by Amit Ashwini, who builds WriteAmp and runs its marketing. More: why the Tab key beats the chat box · mini, midi, and max compared · benchmark methodology.