GuideSetup

How to get an API key

Waffler needs an API key to turn your speech into clean text. Think of it as a password that connects the app to the AI service.

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You only need one key to get started, and that’s Groq. It handles both jobs Waffler does: turning your speech into text, and tidying up the result. Groq’s free plan covers about 30 cleaned dictations a day. An OpenAI key is worth adding later as a backup. Without one, dictation still works: past the free plan’s limits you get your raw transcript, without clean-up, until the limit resets.

Your API key is private, so treat it like a password. Never share it publicly, paste it in a chat, or commit it to code. Waffler stores it locally on your machine and never sends it anywhere except directly to the API provider.

How Waffler picks which provider to use

Waffler does two separate things with your recording, and it needs a provider for each:

Transcription

Your speech becomes text. Groq and OpenAI can both do this.

Clean-up

The text gets tidied into something you’d actually send. Again, Groq or OpenAI, plus an optional Cerebras key in Settings that does clean-up only.

If you add both keys, Waffler tries Groq first at both stages by default, so its free plan gets used before anything you pay for. OpenAI is used when Groq is rate-limited, down, or past its free plan’s limits. You can change the order in Settings.

GroqRecommended

Groq’s free plan costs nothing up to about 30 cleaned dictations a day. It also limits use per minute, so two dictations within a minute can hit that limit too. Past either limit, Waffler still pastes your raw transcript but skips clean-up until the limit resets, unless you have a backup key. It does both the transcription and the clean-up, so this one key is all you need to get going. On a paid Groq plan each dictation costs about a sixth of a cent, so 1,000 dictations a month is roughly $1.60.

  1. Create a Groq account

    Go to console.groq.com and sign up with Google or email. It’s free.

  2. Create an API key

    Once logged in, go to console.groq.com/keys. Click “Create API Key”, give it a name (e.g. “Waffler”), and click create.

  3. Copy the key

    Your key will start with gsk_. Copy it straight away, because Groq only shows it once. If you lose it, just create another.

  4. Paste it into Waffler

    Open Waffler, and the setup wizard will ask for your API key. Paste it in and you’re done.

OpenAIOptional backup

OpenAI is the backup for the occasions when Groq is rate-limited or down, or when you are past the free plan’s limits. It means a bad day at Groq doesn’t leave you unable to dictate, but it isn’t free to keep: OpenAI’s API is prepaid, so you buy credit up front (at least $5), each use is taken from that balance, and credit you don’t use expires after a year. Usage is charged at OpenAI’s published rates (September 2026): transcription uses gpt-4o-mini-transcribe, which OpenAI estimates at $0.003 per minute of audio, and clean-up uses gpt-4.1-mini, at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.60 per million output tokens. You only need this if you want a backup.

  1. Create an OpenAI account

    Go to platform.openai.com/signup and create an account. This is the API platform, which is separate from ChatGPT.

  2. Add credit

    Go to Billing and buy credit. The minimum is $5. You pay it now, whether or not Waffler ever falls back to OpenAI, and it expires after a year if unused.

  3. Create an API key

    Go to platform.openai.com/api-keys. Click “Create new secret key”, name it “Waffler”, and click create.

  4. Copy the key

    Your key will start with sk-. Copy it straight away, because OpenAI only shows it once.

  5. Paste it into Waffler

    Paste it into the setup wizard, or add it later in Waffler’s Settings under OpenAI API Key.

Got your key?

You’re all set.

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