---
title: "Pace vs Dottie"
description: "An evidence-based comparison of Pace and Dottie: open source + tier picker vs closed 134-tool app."
canonical: https://heypace.app/compared/dottie/
last-updated: 2026-08-27
---
# Pace vs Dottie

An evidence-based comparison of Pace and Dottie: open source + tier picker vs closed 134-tool app.

## Product posture

- **Product:** [Dottie](https://www.dottie.ai)
- **Maintainer:** stevederico
- **License:** Proprietary; not open source under Proprietary
- **Runtime posture:** hybrid
- **Speech-to-text:** Local (MLX-based)
- **Reasoner:** Local MLX (3,800+ models) or cloud (OpenAI / Anthropic / xAI / Ollama)
- **Text-to-speech:** MLX Kokoro with premium AI voices
- **Screen-aware:** Yes

## What the competing product does well

- 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.

This comparison does not claim ratings, market rank, or user-review scores.