Gboard is a keyboard. KOPY is a reply engine.

Gboard is a keyboard. It types. It swipes. It does voice. It inserts GIFs. Google documents it as an input method: Gboard help. KOPY is also a keyboard in the Apple sense — a custom keyboard extension you enable in Settings — but the job we sold ourselves is not character entry. It is reply generation. If you score us on voice typing, Gboard wins and should. If you score Gboard on “write the whole answer from this message,” it is not in the category.

I used Gboard for years. I still respect it. I did not build KOPY because swipe was bad. I built it because I was fluent at typing and still stalled on what to say. That stall is not an IME problem. It is a content problem. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index interruption math (every ~2 minutes in core hours; 275/day in the high-ping slice) makes the stall expensive. You can type fast and still lose the thread.

• Gboard: input fidelity (keys, swipe, voice, search-adjacent niceties).
• KOPY: output proposal (a full reply, mode × tone, insert).
• Install both. Use Gboard to type. Globe to KOPY when the field is empty and your brain is not.

Typing speed is the wrong leaderboard

Keyboard reviews love WPM. Fine for Gboard. Useless for us. A 70 WPM user who spends four minutes deciding tone has lost to a 30 WPM user who inserted a decent draft in two seconds and changed one word. Grammarly’s 2024 communication research keeps pointing at load and quality of exchange, not keystroke rate. I stopped optimizing our UI for more keys. We have enough keys. We needed a generate control that does not feel like opening Google.

KPI	Gboard	KOPY
Character / swipe / voice input	Excellent — that is the product	Adequate typing, no voice bet
Full reply from thread context	You type it	Generate in ~2s
Steps when you already know the words	1: type	Worse than Gboard — don’t use us
Steps when you do not know the words	Stare, type, delete, repeat	3: switch, tap tone, insert
Context switches	0	0
Price to install	Free	Free on the App Store
Price to generate replies	n/a	Pro $12.99/mo, no free trial

Read that table twice. If you know the words, Gboard (or Apple’s keyboard) is kinder. KOPY is overhead. If you do not know the words, Gboard offers you a very nice empty rectangle. I have that rectangle. I filled it with a reply engine.

Free plan without lying about Pro

Gboard is free. Our comparison table lists a free plan on KOPY as true because you can install and enable the keyboard without a subscription. That is not a shadow free tier of unlimited model calls. Reply generation is KOPY Pro at $12.99/mo. No free trial. I would rather you be annoyed at honesty than surprised at a paywall after a cute onboarding. Google can afford to give away an IME. We cannot afford to give away generations and also pay inference.

What Apple forces both of us to share

Gboard on iOS and KOPY are both guests. App Extension Programming Guide — Custom Keyboard is the same landlord. Height, sandbox, Full Access for network, user has to add the keyboard manually, host app can be hostile. Gboard uses that guest pass for Google input features. We use it for HTTPS to our generate route. Same prison, different inmate.

Full Access is the trust cliff. Gboard needs it for some features. We need it to see pasteboard context and to call the API. I do not love asking. Users who skip it think the keyboard is broken. It is not broken. It is sandboxed. I wrote setup copy until I was sick of it. Still better than pretending we work like a system keyboard with secret entitlements we do not have.

Voice, GIFs, and other features we will lose on purpose

Gboard voice is good. We did not ship voice. A reply engine with a mediocre speech-to-text would be a worse Gboard and a worse KOPY. GIFs, stickers, Google search in the keyboard: also not us. If those are why you opened this page, stay on Gboard. Come back when your problem is a message you cannot start.

We did ship modes that Gboard will never care about. Dating versus Work is not an IME setting. It is a generation prior. Putting that in a typing keyboard would be a category mash that reviews would correctly mock.

The interruption case for staying inside one keyboard switch

Infinite workday (2025): early email, late meetings, residue on weekends. The person in that graph still types on a phone. App-switching to ChatGPT is one tax. Switching from Gboard to KOPY is a smaller tax: one globe tap, same field, same thread. That is why I am fine losing the “default keyboard” war to Gboard. I want to be the keyboard you switch to for the hard message, then switch back.

Power users already live in the globe menu. We designed for them, not for replacing Gboard as the 100% default. If we ever chase default status by cloning swipe and voice, we will ship a worse Google keyboard and starve the reply engine. I would rather remain a specialist.

When to use which, in the same hour

Type the easy “ok” on Gboard. Generate the loaded “I need to reschedule and I know this is annoying” on KOPY, then edit like an adult. Type passwords and one-time codes on a keyboard you trust for input. Do not send generated replies into banking fields. Obvious, but I will write it anyway because keyboard extensions scare people, and they should stay slightly scared.

Assistants are a third class. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini are research/generalist surfaces. Grammarly is an editor. Gboard is an IME. KOPY is a reply generator wearing an IME costume because that is the only costume iOS allows in the text field. Taxonomy: AI texting assistant comparison. Shopping: best AI keyboard apps for iPhone 2026. Voice quality: why AI replies sound robotic.

Swipe muscle memory is a moat I will not attack

If your thumbs know Gboard glide paths, ripping that out is how you ship a “better keyboard” nobody keeps. I watched people try AI keyboards that replaced the entire IME. They lasted a weekend. Accuracy on names, URLs, and slang is a decade of Google data. We are not going to beat it by stuffing a transformer under the keys. We globe-switch for the hard message, then we give the keys back. That is product cowardice and also product taste.

Clipboard suggestions in Gboard are a typing feature: they help you paste. Our clipboard use is a generation feature: they help the model see what you copied from the other person. Same OS object, opposite intent. If you disable Full Access, Gboard still types. We mostly stop being a reply engine. That asymmetry is why “both are keyboards” is true in Settings and false in the job-to-be-done.

Multilingual typing versus multilingual replies

Gboard is strong when you switch languages mid-sentence. That is IME work. A reply engine that claims 40 languages without genre control will emit tourist English with extra steps, or confident wrong register in a language I cannot QA. We are honest about being an English-weighted reply product in this generation of the app. If your bottleneck is typing in two scripts, Gboard. If your bottleneck is inventing a reply in the language you already type, KOPY. Do not buy us as a translation keyboard. That is a different SKU I have not shipped.

Voice is the same split. Gboard voice is dictation. Dictation assumes you can speak the message. The people I built for can speak and still freeze, or they are in a quiet office, or they do not want the bus to hear the dating reply. Generation is for the freeze. Dictation is for the fluent. I will not duct-tape a speech API onto a reply engine to win a feature table against Gboard. We would lose on quality and confuse the tap that matters.

Default keyboard politics

iOS makes default keyboards a chore: Settings, add keyboard, allow Full Access, hold globe. Gboard already won that chore for millions of people. Competing for default means competing with their muscle memory and with Apple’s own keyboard. I decline. Default is a vanity metric for a reply engine. Share-of-globe-taps-on-hard-messages is the metric. If we become default and then people use us to type passwords slowly, we failed upward.

Keep Apple or Gboard as default. Add KOPY. Pay Pro if the generate tap is weekly. If you never globe to us after a week, uninstall. A free install that never generates should not convert. I would rather lose that subscriber than fake a typing-keyboard war Google already won. Count globe taps for a day. If they are all Gboard, you do not have a reply problem. If they spike on dating and Slack, you do, and WPM will not save you.

Decision rule

Choose Gboard when the bottleneck is entering characters you already have. Choose KOPY when the bottleneck is inventing the characters. Pay $12.99/mo only if the second bottleneck is weekly, not theoretical. Keep Gboard free either way. I built a reply engine, not a Gboard killer. The globe key is big enough for both, and Apple already made you tap it.