We make Flikzi, so read this list with that in mind. We’ve tried to be fair: each entry says who it suits best, and the permissions were read from each project’s source code on 13 November 2026.
Side by side
| Keyboard | Licence | Network access | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flikzi | Closed source; free, Pro US$4.99 once (on Google Play) | No internet permission. Google Play billing, for buying Pro; Microphone and Contacts are optional and stay off until you turn on voice typing or contacts’ email addresses | Flicks on a QWERTY honeycomb; 23 languages including Chinese, Japanese and Korean; foldables |
| FUTO Keyboard | FUTO Source First License (source available, not OSI open source) | No internet permission; it also removes the network-state permission | Offline voice input from its own speech model; source code you can read |
| HeliBoard | GPL-3.0 | No internet permission | A familiar AOSP-style keyboard with many options |
| FlorisBoard | Apache-2.0 | No internet permission | Open source with heavy customisation |
| Simple Keyboard | Apache-2.0 | No internet permission (its only permission is vibration) | The smallest possible keyboard |
Flikzi
A QWERTY keyboard on a honeycomb of hexagon keys, with no shift key and no backspace key: flick a letter up for its capital and down for a digit or mark, and swipe the space bar to delete and restore. Its autocorrect reads where each tap landed, and it learns your words, your email addresses and where your thumbs land, on the phone only. It has 23 languages with their dictionaries built in, Chinese pinyin, Japanese and Korean among them, voice typing through Android’s on-device recogniser (Android 12 and later), emoji search and suggestions, and a split layout for foldables and tablets.
Its promise is that your typing never leaves your phone, and the proof you can check is that it has no internet permission. Its two optional permissions, Microphone and Contacts, stay off until you turn on voice typing or contacts’ email addresses. It is free to download; more than one language, the split layout, voice typing, the clipboard keys, clipboard history and text shortcuts come with Flikzi Pro, a one-time US$4.99 purchase (before tax) after a 14-day free trial. It isn’t out yet. Try the gestures.
FUTO Keyboard
An offline all-rounder with its own on-device voice input, a clipboard manager and custom layouts. You pay if you like it, and its licence restricts commercial reuse of the code. FUTO says it is still in active development and may be missing features or languages; for most languages you download a dictionary and import it. FUTO Keyboard. Flikzi vs FUTO Keyboard
HeliBoard
Built on the Android Open Source Project keyboard, with clipboard history, a one-handed mode, a split keyboard and themes you can change. It asks for contacts permission to suggest names, which you can deny. HeliBoard. Flikzi vs HeliBoard
FlorisBoard
Actively developed and very themeable, with a clipboard manager and emoji suggestions. Its README calls it beta and says word suggestions and spell checking are not included in the current releases. FlorisBoard.
Simple Keyboard
Under 1 MB. By design it leaves out emoji, a spell checker and swipe typing. Simple Keyboard.
How we checked
For each keyboard we read the app’s Android manifest in its public source repository and looked for
android.permission.INTERNET. Apps can change between releases, so check the permissions on your own phone
after installing: Settings, Apps, the keyboard, Permissions.
What about Gboard and SwiftKey?
Both are free, capable keyboards that use the network for some features. See Flikzi vs Gboard and Flikzi vs SwiftKey.