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What transcription actually costs per hour.

Compare published rates for eight transcription services. The table converts plans, included minutes and overage into a cost per hour at three volumes. Check the assumptions and minimums before choosing.

By Axel Jørgensen

Founder · Prices verified September 5, 2026

Every figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-05 and is stored with the line it came from. Month-to-month billing, not the discounted annual rate, because we ask for no commitment and comparing against a twelve-month one would be comparing two different products. Our own figure is produced by the code that charges the card. A test fails the build if any of this goes more than 90 days without being re-checked.

Cost per hour of audio across eight transcription services, at 2, 10 and 40 hours a month.
Service	2 h/mo	10 h/mo	40 h/mo	Cheaper than us above
TranscribeCat	$2.00	$2.00	$2.00	—
TurboScribe	$10	$2.00	$0.50	10 h/mo
Happy Scribe	$8.50	$2.90	$2.23	44.5 h/mo
Otter.ai	$8.49	$1.70	$0.75	8.5 h/mo
Rev	$15	$3.00	$0.75	15 h/mo
Sonix	$13	$5.00	$2.00	40 h/mo
Descript	$12	$2.40	$1.63	17.5 h/mo
GoTranscript	$72	$72	$72	never
Trint	—	—	—	never

A dash means the vendor publishes no price for that volume — not that it is free. Trint publishes no prices at all; GoTranscript is human transcription, which is a different product at roughly thirty-six times the cost.

How to read this

A subscription charges you whether or not you use it, so the honest cost per hour is the cheapest plan that covers your volume divided by that volume. That is why a $17 plan can cost more per hour than an $89 one, and why almost every service on this list is cheapest at exactly the volume its marketing assumes you have.

We charge $2.00 per hour of audio with a $2.00 minimum per file and no plan, so our column is flat. That is the whole argument: below the break-even in the last column we are cheaper, and above it we are not, and we would rather you knew which side you are on.

The eight, one at a time

TranscribeCat vs TurboScribe
Choose TurboScribe if its free limits cover your needs or you want an unlimited subscription.
TranscribeCat vs Happy Scribe
Choose Happy Scribe when you need its subtitle or meeting workflow.
TranscribeCat vs Otter.ai
Choose Otter for recurring meetings you want recorded and summarized automatically.
TranscribeCat vs Rev
Choose Rev when human review or its specialist workspace is part of the requirement.
TranscribeCat vs Sonix
Choose Sonix if its workspace, translation or team features justify the price for your project.
TranscribeCat vs Descript
Choose Descript when you want to edit and publish the recording itself.
TranscribeCat vs GoTranscript
Pick GoTranscript when the recording is difficult or the transcript is going on the record, and the budget and the wait are both acceptable.
TranscribeCat vs Trint
Pick Trint if you are a team that needs a collaborative newsroom tool and has someone whose job is to negotiate software contracts.

If the job is captioning

Captions are bought differently: by the minute of video rather than the hour of audio, and mostly on one decision — whether a person listens to the recording or a machine does. What closed captioning costs bands this same data that way, and prices the two bands nobody on this page sells.

Transcribe a file See our pricing

Take the data

Everything on this page is published as a machine-readable document at /transcription-pricing.json — every plan, every source URL, the line each number was read from, and the cost per hour computed at three volumes. Free to quote and cite. If a figure is wrong, tell us and we will correct it whichever way it goes.