Compare
TranscribeCat vs Happy Scribe
Happy Scribe starts at $17 a month for two hours of audio. TranscribeCat is $2.00 an hour with no plan. Both export subtitles; the difference is what happens in a quiet month.
What Happy Scribe is
Happy Scribe is a subtitling and transcription tool with three plans, an included monthly allowance on each, and overage at twenty cents a minute once the allowance runs out. It also sells human proofreading as a separate add-on, which is a different product from anything we do.
Cost per hour of audio
| Hours per month | 1 h | 2 h | 5 h | 10 h | 20 h | 40 h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TranscribeCat | $2.00 | $2.00 | $2.00 | $2.00 | $2.00 | $2.00 |
| Happy Scribe | $17 | $8.50 | $5.80 | $2.90 | $4.45 | $2.23 |
The break-even is 44.5 hours of audio a month. Below that we cost less; above it, Happy Scribe does.
Where Happy Scribe is the better choice
Their Business plan buys a hundred hours a month for eighty-nine dollars, which is well under a dollar an hour — past roughly forty-five hours a month they are cheaper than we are. Subtitling is also a first-class product for them rather than an export format, so if editing subtitle timings in a browser is the job, that is what they built.
Where we are
Their overage rate is twenty cents a minute, which is twelve dollars an hour — six times our price for anything past the allowance. That is the number that catches people: the plan looks cheap and the month you go over does not. We have no allowance to exceed, so there is no second, worse price.
Which to pick
Pick Happy Scribe if you need a subtitle editor, or if you reliably use more than forty-five hours a month.
Pick us if your volume is uneven, or if you have ever paid an overage charge and wanted to know in advance what it would be.
What you get either way, from us
$2.00 per hour of audio, $2.00 minimum per file, tax included. No subscription, no seats and no expiring credits. If a transcription fails, the card authorization is cancelled and no money is taken. Audio is deleted 90 days after your last sign-in.