Sonix alternative
Sonix sells hours of audio, and the entry plan is $25 a month. What decides the comparison with Transcrib Si is not the headline price but the price of one real minute of audio: Sonix Core works out at about 8.3 cents a minute, the yearly Pro plan here at about 0.7 cents.
Short answer: if you transcribe a few files a month and want to pay for exactly what you use, Sonix pay-as-you-go at $10 an hour is hard to argue with — that is about 16.7 cents a minute. If you sit down and push a lot of audio through every month, the plans here work out cheaper, because they are counted in minutes of your audio rather than in hours of the machine's time. Every figure below was read off Sonix's own pricing page on 2026-10-25.
What Sonix charges
| Plan | Price | Allowance | Worked out per minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | $10 an hour of transcription | No monthly allowance, no subscription | About 16.7 cents |
| Core | $25 a month | 5 hours of transcription a month, 25 GB of storage | About 8.3 cents |
| Advanced | $50 a month | 20 hours of transcription a month, 50 GB of storage | Cheaper than Core, the allowance grows with the price |
| Pro | $80 a month | 40 hours of transcription a month, 100 GB of storage | Cheaper again, and the storage grows too |
| Trial | $0 | 30 minutes | A taste, not a plan |
Two things in that table are worth spelling out. First, Sonix counts the machine's working time, not the length of your recording: an hour of transcription time is what you buy, and a recording that takes longer to process costs more to turn into text. Second, the storage on the paid plans is generous — 25 GB on Core is more than this service keeps for you, and the file that goes in and the transcript that comes out are not measured against the same limit.
What this service charges
The plans here count minutes of your audio per calendar month, on every plan, free and paid.
| Plan | Price | Limits | Worked out per minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 3 files a day, up to 30 minutes per file, 64 MB per file | Free |
| Pro, billed yearly | $10 per month ($120 for the year) | 1,500 minutes of audio a month, files up to 64 MB and 120 minutes | About 0.7 cents |
| Pro, billed monthly | $20 per month | The same 1,500 minutes a month, cancel any time | About 1.3 cents |
The gap is not a rounding error. A month of Sonix Core buys 5 hours of transcription for $25, which is about 8.3 cents a minute. A month of Pro here buys 1,500 minutes for $10, which is about 0.7 cents a minute. If you are sending real audio through every week, that difference adds up to more than the annual plan costs.
What you give up for it: Sonix keeps 25 GB on Core, and this service keeps the transcript in your account history rather than in a storage plan you have to think about. If your work is one enormous file that has to live somewhere for years, that is the argument for Sonix. If your work is many recordings that you want as text, it is not.
Where the two services differ
| Question | Sonix | Here |
|---|---|---|
| What is counted | Hours of transcription time | Minutes of your audio per month |
| Cheapest way in | $10 an hour, paid as you go | $0, with 3 files a day |
| Longest single file | Set by the subscription, not published as a file limit | 120 minutes per file on every plan |
| Size of one file | Published as storage per plan, 25 GB on Core | 64 MB per file, the same on free and paid |
| Speaker labels | On the paid plans | On every plan, including free |
| Exports | Text, subtitles and translations | TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT, CSV and DOCX |
| Paying once, no account maths | Pay-as-you-go at $10 an hour | Free plan, no card |
Try a file before you decide
Drop in a recording and read the result. No card, no clock on the machine.
Drop an audio or video file
or — mp3, wav, m4a, mp4, up to 64 MB and two hours
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Questions this page answers.
Is Sonix cheaper than this service?
For a single file, it can be. Sonix pay-as-you-go costs $10 an hour of transcription, and a short recording is cheaper than a month of anything. The moment you transcribe regularly, the accounting flips: Sonix Core at $25 a month covers 5 hours, about 8.3 cents a minute, while the yearly Pro plan here covers 1,500 minutes for $10, about 0.7 cents a minute. Both numbers are on the pricing pages, not estimates.
What does $10 an hour actually mean?
It is the price of an hour of transcription time, which is not the same as an hour of your recording. Sonix bills the time its own engine spends working on the file, so a clean recording and a difficult one do not cost the same. That is the structural difference between the two models: minutes of your audio on one side, minutes of the machine on the other.
Does the free plan here do enough to try it?
For a first look, yes. The free plan gives 3 files a day of up to 30 minutes each, and it comes with the same transcription, the same timestamps, the same speaker labels and the same exports as the paid plan. There is no card on the free plan and no clock counting down.
What happens if one file is longer than two hours?
Split it. The limit here is 120 minutes per file and 64 MB per file on every plan, paid or free, and a file that goes over is refused rather than cut. The guide to long recordings explains the cleanest way to cut a file so that the parts join back up without a gap in the text.
Do I get speaker labels and exports on the free plan?
Yes. Speaker labels are not a paid extra here: switch on the split by speaker option before sending the file and every line arrives with a name or a number attached to it. Exports work the same way on free and paid, and the file list stays in your account so you can come back to it later.
Where the numbers on this page come from
Each line names the page the figure was read on and the day it was read.
- Sonix: $10 an hour pay as you go, Core $25 a month with 5 hours and 25 GB, Advanced $50 a month with 20 hours and 50 GB, Pro $80 a month with 40 hours and 100 GB, a 30-minute trial — https://sonix.ai/pricing — checked 2026-10-25
- Worked out per minute: Sonix pay as you go about 16.7 cents ($10 an hour over 60 minutes), Sonix Core about 8.3 cents ($25 a month over 300 minutes), the yearly Pro plan here about 0.7 cents ($10 a month over 1,500 minutes) and the monthly Pro plan about 1.3 cents ($20 a month over 1,500 minutes) — calculated from the figures above — https://sonix.ai/pricing and https://transcrib.si/pricing.html — checked 2026-10-25
- Free $0, 3 files a day, 30 minutes per file, 64 MB; Pro $10 per month ($120 for the year), $20 per month, 1,500 minutes per calendar month, 120 minutes per file — https://transcrib.si/pricing.html — checked 2026-10-25
- Exports in TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT, CSV and DOCX; accepted containers mp3, wav, m4a, mp4, webm, ogg, flac, aac, wma, mov — https://transcrib.si/pricing.html and https://transcrib.si/app.html — checked 2026-10-25
Where to go next
What an hour of audio costs
The price per minute at a dozen services, checked on one day.
Free transcription limits
What each service lets you send before you pay.
TurboScribe alternative
The service that counts files a day rather than minutes.
Otter alternative
The meeting recorder, and what it costs to keep.
Plans and prices
Every plan, every limit, in one table with no small print.
Transcribe a long recording
What to do when one file is longer than the two-hour limit.
Also worth a look: the general guide, WAV to text, MP3 to text and the app.
Mark Burmistrov, Founder.
Every number on this page comes from the pricing page, the service contract or the upload form itself. The author of the page and the publisher of the site are the same person. Questions and corrections: support@transcrib.si.