Transcription services compared
Twelve services that turn audio into text, with the numbers we read from their own pages on 21 October 2026: price per hour of audio, price per month, the free tier, the longest recording, the number of transcription languages and whether an API is open. Sort the table by any column, filter it by name or price, and the best value in the column stays highlighted.
What we compared, and how
Every cell was read from the public pages of the service itself on 21 October 2026. Where a page could not be read, the cell says “not measured” — we did not fill it from memory or from an advertisement. The table and the chart below come from one file, so the numbers in both are the same numbers.
How to read the table
- Price per hour of audio is only for the services that sell the audio itself by the hour: Sonix sells extra hours at $10, Transcribe.com sells extra hours at $5, AssemblyAI bills $0.15 an hour and Rev $0.20 an hour for English. A dash means the service has no such price; “not measured” means we could not read it.
- Price per month is the yearly-billed monthly price. Notta, Otter and Fireflies price per seat, tl;dv quotes euros and is left out of the comparison, and our own API is paid by volume rather than by a plan.
- The highlighted cell is the best value in that column among the rows you see. Filter the table and the highlight moves with the rows that are left.
- On a phone the first column stays in place while the table scrolls sideways, so you never lose the name of the service you are reading.
Put a file on the page and read the first lines.
The widget below is the same one as on the home page: file → transcript with timecodes and speakers → export. The transcript is saved to your account.
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.
Which service is the cheapest for one hour of audio?
Among the services that sell audio by the hour, AssemblyAI is the cheapest at $0.15 an hour for the Universal-2 model and Rev is $0.20 an hour for English. Transcribe.com sells extra hours at $5 and Sonix at $10. We do not publish an API price, so we are not in that column.
Which service is the cheapest per month?
Notta, at $8.17 a month for Pro paid yearly, then Otter at $8.33 and Fireflies at $10 a seat. Our own Pro is $10 a month paid yearly or $20 billed monthly, and it includes 1,500 minutes of audio a month.
Which service accepts the longest recording?
TurboScribe takes files up to 10 hours and 5 GB. Transcribe.com allows 5 hours of server transcription on Pro, and tl;dv does not limit the upload at all. Our own limit is 120 minutes and 64 MB per file, and a file over either limit is rejected at upload with a clear error.
Why do some cells say “not measured”?
Because the number was not on the pages we could read on 21 October 2026. We left the cell empty instead of filling it from memory, from an advertisement or from an older note. It happens with Transkriptor, whose prices did not render, and with Otter and Fireflies, whose pages give no number of transcription languages.
Where does my audio go?
Our privacy policy states which files are processed where, which third party sees a pure-English file, and how long anything is kept. We did not read the storage terms of every service in this comparison, so we publish ours and not theirs.
Related pages.
The same numbers for one service in depth.
Two file-based services, side by side.
Another meeting assistant, another set of trade-offs.
A Telegram bot with published plans, 90+ languages and speaker separation for up to 48 voices.
A Telegram writing assistant whose Voice to Text tool is the Telegram-only part.
An open-source Telegram bot that also answers every voice message in a group.
Transcrib Si vs Transcriber Bot
The most-used Telegram transcription bot, with no published price list.
Our plans in full.
How to transcribe a long recording
The 64 MB and 120-minute limits.
Where a file is processed and how long it is kept.
Mark Burmistrov, Founder.
Every number on this page comes from the public pages of the service it belongs to, read on 21 October 2026, or from our own pricing page. The author of the page and the publisher of the site are the same person. Questions and corrections: support@transcrib.si.