Audio transcription in South Africa: the 12 services to compare
Twelve rows in the table: Transcrib Si, five South African providers and six international services, read on their own pricing pages on 24 October 2026 — price, free tier, languages, export, meeting bot, API. Sort the columns, filter the rows, and follow the source of every figure. Every local provider below publishes its price in rand, and our own service transcribes Russian and English.
Our prices in brief: the free plan gives 3 files a day of up to 30 minutes each, with no bank card. Pro costs $10 a month if you pay for the year ($120 a year) or $20 a month, with 1,500 minutes of audio a month. One file weighs at most 64 MB and lasts at most 120 minutes.
Our prices and our limits
We publish the figures of our own service on the same page and under the same rule: a value comes either from the service contract, from the pricing page, or from a dated measurement of our own.
| What we publish | The value |
|---|---|
| Free plan | 3 files a day, up to 30 minutes per file, no bank card |
| Pro, paid yearly | $10 a month ($120 a year), 1,500 minutes of audio per calendar month, DOCX export, REST API and MCP server |
| Pro, paid monthly | $20 a month, the same allowance |
| Size of one file | 64 MB and 120 minutes |
| Languages | Russian and English, chosen by you or detected automatically |
| Export formats | TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT, CSV and DOCX (DOCX on Pro) |
| What we do not do | We do not record your meetings and we do not sell hardware |
How this table was filled
Every row starts from an official page of the service: the pricing page when there is one, otherwise the product page. We read the page as it publishes the price, in the currency of the country, and we keep that currency: a price is never converted here, because a conversion without a date and a rate is a number nobody wrote down. Where a page says nothing, the cell reads "not measured": we do not fill a cell from memory, and we do not estimate a precision the service does not publish itself.
The table of services
The columns sort on click, the filters combine, and the search covers the name of the service and the name of the plan. The providers of the country first, then the international services. Our own row comes first, to set the scale.
| The plan includes | Export | Meeting bot | API |
|---|
The prices are the ones published by each service, in the currency it publishes them in. "not measured" means the page does not say it. Every service name links to its page, and every row links to the page where the figure was read.
Five South African providers, in detail
The five South African services are worth a closer look, because they do not sell the same thing: a per-minute price with a person proofreading every file, a general and a legal desk with a page rate for court work, a per-minute rate with a turnaround clock, a language company that also translates, and a subtitle and caption house. The figures below come from their own pages, read on 24 October 2026.
Transcribe Africa
R15 / audio minute
The cheapest published rate of the five, and the clearest promise: R15 an audio minute, all inclusive, with a standard turnaround of 24 to 48 hours, 99%+ transcript accuracy, every file transcribed and proofread by a person, POPIA compliance and NDAs signed on request. The quote is fixed before the work starts, and the languages are English, Afrikaans, Zulu and other South African languages.
Best for: Anyone who wants a South African file proofread by a person within two days, with the quote fixed before the work starts.
Simply Transcriptions
from R16.50 / audio min
A general desk and a legal one. General transcription runs from R16.50 an audio minute with a 3 to 5 business day turnaround and intelligent verbatim as standard; legal and CCMA transcription starts at R18.50 an audio minute with full verbatim, court-ready formatting and speaker ID; court transcripts are billed per page at R65–R70 when per-page billing is required, with the turnaround confirmed on the quote. Overnight, 24-hour and 48-hour options are offered across all service types, with a rush surcharge of 25 to 50%.
Best for: Legal departments and CCMA hearings that need a court-ready transcript, billed per page when the matter requires it.
TopTranscriptions
R16.45 / minute
Priced per minute and published excluding VAT: R16.45 a minute on the standard rate with a turnaround from 2 days for one hour of audio, R19.90 a minute on the rush rate from 1 day, and R22.80 a minute on the urgent rate, where the turnaround is on request. The audio is English or Afrikaans, and an English and Afrikaans translation service sits next to it.
Best for: Teams that transcribe English or Afrikaans every week and want the turnaround to be known before they pay.
Soror Language Services
from R20.00 / audio minute
A full language-services company that starts at R20.00 an audio minute, excluding VAT. The transcripts are reviewed by a person, the speakers are identified consistently, the formatting is professional, and South African recordings are handled with code-switching and several accents. Transcription plus an English translation is available on request.
Best for: Researchers and institutions with code-switched South African recordings that need consistent speaker identification.
Transcription and Captioning SP
R35 / min
A subtitle and caption house in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban: R35 a minute of media, visually synchronized, in the SRT and VTT+ formats, with industry compliance and multilingual subtitles. The languages are English and all European languages.
Best for: Studios and broadcasters who need visually synchronized subtitles in SRT or VTT, in English and the European languages.
When to choose Transcrib Si
Five situations where our service is the simplest one. The figures come from our pricing page and the service contract, not from a promise.
| Your situation | Why us |
|---|---|
| Your recordings are in Russian, or mix Russian and English | That is what our engine is built for: Russian and the Russian-English pair, with automatic language detection. None of the five South African providers in the table names Russian, and the international services are billed in dollars on a card. |
| You want an API and exports a script can read | The REST API and the MCP server come with the Pro plan, and the CSV is one of the standard formats: TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT, CSV and DOCX. |
| You transcribe a few files a day | The free plan gives 3 files a day of up to 30 minutes each, with no bank card: no payment detail is asked for. And to try it, no account either: the file is dropped without signing in, the transcription starts at once, the draft stays for 24 hours, then it joins the account when you sign up. |
| You want to know what happens to your audio | We do not record your meetings, we do not sell hardware, and the privacy policy is written to be read. |
| You need a stable invoice | $10 a month when you pay for the year ($120 a year) or $20 a month, with 1,500 minutes of audio per calendar month. |
The questions this page answers.
How much does audio transcription cost in South Africa?
Our own price comes first: the free plan gives 3 files a day of up to 30 minutes each with no bank card, and Pro costs $10 a month when you pay for the year ($120 a year) or $20 a month, with 1,500 minutes of audio per calendar month. Among the South African providers the published rates run from R15 an audio minute at Transcribe Africa to R35 a minute at Transcription and Captioning SP: Simply Transcriptions starts at R16.50, TopTranscriptions charges R16.45 excluding VAT, and Soror Language Services starts at R20.00 excluding VAT. Three criteria then decide the choice: the turnaround you need, the language of the recordings and the format you want back. The prices stay in the currency of the service, the table does not convert them, and every row sends you to the page that publishes the figure.
Is there a free audio transcription service in South Africa?
Yes, and the free plan of Transcrib Si is part of it: 3 files a day, up to 30 minutes per file, with no bank card. None of the five South African rows announces a free tier, so their cell reads "not measured". Five of the six international services announce a free plan or a free trial: Otter.ai has a Basic plan that is free forever, Notta.ai gives 120 minutes a month with no credit card required, Rev gives 45 minutes of AI transcription a month, HappyScribe a free plan with a 10-minute free trial of AI transcription, and Sonix a 30-minute free trial. Only Transkriptor has a "Try it Free" button without a published allowance. Transcribe Africa offers a free quote and Simply Transcriptions a free no-obligation quote, but neither of those is a published free allowance, so we have not counted them as one.
Which languages are transcribed?
We transcribe Russian and English, chosen by you or detected automatically. That is the whole list and we do not round it up: we do not claim Afrikaans, Zulu or any other language. The local providers cover other ground — Transcribe Africa takes English, Afrikaans, Zulu and other South African languages, TopTranscriptions takes English or Afrikaans, Soror Language Services works with South African languages and code-switched recordings, and Transcription and Captioning SP takes English and the European languages. Simply Transcriptions names no language on the page we read, so its cell reads "not measured". The Languages column keeps the wording of each service.
Do I need an account?
To try, no: a visitor drops a file without signing in, the transcription starts at once, and the result stays available through a draft token for 24 hours (5 uploads a day per IP address, one file of 64 MB and 120 minutes at most). The account is for the rest: the history of the transcriptions, an API key and the Pro plan. It is created with an email address and a password of at least 8 characters, and the API returns an access token after the sign-up — no bank card. A draft already dropped then joins the account and appears in the history. The pages of the South African providers we read do not publish the terms of their own sign-up.
Can I pay with a card?
With us the card is only for the Pro plan: the free plan asks for no bank card, and Pro is paid by card after the sign-up, in the Billing section. The South African services take the rand: the five local providers publish their rates in rand and quote the work before it starts, while the international services are billed in dollars on a card. Every row of the table sends you to the page where the figure was read.
The same comparison in the other countries
On the Nigerian side: 12 rows, 5 local providers and 6 international services.
On the French side: 16 rows, 7 local providers and 8 international services.
On the German side: 12 rows, 4 local providers and 7 international services.
On the Italian side: 16 rows, 9 local providers and 6 international services.
On the Spanish side: 14 rows, 5 local providers and 8 international services.
On the Polish side: 16 rows, 8 local providers and 7 international services.
To read next.
The closest competitor, line by line.
A meeting assistant and a transcription service.
How the engine works, the limits and the formats.
Our plans and their limits, without detours.
An .srt file becomes a .vtt in the browser: the comma of the timecode becomes a dot and the WEBVTT header is added. Nothing is sent.
Try it on a file
The free plan accepts 3 files a day of 30 minutes each. Drop a file here: the transcription starts with no bank card, and the result opens in the page, ready to download as TXT, SRT or DOCX.
Mark Burmistrov, founder.
Every figure on this page comes from a service page, a contract or a dated measurement of our own. The author of the page and the publisher of the site are the same person. Questions and corrections: support@transcrib.si.
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