Transcription cost calculator
Type how many hours of audio you have and see what each transcription service charges: the published rate, the cost of your audio, and the source and the date behind every price. Every number is worked out on your own device, and no file is uploaded anywhere.
10 hours of audio costs between $50.00 and $1,200.00 across the 7 services of this currency that publish a rate.
- AI (automatic)
- Human
- Not stated on the page
Source: the official pricing pages of the services listed, accessed 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-23. Every price in the table carries its own page and its own date.
| Service | Plan | Who does the work | Published rate | Cost of 10 hours | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transcribe.com | Extra credit on any plan | AI (automatic) | $5 per hour | $50.00 | transcribe.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Sonix | Pay as you go | AI (automatic) | $10 per hour | $100.00 | sonix.ai/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| HappyScribe | Additional credits | AI (automatic) | $0.20 per minute | $120.00 | www.happyscribe.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Rev | AI transcript, pay as you go | AI (automatic) | $0.25 per minute | $150.00 | www.rev.com/services/ai-transcription · checked 2026-10-22 |
| TranscribeMe | Human edited transcript | Human | from $0.79 per minute | $474.00 | transcribeme.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-23 |
| Rev | Human transcription | Human | from $1.99 per minute | $1,194.00 | www.rev.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| HappyScribe | Human proofreading | Human | from $2.00 per minute | $1,200.00 | www.happyscribe.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
Everything above is calculated on your device. The numbers you type are not sent to a server and are not stored: the page holds no statistics and makes no request of its own, apart from the small JSON file with the published prices that sits next to it. No file is uploaded, and nothing you enter here can reach us.
Four steps, and no account.
Type the length of your audio
Put the number of hours you need transcribed into the first field. A tenth of an hour is six minutes, so 2.5 is two and a half hours of audio.
Pick the currency you pay in
Every service publishes its own currency and the page converts nothing, so it shows one currency at a time. Change the field and the whole table and chart change with it.
Read the table, not only the chart
Each row carries the published rate, what your audio costs there, and the page the number came from. A rate written as "from" is the cheapest the service can charge, so the cost is a lower bound.
Check the source before you sign up
Every price shows the page it was read from and the date it was checked. Prices change without notice, so the page is a starting point and the link is the truth.
What a plan costs for the same audio.
A plan is paid for by the month and comes with an allowance of audio. While your audio fits in the allowance, the monthly price is the whole answer. Past the allowance, the extra time is added only when the service publishes a price for it.
| Service | Plan | Price | What the month includes | Cost of 10 hours | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notta | Pro, billed yearly | $8.17 a month, $97.99 for the year | 1,800 transcription minutes a month (30 h) | $8.17 | www.notta.ai/en/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Transkriptor | Lite | $9.99 a month | 300 minutes of transcription a month (5 h) + 5 h over the allowance, price not published | $9.99 + 5 h, price not published | transkriptor.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Transcrib Si | Pro, billed yearly | $10 a month, $120 for the year | fair use of 1,500 minutes of audio a month (25 h) | $10.00 | transcrib.si/pricing.html · checked 2026-10-23 |
| Descript | Hobbyist, billed yearly | $16 a month ($24 a month paid monthly) | 10 media hours a month (10 h) | $16.00 | www.descript.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Otter | Pro | $16.99 a user a month | 1,200 in-app recording minutes a month (20 h) | $16.99 | otter.ai/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| HappyScribe | Basic | $17 a month ($8.50 a month paid yearly) | 120 minutes of AI transcription a month (2 h) + 8 h over the allowance at $0.20 per extra minute | $113.00 | www.happyscribe.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Transcrib Si | Pro, billed monthly | $20 a month | fair use of 1,500 minutes of audio a month (25 h) | $20.00 | transcrib.si/pricing.html · checked 2026-10-23 |
| Sonix | Core | $25 a month ($275 a year) | 5 hours of transcription a month (5 h) + 5 h over the allowance at $10 per extra hour | $75.00 | sonix.ai/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
| Rev | Essentials | $29.99 a seat a month | 5,000 AI transcription minutes a user a month (83.33 h) | $29.99 | www.rev.com/pricing · checked 2026-10-22 |
Three rules, and no hidden conversion.
One price, one page, one date. Every rate in the table was read from the official page of the service and checked against a saved copy of that page. The page and the date sit in the row, so you can open the link and see the number yourself.
No currency conversion. Services publish dollars, euros and pounds, and the published research behind this page did not convert between them. So the tool shows one currency at a time rather than a made-up rate of exchange.
A rate is not always a final price. A rate written as "from" is a lower bound, and the cost in that row is the cheapest the service can charge for that audio. A plan with an allowance is paid for by the month: the cost of your audio is the monthly price while it fits, and the extra time is added only when a price for it is published.
Machine and person are different prices. The "who does the work" column says what the page of the service says: automatic transcription, a human, or nothing at all. Where a page does not say, the table says "not stated" instead of guessing. The difference is large: an hour of human transcription often costs more than ten hours of the automatic kind.
Five questions people ask.
How do I work out what N hours of transcription cost?
Multiply the published rate by the length of your audio. A rate per hour is multiplied by the hours; a rate per minute is multiplied by the minutes, so 10 hours is 600 minutes. The calculator does that multiplication for you, and shows the number of minutes it used next to the hours you typed.
Why are the prices in different currencies?
Because each service publishes its own prices in its own currency, and no rate of exchange was applied when the prices were collected. Comparing a dollar price with a euro price would need an exchange rate that changes every day, so the tool shows one currency at a time. Pick the currency you pay in and the table and the chart follow it.
How fresh are these prices?
Every row carries the date its page was checked, between 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-23, and the page it was read from. Prices change without notice, so treat the table as the state of the market on that date and open the link when you decide.
What is the difference between AI and human transcription?
Automatic transcription is done by a model and costs a fraction of a human. Human transcription means a person listens to the recording and writes it out, which is what you need for a court transcript, an exact quotation or an unusual accent. The "who does the work" column tells you which one each service is selling at that price.
Does this page upload my files?
No. The calculator works on numbers, not on audio, and it has no field for a file. Nothing you type is sent anywhere: the page holds no statistics, keeps nothing in a cookie, and makes one request for the small JSON file with the published prices that sits next to it. If you want to transcribe audio itself, the upload box below does that, under your own account.
Three pages that do the work.
The calculator tells you what the audio costs. These pages get the text out of it.
Transcribe audio to text
Upload a recording of any length and get the text back, with speaker labels and every export format.
Transcribe a meeting
What a recorded meeting costs to put on paper, and how to get the minutes without a bot in the call.
Transcribe a long recording
A lecture, an interview or a whole day of interviews: how to split it, and what to do with the pieces.
Back to the front page of Transcrib Si, or read our own plans.
Transcribe a recording and judge the result yourself.
The free plan needs no card. Our Pro plan is $10 a month paid yearly, with a fair use of 1,500 minutes of audio a month.
Drop an audio or video file
or — mp3, wav, m4a, mp4, up to 64 MB and two hours
Transcription runs under your account: sign in or create a free account.
A file you upload here goes to the transcription service under your own account, which is a different thing from this calculator. The calculator never sees a file at all. What happens to your audio is written down in the security page.