Pay-as-you-go transcription, priced per minute

Pay-as-you-go transcription for personal accounts means buying a minute pack only when you have recordings to process. You pay per minute of audio, and there is no personal monthly fee.

Per-minute transcription cost by pack

The effective base rate is the pack price divided by its minutes. For a 120-minute recording, this table shows the equivalent value drawn from each pack, not a separate charge at checkout:

Pack price	Pack minutes	Value of 120 minutes	Pack minutes left
$1.99	45 min	Cannot cover alone	n/a
$5.99	5 h (300 min)	~$2.40	~180 min
$12.99	15 h (900 min)	~$1.73	780 min
$19.99	30 h (1,800 min)	~$1.33	1,680 min
$49.99	100 h (6,000 min)	~$1.00	5,880 min

Three $1.99 starter packs cost $5.97 and provide 135 minutes, leaving 15 after the recording. One $5.99 pack provides 300 minutes and leaves 180. Pack prices are paid up front; the dollar figures above allocate that purchase price across minutes used.

Optional medical mode adds 100% of recording duration to the billed minutes, and each selected translation target adds 25%; these charges add together and the app shows the total before upload. Multichannel handling bills each audio channel, so a two-channel file counts twice.

Prepaid transcription without a personal subscription

Buy a pack up front and draw from your balance as you transcribe. Speaker labels, the transcript editor, tags, and exports do not add billed minutes. You can buy another pack when you need one; unused minutes carry across projects. Hushscript for Teams has a separate monthly or annual subscription with pooled hours.

Buy minutes when your recording work calls for them

Prepaid transcription can fit an uneven workload: buy minutes for an interview now, then use the remainder on another project later. You pay for the pack rather than a recurring personal plan. For example, a $19.99 pack provides 1,800 base transcription minutes, enough for 15 recordings of two hours each if you do not select options that add billed minutes.

Choose the workflow you need

Speaker detection is optional and adds no billed minutes. You can edit the transcript, use tags and saved transcription context, merge related recordings, and export in 21 formats. Insights are optional too: one free run per transcript creates summaries, actions, and a fully rewritten Cleaned transcript together, and a later regeneration uses minutes from your balance, shown before confirmation.

Batch without a plan allowance

Personal accounts have no plan-based daily or monthly allowance. Recordings can run up to 10 hours, and there is no fixed source-file-size limit. Large files are prepared in the browser, so device capacity affects what you can process. Service and active-job safeguards apply. Stage several recordings and start them together or one at a time; batching does not change the base minute rate. For the queue workflow, see batch transcription.

Billed by audio length

Minutes are counted by the length of your audio, not by how long recognition takes. A standard 45-minute interview uses 45 minutes. Three things add billed minutes: medical mode adds 100% of the duration, each translation target adds 25%, and multichannel handling bills each audio channel, so a two-channel file counts twice. Nothing renews on its own, and you decide when to buy another pack.

Transcription without a subscription: when it fits

A subscription bills every month whether you transcribe or not, and its monthly allowance usually resets, so unused minutes are forfeited. Prepaid minutes do not expire. That favors uneven work: a burst during a project, seasonal fieldwork, a few interviews a year, or a trial before you commit. As a hypothetical, a $20-a-month plan costs $240 a year whether you transcribe 100 hours or none.

A subscription can still win at high, steady volume, such as 30 or more hours every month, where its bulk rate may beat the prepaid rate. The break-even is arithmetic: divide the plan price by the minutes you really use and compare the result with the pack rates above. Steady and high leans subscription. Bursty, seasonal, or uncertain leans prepaid.

Sizing a pack: a worked example

Say a project has six 50-minute interviews, two 30-minute briefings, and a 40-minute panel. That is 400 minutes. If you are eligible for the 30 free minutes, 370 remain. One $12.99 pack of 900 minutes covers them and leaves 530 for the next project, and the $5.99 pack of 300 minutes would not.

Four mistakes to avoid:

• Over-buying for a one-off. Larger packs have a lower rate, but minutes you never use are still paid for.
• Under-buying. Add up your recordings first and keep a small margin so you do not run dry mid-project.
• Treating the free minutes as monthly. They are granted once, so spend them on a representative recording.
• Reading “no subscription” as “free”. Each minute still costs money. What goes away is the recurring bill.

Prepaid minutes never expire

Minutes do not expire.

Updated: October 26, 2026