How Much Does Transcription Cost in 2026? 22 Services Compared

AI transcription in 2026 costs $0.006 to $0.142 per included minute on the entry paid plans of seven apps that meter minutes, with a median of $0.033 on monthly billing. That is about 11 times the $0.003 median of five speech-to-text APIs, while human transcription at Rev costs $1.99 a minute. Free plans range from 45 minutes a month (Rev) to 300 (Otter), and 5 of 17 apps cap a single free recording, from 3 minutes (Notta) to 2 hours (Fireflies).

Key numbers

• The median AI transcription app charged $0.033 per included minute on monthly billing in September 2026, across 7 apps with metered entry plans; the range was $0.006 to $0.142 (How we calculated).
• Five speech-to-text APIs had a median batch price of $0.003 per minute in September 2026, from $0.0025 at AssemblyAI to $0.006 at Amazon Transcribe (AssemblyAI pricing, Amazon Transcribe pricing).
• Human transcription at Rev costs $1.99 per minute in 2026, about 800 times the cheapest API price we found (Rev pricing).
• Otter's free plan gives 300 transcription minutes a month in 2026, with a 30-minute limit per conversation and 3 lifetime file imports (Otter pricing).
• 5 of 17 transcription apps capped a single free recording in September 2026, from 3 minutes at Notta to 2 hours at Fireflies (Notta pricing, How we calculated).

Price per minute: apps, APIs and people

The same minute of audio costs $0.003 through a median API, $0.033 in the median app and $1.99 from a person. Apps are priced as monthly plans, so we divide the plan price by the minutes it includes; APIs and human services publish a per-minute or per-hour rate (How we calculated). Figure 1 puts the three medians side by side.

Source: vendors' pricing pages, accessed 2026-09-23; medians computed as described in How we calculated.

Figure 1. One minute of audio costs $0.003 via the median API, $0.033 in the median app and $1.99 from a person. Source: MeetWave check of 22 vendor pricing pages, 2026-09-23.

An app price per included minute is a floor. A plan used at half its quota costs twice as much per minute, and the apps with unlimited plans have no per-minute price at all (How we calculated).

Price is one axis of the choice. Error rates are measured in how accurate AI transcription is on real meetings, and the recording model, bot or no bot, in how to choose transcription software. A caption file a service already exported can be turned into plain text with the free VTT to TXT converter.

The full table: 22 services checked on 2026-09-23

The table is the answer for one service at a time. Each name links to the pricing page we read; prices are per user per month in the currency the page showed (Otter pricing).

Source: vendors' pricing pages, accessed 2026-09-23; the MeetWave row is read from our own plan configuration. For API rows the "$ per included minute" column is the list price per minute. Method: How we calculated.

What "free" means on each plan

Free plans limit four different things, and the monthly minute count is only one of them. Among the five apps that meter free minutes, the allowance runs from 45 minutes a month at Rev to 300 at Otter, with a median of 120 (Rev pricing, Otter pricing). Figure 2 shows the five.

Figure 2. Free transcription plans give 45 to 300 minutes a month. Fireflies, Fathom and tl;dv set no monthly minute cap; 5 of 17 apps limit one free recording. Source: MeetWave check of vendor pricing pages, 2026-09-23.

• Minutes per month. 45 to 300, median 120, across Rev, Descript, Notta, MeetGeek and Otter (How we calculated).
• Length of one recording. 5 of 17 apps stop a free recording: Notta at 3 minutes, Otter and Jamie at 30, Happy Scribe at 45 and Fireflies at 2 hours (Notta pricing, Fireflies pricing).
• File imports. Otter allows 3 imports for the lifetime of a free account; Notta allows 50 uploads a month (Otter pricing, Notta pricing).
• Trial minutes instead of a plan. Sonix gives a 30-minute trial and Happy Scribe a 10-minute trial of AI transcription (Sonix pricing, Happy Scribe pricing).

A limit that does not renew every month is a trial, not a free plan. Three meeting apps, Fireflies, Fathom and tl;dv, advertise unlimited free transcription; Fireflies caps storage at 400 minutes per team instead (Fireflies pricing, Fathom pricing, tl;dv pricing). To check a file against a paid plan before paying, the free plan on our pricing page lists its monthly minutes.

"Unlimited" plans and where the limit moves

6 of the 10 meeting apps sell an entry paid plan without a minute cap: Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv, Tactiq, Granola and Krisp. Otter, Notta, MeetGeek and Jamie meter theirs (Tactiq pricing, Krisp pricing, How we calculated).

On unlimited plans the limit moves to the length of one recording and to AI credits. Fireflies records up to 2 hours on Free and Pro, 3 hours on Business and 4 on Enterprise, with 20 to 50 AI credits by plan (Fireflies pricing). Otter Pro stops at 90 minutes a meeting, and Notta Pro at 5 hours a recording (Otter pricing, Notta pricing).

Why the "$0.10–$0.50 a minute" rule of thumb is out of date

Only 2 of the 8 app prices we checked fall between $0.10 and $0.50 a minute. SpeakWrite's 2026 guide lists automated transcription at "$0.10 – $0.50 per minute" (SpeakWrite, 2026). In our check, Happy Scribe Basic ($0.1417) and Sonix pay-as-you-go ($10 an hour, $0.1667 a minute) sit in that band; the other six monthly plans are below $0.10 (How we calculated).

Annual billing cuts the price further. The discount against monthly billing runs from 15% at Rev to 51% at Otter, and the median annual price per included minute drops to $0.0069 (Rev pricing, Otter pricing).

How we calculated

We opened each of the 22 pricing pages on 2026-09-23, from a US address, and recorded the entry paid plan, the minutes it includes, the free allowance and the per-recording cap. Pages that switch between monthly and annual billing were read in both positions. The recomputation script is apps/web/scripts/blog-data/transcription-pricing-2026.mjs in our repository; its inputs are the rows of the table above (Rev pricing).

• Price per included minute = monthly plan price ÷ minutes included per month. Example: Otter Pro, $16.99 ÷ 1,200 = $0.0142 (Otter pricing).
• Apps, monthly billing (7): the cheapest plan with a minute quota and a monthly price — Rev Essentials $0.0060, MeetGeek Pro $0.0133, Otter Pro $0.0142, Transkriptor Lite $0.0333, Descript Hobbyist $0.0400, Sonix Core $0.0833, Happy Scribe Basic $0.1417. The median is $0.033 (Transkriptor pricing).
• Apps, annual billing (7): the cheapest plan with a minute quota and an annual price — Transkriptor Pro $0.0035, Notta Pro $0.0045, Rev $0.0051, Otter $0.0069, MeetGeek $0.0083, Descript $0.0267, Happy Scribe $0.0708 (Notta pricing).
• APIs (5): the cheapest pre-recorded (batch) list price — AssemblyAI $0.0025, Azure $0.003, Google Cloud dynamic batch $0.003, Deepgram $0.0043, Amazon $0.006. Google's standard v2 rate is $0.016 a minute (Google Cloud pricing, Azure pricing).
• Ratios: $0.033 ÷ $0.003 = 11; $1.99 ÷ $0.0025 = 796, rounded to about 800 (Deepgram pricing).
• The 17 apps are 10 meeting apps (Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv, Notta, Tactiq, MeetGeek, Jamie, Granola, Krisp) and 7 file transcription services (Rev, Sonix, Descript, Happy Scribe, Transkriptor, Amberscript, Trint) (Trint plans).

Exclusions. Prices shown only in euros (Jamie, Amberscript) stay out of every median. Plans without a minute quota have no price per minute. OpenAI and TurboScribe are not in the table because both pricing pages refused automated access on the day of the check (Amberscript pricing). We re-check every row each quarter; the next check is due 2026-12-23.

What changed since the last check

First check: 2026-09-23. Later checks will list every price or limit that moved, with the old and new value (How we calculated).

FAQ

How much does transcription cost per minute?

In September 2026 the median app charged $0.033 per included minute on monthly billing, the median API $0.003 and Rev's human service $1.99 (How we calculated).

How much does AI transcription cost?

On the entry paid plans of seven apps that meter minutes, $0.006 to $0.142 per included minute on monthly billing; on annual billing the median falls to $0.0069 (How we calculated).

What is the cheapest transcription API?

Of the five APIs we checked, AssemblyAI Universal-2 at $0.15 an hour, or $0.0025 a minute, had the lowest list price (AssemblyAI pricing). OpenAI was not checked because its pricing page blocked automated access.

How many free minutes does Otter give?

300 transcription minutes a month, up to 30 minutes per conversation and 3 audio or video imports over the life of the account (Otter pricing).

Is the Fireflies free plan unlimited?

Transcription is unlimited on the free plan, but storage is capped at 400 minutes per team, one recording stops at 2 hours and the plan includes 20 AI credits (Fireflies pricing).

How much does human transcription cost per hour?

Rev charges $1.99 a minute, which is $119.40 an hour; Happy Scribe's human proofreading starts at $2.00 a minute (Rev pricing, Happy Scribe pricing).

Sources

1. Otter.ai — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
2. Fireflies.ai — Pricing & Plans (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
3. Fathom — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
4. tl;dv — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
5. Notta — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
6. Tactiq — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
7. MeetGeek — Plans & Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
8. Jamie — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
9. Granola — Pricing plans (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
10. Krisp — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
11. Rev — Subscription Plans + Per-Minute Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
12. Sonix — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
13. Descript — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
14. Happy Scribe — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
15. Transkriptor — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
16. Amberscript — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
17. Trint — Pricing Plans (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
18. AssemblyAI — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
19. Deepgram — Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
20. Amazon Web Services — Amazon Transcribe Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
21. Google Cloud — Speech-to-Text API Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
22. Microsoft Azure — Azure Speech Pricing (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.
23. SpeakWrite — Transcription Costs in 2026: Your Ultimate Pricing Guide (2026). Accessed 2026-09-23.