Transcription tools love to advertise a monthly price, but the monthly price
tells you very little. What matters is how many hours of audio that price
covers, and whether the plan lets you upload the files you actually have.
Two tools at the same $20 can differ tenfold in what you get.
So instead of comparing sticker prices, this post works out what a real
workload costs on five tools: Otter.ai, Rev, Sonix, HappyScribe and
ScribeToAny (ours — we'll be upfront about where the others are the better
choice). Every number comes from each vendor's public pricing page, checked on
September 23, 2026; links are at the end. Prices change, so treat this as a
snapshot and check the vendor's page before you buy.
One scoping note: this is about transcribing recorded files — interviews,
lectures, podcasts, videos. Live meeting bots are a different job, covered
under "When another tool is the better choice" below.
Cost per hour of audio
Each row is the cheapest plan that includes file uploads, divided by the hours
of transcription it includes each month.
| Tool and plan | Price | Included per month | Cost per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| ScribeToAny Plus | $10/mo · $88/yr | 25 h (1,500 min) | $0.40 · $0.29 yearly |
| ScribeToAny Pro | $20/mo · $120/yr | 50 h (3,000 min) | $0.40 · $0.20 yearly |
| Rev Essentials | $29.99/mo · $305.90/yr | 83 h (5,000 min) | $0.36 · $0.31 yearly |
| Otter.ai Pro | $16.99/mo · $99.96/yr | 20 h (1,200 min), max 10 file imports | $0.85 · $0.42 yearly |
| HappyScribe Pro | €29/mo · €228/yr | 10 h (600 min) | €2.90 · €1.90 yearly |
| HappyScribe Basic | €17/mo · €102/yr | 2 h (120 min) | €8.50 · €4.25 yearly |
| Sonix Core | $25/mo · $275/yr | 5 h | $5.00 · $4.58 yearly |
| Sonix pay-as-you-go | $10 per hour | — | $10.00 |
Two things stand out. Per hour, Rev Essentials is slightly cheaper than
ScribeToAny on monthly billing ($0.36 vs $0.40; on yearly billing ScribeToAny
is cheaper) — but it starts at $29.99 and covers English and Spanish only;
you need Rev Pro ($59.99/mo) for its 37+ languages. And Otter's 1,200
minutes are capped at 10 imported files a month on Pro, so if your work is
uploading recordings rather than recording meetings, the file cap runs out long
before the minutes do.
What a real month costs
Cost per hour hides the jumps between plans, so here are two concrete
workloads, priced on monthly billing (yearly in brackets).
10 hours of recordings a month
Ten one-hour interviews, or twenty 30-minute lectures.
| Tool | Plan you'd need | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| ScribeToAny | Plus (1,500 min) | $10 ($7.33) |
| Otter.ai | Pro — fits only if it's ≤ 10 files | $16.99 ($8.33) |
| Rev | Essentials | $29.99 ($25.49) |
| HappyScribe | Pro (600 min) | €29 (€19) |
| Sonix | Core 5 h + 5 h at $10/h | $75 |
30 hours of recordings a month
A research project, a weekly podcast back catalogue, or a course's lectures.
| Tool | Plan you'd need | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| ScribeToAny | Pro (3,000 min) | $20 ($10) |
| Rev | Essentials (5,000 min) | $29.99 ($25.49) |
| Otter.ai | Business — Pro stops at 1,200 min and 10 files | $30 ($19.99) |
| HappyScribe | Business (6,000 min) | €89 (€59) |
| Sonix | Pro (40 h) | $80 ($73.33) |
At 30 hours, the gap with Sonix and HappyScribe is several-fold. Rev and Otter
Business come closest, at roughly $20–30 a month against ScribeToAny's $10–20 —
and Otter Business is a per-user plan built for meetings rather than file
uploads.
Free plans: what you can actually do before paying
| Tool | Free allowance | Longest file | Exports on free |
|---|---|---|---|
| ScribeToAny | 100 min every month, 2 files/day | 30 min | All 8: TXT, SRT, VTT, TSV, CSV, JSON, PDF, DOCX |
| Otter.ai | 300 min/month, but 3 file imports in total | 30 min | TXT, MP3 |
| Rev | 45 min/month, English only | not listed | not listed |
| HappyScribe | 10-minute one-time trial | 45 min | TXT, SRT |
| Sonix | 30-minute one-time trial | not listed | not listed |
ScribeToAny's free plan is smaller than Otter's on paper, but it renews every
month, has no lifetime import cap, and includes speaker labels and every export
format — so you can test your real files, in the format you need, before paying
anything. No credit card is required.
Limits that change the math
- File length. ScribeToAny paid plans take files up to 3 hours (5 GB). Otter Pro stops at 90 minutes per conversation and HappyScribe Basic at 90 minutes per file; long recordings would need splitting there.
- Languages. ScribeToAny transcribes about 98 languages on every plan, free included, and can transcribe non-English audio straight into English. Otter supports 6 languages; Rev Essentials 2 (37+ on Pro); Sonix 54+; HappyScribe 150+ (60+ on its free trial).
- Parallel work. ScribeToAny paid plans transcribe 6 files at once, with no daily upload limit.
- Translation. Finished ScribeToAny transcripts can be translated into 134+ languages for free (via Google Translate), keeping the original subtitle timings.
When another tool is the better choice
Cheaper isn't better if the tool doesn't do the job. Pick one of the others if:
- You need live meeting notes. Otter joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet and transcribes in real time. ScribeToAny transcribes recordings you upload; it doesn't join calls.
- You need human-verified transcripts. Rev offers human transcription at $1.99/min with 99%+ accuracy, and legal transcript formats — useful for court and compliance work. ScribeToAny is machine transcription only; see how accurate AI transcription really is for what to expect.
- You need a rare language or professional subtitling. HappyScribe covers 150+ languages, exports 15+ formats and sells human subtitling.
- You're a team that lives in a shared workspace. Sonix is built around multi-seat workspaces and AI analysis of transcripts.
- You transcribe 80+ hours a month. Rev's larger allowances (5,000 minutes on Essentials, 10,000 on Pro) fit very high volumes; ScribeToAny Pro tops out at 3,000 minutes a month.
The short version
If your work is uploading recordings — interviews, lectures, podcasts,
videos — and you transcribe somewhere between a few hours and 50 hours a
month, ScribeToAny is the lowest-cost way to do it among these five: $10 a
month covers 25 hours, $20 covers 50, with 3-hour files, ~98 languages and
every export format. You can try it on your own files with the
free plan, no card needed.
Sources
Prices and limits as published on each vendor's pricing page on September 23,
- EUR prices are shown as published, not converted. Yearly cost per hour divides the yearly price by 12 months of included time.
- Otter.ai — otter.ai/pricing
- Rev — rev.com/pricing
- Sonix — sonix.ai/pricing
- HappyScribe — happyscribe.com/pricing
- ScribeToAny — scribetoany.com/pricing
Otter.ai, Rev, Sonix and HappyScribe are trademarks of their respective owners.
This comparison is independent and not endorsed by any of them. Spotted a
number that's changed? Tell us and we'll update it.
Originally published on the ScribeToAny blog.
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