Drag the slider to your yearly audio volume and see what transcription actually costs — pay-per-use versus subscriptions versus human, with the honest break-even point for each.
TranscribeBee — $2/hour, pay only for what you transcribe
$24/ year
Subscription tools (flat yearly cost, regardless of usage)
Typical market rate is $1–$3 per minute of audio.
At 12 hrs/year, pay-per-use is the cheapest option — you save $180 versus the cheapest subscription (Otter Pro).
Subscription figures are public monthly-billing list prices ×12, verified 2026-05; check each provider for current pricing and plan limits. Human transcription is an industry estimate, not a TranscribeBee service. TranscribeBee is billed per minute at $2/hour with a $2 minimum per file.
Most transcription pricing pages are built to make one option look good. This one shows the full picture: a flat subscription is only cheaper once you transcribe enough hours to pass its break-even point. If your usage is occasional or unpredictable — a batch of interviews, a semester of lectures, an occasional podcast — paying $2 per hour with no subscription is almost always the lower total cost, and you never pay for months you don’t use.
It depends on the model. Pay-per-use AI transcription like TranscribeBee is $2 per hour of audio. Subscription tools run roughly $204–$420 per year (Otter, TurboScribe, GoTranscript) regardless of usage. Human transcription typically runs $1–$3 per minute (about $60–$180 per hour).
For occasional or variable use, yes — you only pay for the hours you actually transcribe. A flat subscription only becomes cheaper once your yearly volume passes its break-even point, which this calculator shows for each tool.
Human transcription is done manually by a person, priced per minute. It can be more accurate for very difficult audio, but for most recordings AI transcription is a fraction of the cost.