A team that captions four or five short clips a week can pull up Rev’s per-minute rate, Otter.ai’s monthly seat price, and Descript’s seat-plus-hours plan side by side and still not know which one is cheaper, because none of the three sticker prices measure the same thing. One is priced per minute of audio. One is priced per seat with a monthly minute allowance. One is priced per seat with a monthly hour allowance and a separate export restriction by tier. Comparing them on list price alone is comparing units that do not convert into each other without an extra step.
Three ways this category prices the same output
Rev prices human transcription at $1.99 per minute of audio, ordered a la carte with no subscription (Rev, fetched 2026-08-28). Rev also sells seat plans, but $1.99 per minute is the flagship price this piece uses as the category’s per-minute example.
Otter.ai prices by seat with a fixed monthly allowance: 300 minutes on Basic, 1,200 on Pro, and unlimited live-meeting minutes on Business, though Business still caps imported file transcription at 6,000 minutes a user per month (Otter.ai, fetched 2026-08-28).
Descript also prices by seat but measures its allowance in “media hours”: 10 a month on Hobbyist, 30 on Creator, 40 on Business, with paid top-ups on the two higher tiers and export gated by tier, 1080p on Hobbyist versus 4K on Creator and Business (Descript, fetched 2026-08-28).
Sonix hybridizes the two models: a per-hour Pay As You Go rate of $10 plus three subscription tiers that each carry an hour allowance and a flat $10-per-hour overage once that allowance runs out (Sonix, fetched 2026-08-28).
A $1.99-per-minute rate and a $16.99-per-seat-per-month rate are not the same unit of measurement, any more than a price per mile and a price for a full tank of gas are. Ranking them requires knowing how much finished transcription a team actually produces in a month, and none of these four pricing pages calculates that for you.
Why the hour cap is the trap for short-clip teams
For a team that records long sessions and publishes short clips, the detail that matters most is what the hour cap counts. Descript states this plainly: media hours “track uploaded media files and media recorded in Descript, regardless of whether they’re transcribed” (Descript, fetched 2026-08-28), the raw file dropped into the app, not the trimmed clip exported at the end. Otter.ai’s caps are labeled “Meeting & recording transcription monthly limit” and “Imported file transcription monthly limit,” both measured against the length of the meeting, recording, or file, not anything produced after editing (Otter.ai, fetched 2026-08-28). Sonix confirms the same mechanism in its FAQ: “per hour” of transcription “relates to the length of audio or video file that you upload… not the length of time to transcribe or the length of time you use the software” (Sonix, fetched 2026-08-28). Rev’s per-minute rate has no cap to test against.
This is what makes an hour-capped plan risky for a team with a high ratio of raw minutes uploaded to finished minutes kept. If a 45-minute raw interview gets cut to a 3-minute finished clip, the cap meters the full 45 minutes, not the 3 that ship. A seat-based allowance is not always measuring the unit the buyer assumes it is.
The cost-per-finished-minute formula
The formula: plan price for a billing period, divided by finished, exported minutes produced in that period, equals cost per finished minute. For a seat plan, this needs your own monthly finished-minute volume.
Here is an illustrative scenario, not a reader’s actual volume: a team keeping short highlight clips from long raw sessions, at roughly 15 raw minutes uploaded per finished minute. The numbers below assume the team submits only the finished clip to Rev, a per-file order, while Otter and Descript meter the raw file because that is how recording or import happens on those tools. Submit the raw file to Rev instead and cost scales with raw minutes: 75 raw minutes at $1.99 is $149.25 for 5 finished minutes, or $29.85 per finished minute, far above the seat plan.
At 5 finished minutes a month (75 raw minutes), Rev costs 5 times $1.99, or $9.95; Otter Pro, at $16.99 a month, costs $3.40 per finished minute. Rev is cheaper here. At 40 finished minutes (600 raw minutes, under Otter Pro’s 1,200-minute cap), Rev is still $1.99 per finished minute; Otter Pro is $0.42. The crossover sits around 8 to 9 finished minutes a month. Past that point the seat plan is cheaper, for as long as raw uploads stay under the cap.
At 100 finished minutes, the same ratio implies 1,500 raw minutes, above Otter Pro’s 1,200-minute cap. Rev keeps scaling linearly: 100 times $1.99 is $199, still $1.99 per finished minute. Otter states no overage rate for exceeding the limit, only that unused minutes do not roll over, so what happens next is undocumented. Moving to Otter Business, at $30 a month, the binding constraint for a team importing raw footage is the separate 6,000-minute-per-user imported-file cap, not the unlimited meeting and recording allowance; 1,500 raw minutes sits well under it. That is $0.30 per finished minute, under Rev’s rate, but only because the team upgraded before hitting Pro’s undocumented wall.
What each vendor’s own pricing page states
Figures below are from each vendor’s own pricing page, fetched 2026-08-28.
| Vendor | Tier | Price | Billing | Included | Overage | Export/format restriction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rev | Human Transcription | $1.99/min | Pay per minute, no plan | N/A | N/A, always per minute | None stated |
| Otter.ai | Pro | $16.99/user/mo ($8.33/user/mo billed annually) | Monthly or annual | 1,200 min/user/month, meeting/recording and imported file, tracked separately | Monthly cap, no rollover; rate not stated | None stated |
| Otter.ai | Business | $30/user/mo ($19.99/user/mo billed annually) | Monthly or annual | Unlimited meeting/recording; 6,000 min/user/month imported file | Imported-file cap, no rollover; rate not stated | None stated |
| Descript | Hobbyist | $24/person/mo ($16/person/mo billed annually) | Monthly or annual | 10 media hours/month | No top-up listed for this tier | Export capped at 1080p |
| Descript | Creator | $35/person/mo ($24/person/mo billed annually) | Monthly or annual | 30 media hours/month | Top-ups available; rate not stated | Export up to 4K |
| Descript | Business | $65/person/mo ($50/person/mo billed annually) | Monthly or annual | 40 media hours/month | Top-ups available; rate not stated | Export up to 4K, team-wide Brand Studio |
| Sonix | Pay As You Go | $10/hour | Per hour, no plan | N/A | N/A, always per hour, prorated to the second | None stated |
| Sonix | Core | $25/mo ($275/yr) | Monthly or annual | 5 hrs/month (60 hrs/year) | $10/hour | None stated |
| Sonix | Advanced | $50/mo ($550/yr) | Monthly or annual | 20 hrs/month (240 hrs/year) | $10/hour | None stated |
| Sonix | Pro | $80/mo ($880/yr) | Monthly or annual | 40 hrs/month (480 hrs/year) | $10/hour | None stated |
Where the seat plans still win
The arithmetic above is a volume-dependent crossover, not a universal ranking or verdict. Below roughly 8 to 9 finished minutes a month, Rev’s flat rate beats Otter Pro’s flat fee, since there is not enough output to spread the seat price across. Above that line, for as long as raw uploads stay under the plan’s cap, the seat plan wins, by a wider margin as volume grows.
Sonix’s subscription tiers sit in between. Because Sonix bills overage at a flat $10 an hour instead of leaving it undocumented, a team that exceeds its included hours does not hit an unpriced wall the way an Otter Pro subscriber does; it pays a per-hour rate close to Rev’s, a different kind of risk than a cap with no stated overage price.
Running the numbers on your own week
- Total finished, exported minutes actually produced in one billing period, counted from what you published, not from what you recorded or uploaded.
- The plan price for that same billing period, at whatever billing cycle you are on, monthly or annual.
- Whether your vendor’s cap or overage meter counts the raw audio or video you upload, or the finished output you export. Descript, Otter.ai, and Sonix each state or imply raw upload; where a page does not say, treat it as unconfirmed.
FAQ
What is cost per finished minute in transcription and captioning pricing?
It is the plan price for a billing period divided by the finished, exported minutes produced in that period, the only unit that lets a per-minute vendor like Rev and a per-seat vendor like Otter.ai or Descript be compared honestly, since their list prices describe different things.
Does a transcription plan’s included-hours cap count raw upload time or edited output time?
Where a vendor states it, the answer is raw upload or recording time, not edited output. Descript’s FAQ says media hours track uploaded and recorded files “regardless of whether they’re transcribed.” Otter.ai’s caps are labeled by meeting, recording, and imported-file length, the same upload-side measurement, and Sonix ties its hourly rate to the uploaded file’s length, not time spent transcribing. Rev’s per-minute pricing has no cap. Where a page does not specify, this piece treats that as unconfirmed.
Is a per-minute transcription vendor always cheaper than a per-seat plan?
No. The worked arithmetic above shows a crossover around 8 to 9 finished minutes a month at Otter Pro’s price, holding only when the team submits its finished clip to Rev rather than raw footage. Below the crossover Rev is cheaper; above it, while raw uploads stay under the seat plan’s cap, the seat plan is cheaper. The answer depends on the reader’s own finished-minute volume, not either vendor’s list price.
Prices verified 2026-08-28. This piece is not Watchdog data and is not on followedapp’s re-verification schedule.
Sources
- Rev pricing, fetched 2026-08-28
- Otter.ai pricing, fetched 2026-08-28
- Descript pricing, fetched 2026-08-28
- Sonix pricing, fetched 2026-08-28