A clip is cut, the deadline is in an hour, and captions are the only thing standing between the file and the post. Someone on the team already knows the going rate for captions, because they priced a similar job last month or read a vendor’s pricing page this morning. That number turns out to be the price for a standard order, not a rush one, and the rush number does not live where the standard number does.
The moment this actually happens
The research usually happens in advance of the deadline, not during it. A team looks up a vendor’s captioning price, sees a flat per minute figure advertised on the marketing page, and files it away as the cost of doing captions. Then a clip needs to go up same day, sometimes within the hour, and the team goes back to that same vendor to place the order under time pressure. That is the moment the number changes. Rev, a human captioning vendor, advertises human closed captions at $1.99 per minute on its own services page, and frames its standard delivery as fast: “99%+ accurate, guaranteed in 12 hours or less,” according to Rev’s closed captions page (fetched 2026-09-09). Nowhere on that page is there a second, higher number for orders that need to move faster than the standard window. The rush price is not a line item on the page a team is likely to have already priced the job from. It surfaces later, as an add on inside the order form itself, after a file is already uploaded and the clock is already running.
What Rev’s checkout actually adds for a rush order
Rev’s base rate for human captions in English is $1.99 per minute, stated on both the public services page and inside the order form’s own pricing data at checkout. That order form, at Rev’s caption files checkout (fetched 2026-09-09), carries a separate rush figure in its pricing data: a $1.25 per minute surcharge for English, listed as the rush per minute price alongside the base per minute price of $1.99. Add the two together and a rushed English order comes to $3.24 per minute, not $1.99. That $3.24 figure does not appear as text anywhere on the public closed captions marketing or services page. It exists only inside the order form’s own pricing data, visible once a file is uploaded and the checkout screen loads. A team pricing the job off the marketing page alone would have no way to see it coming.
The order form also states directly that rush is not compatible with foreign language orders: the checkout page’s own copy reads “Rush My Order is not available for foreign language subtitle orders” and, separately, “Foreign language subtitles are not available for Rushed orders.” That is a stated rule, not an inference from the enabled language list, and it means a team ordering a non English subtitle track cannot pair that order with the rush surcharge at all, regardless of deadline.
Standard turnaround versus what rush actually buys
The more useful comparison, before paying anything extra, is what the standard window already promises for a given file length. Rev’s checkout page carries its own turnaround data tied to file length, separate from the “12 hours or less” line on the marketing page. That data sets a standard turnaround ceiling, a longer ceiling for bigger files, and a longest ceiling beyond that.
| Tier | Turnaround ceiling | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 24 hours | Shorter files, per the order form’s own turnaround data |
| Long | 48 hours | Files above the standard length threshold |
| Very long | 96 hours | The longest files the order form accounts for |
A short clip, the kind a social team is usually captioning same day, is likely to land well inside the 24 hour standard ceiling on its own. Rush is worth paying for only when the file’s length pushes the order form’s own standard estimate past the actual deadline, not simply because the deadline feels close. Checking that estimate before checking out is the step that decides whether the $1.25 per minute surcharge buys anything at all.
Why the rush price is not on the page you priced the job from
There is a straightforward explanation for the gap, and it does not require assuming the vendor is hiding anything. Rev’s services and pricing pages are built to advertise a single flat rate and a fast turnaround as the pitch: one price per minute, delivery in 12 hours or less. That is a marketing page’s job, to state the headline offer plainly. A menu of speed tiers, each with its own per minute add on, is a different kind of information, the kind that belongs to an order form rather than a pitch page.
The rush add on only becomes visible once a file is actually uploaded and the checkout screen loads its own pricing data. By that point a team has typically already treated the marketing page’s number as the number, whether they researched it days earlier or five minutes before uploading the file. The gap is a structural one between what a marketing page states and what an order form computes, not a disclosure failure. It does mean the number a team budgets off is not the number they may end up paying, and the only way to close that gap is to check the order form itself before assuming the marketing rate is the total.
Try followed for the market intelligence, not the captions
followed tracks pricing moves like this across the social media tools market, the kind of change that shows up in an order form or a checkout screen before it ever reaches a pricing page. If a vendor your team relies on quietly restructures a fee or adds a surcharge, that is the kind of thing followed’s coverage exists to catch.
What to check before a same day order
- Check the file’s length against the vendor’s own standard turnaround estimate first. A short file may already land inside the deadline without paying for rush at all.
- Check whether rush is compatible with everything else the order needs. At Rev, rush is explicitly disabled for foreign language subtitle orders, so a non English order cannot combine rush with the standard workaround of just paying more.
- Get the full per minute figure with rush added, English base plus the rush surcharge, before uploading the file. At Rev that means totaling $1.99 and $1.25 per minute for English, not budgeting off the $1.99 figure alone.
- Do the arithmetic before checkout, not during it. The order form is the place the real total appears, and by then the deadline pressure makes it a bad moment to discover a new number.
FAQ
Is a faster caption turnaround always a separate charge?
This post verified only one vendor, Rev, where rush is a distinct per minute add on charged at checkout, separate from the base rate. Whether that pattern holds across other captioning vendors was not checked here and should not be assumed; each vendor would need its own verified pricing check before that claim could be made.
Where do I find the rush price before I order?
At Rev it is not on the public pricing or services pages. It appears inside the order form’s own pricing data once a file is uploaded and the checkout screen loads. Check the order form itself rather than assuming the headline per minute rate on the marketing page is the total.
Does paying for rush ever not help?
Yes. If the file is short enough that the standard turnaround estimate already lands inside the deadline, paying the rush surcharge adds cost without changing when the captions actually arrive. Check the standard turnaround estimate for the file’s length before adding rush.
Prices verified against Rev’s own pricing and checkout pages on 2026-09-09. This is not Watchdog data and is not on followedapp’s re-verification schedule.
Sources
- Rev, closed captions services page, fetched 2026-09-09
- Rev, caption files checkout order form, fetched 2026-09-09
- followed, transcription pricing per finished minute, fetched 2026-09-09, for the baseline per minute cost across vendors