Transcription cost calculator
Set your hours, and see what pay-once credits cost against a subscription. No sign-up to use it.
Pepys, pay once
$20one time · about $1.00/hr
Your first 1 hour is free, so you'd pay for 19 hrs. Credits never expire, so that's the whole cost, not a monthly bill.
You'd keep about $220 with pay-once Pepys over that stretch, and your credits wouldn't expire at the end of it.
Estimate only. Pepys prices from the live rate ladder; the subscription figure is whatever you enter. Diarization is billed at a higher rate and isn't included here.
To estimate transcription cost, multiply the hours you'll transcribe by the per-hour rate. With pay-once Pepys, credits run from about $1.25/hr for small top-ups to $0.85/hr at volume and never expire, so you pay once for what you use. A monthly subscription instead bills every month whether you transcribe or not. See the full pricing, or read how much transcription costs and the cheapest way to transcribe audio.
Frequently asked questions
How much does transcription cost per hour?
It varies by model. Pay-once Pepys credits run from about $1.25/hr for small top-ups down to $0.85/hr at volume, and they never expire. Subscription tools charge a fixed monthly fee, and human transcription services often run several dollars per minute.
Is pay-as-you-go cheaper than a subscription?
It depends on how steady your usage is. A subscription can be cheaper if you transcribe a large, consistent volume every month. Pay-once tends to win when your usage is uneven or occasional, because you never pay for a month you didn't use and your credits don't expire.
Does this calculator include everything?
It's an estimate. The Pepys figure comes from the live rate ladder; the subscription figure is whatever you type. Add-ons like speaker diarization are billed at a higher rate and aren't included, so treat the result as a planning number, not a quote.
Do Pepys credits expire?
No. You buy credits once and they never expire, so unused hours carry forward indefinitely. That's the core difference from a subscription, where value resets each billing cycle.
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