How much does it cost to transcribe a semester of lectures? About $12 a course.
For one course it is usually $12: three 50-minute lectures a week for 13 weeks makes 39 recordings and 1,950 minutes, which the $12 pack (2,000 minutes) covers with 50 minutes left, and two courses (3,900 minutes) fit the $24 pack. Each lecture is its own file, far inside the limit of 10 hours or 5 GB per file, uploads up to 2 GB work before you buy anything, processing takes about 2 minutes per audio hour, and the first 20 minutes of your first recording are free.
A term of lectures, costed
Count the minutes, then pick one pack.
Count your own term
Multiply lectures per week by weeks by minutes per lecture. Two 75-minute sessions a week over 14 weeks is 2,100 minutes, just past the $12 pack, so that course belongs on the $24 pack with 2,900 minutes to carry forward. A weekly three-hour seminar over 12 weeks comes to 2,160 minutes and lands on the same pack.
Where the recordings come from
Lecture-capture systems usually let you download an MP4, and many courses post recordings to YouTube, Vimeo or a shared Google Drive folder. A link needs no upload, and a Drive folder link brings in the files inside it. Downloaded files go up from the upload page.
What each lecture turns into
Every recording returns a brief with the thesis and takeaways, chapters with timestamps, the names, numbers and dates the lecturer said, the questions the lecture answers, and a chat you can question while revising for an exam.
Time as well as money
At about 2 minutes per audio hour, a 50-minute lecture is text in under two minutes and a whole 1,950-minute course needs roughly an hour of processing in total. Upload each lecture the day it is given and the semester never piles up before exams.
Term-long transcription
Why per-lecture pricing adds up badly.
✗ Priced for one-off files
Tools sized for short clips charge each lecture as if it were the only one, or reset a monthly allowance halfway through the term.
- Monthly allowances that reset in week five
- Per-file caps shorter than a lecture
- Subscriptions that run through the break
- Unused minutes lost at renewal
- Lectures cut up to fit a limit
- Notes still written by hand
✓ Priced for the whole term
Buy minutes once, spend them lecture by lecture, and keep whatever is left.
- 1,950 minutes on the $12 pack
- No subscription to cancel after exams
- Leftover minutes kept for next term
- Each lecture as its own file
- Chapters to revise from
- TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON
Sample output
From week nine of a fifty-minute lecture.
Illustrative lines written for this page, not taken from a real course. Each lecture keeps its own clock from zero.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
A semester of lectures, answered.
What if my course load is bigger than one course?
Add up the minutes. Up to 500 minutes, roughly ten 50-minute lectures, fits the $6 pack. Up to 2,000 minutes, a typical single course, fits the $12 pack. Anything above that, such as two courses at 3,900 minutes, belongs on the $24 pack (5,000 minutes), which leaves 1,100 for the following term.
Is the first lecture free?
The first 20 minutes are free for a first-time visitor. A recording of 20 minutes or less transcribes in full; a 50-minute lecture is previewed, and a pack from $6 transcribes the rest from where the preview stopped, so you read real output from your own course before paying.
How large are lecture files, and is there a cap?
A 50-minute capture of slides and voice is usually a few hundred megabytes, and the audio alone is far smaller. Each file can run up to 10 hours or 5 GB. Before the first pack, uploads can be up to 2 GB, and a file above that starts once a pack is on the account.
Can I paste a link instead of downloading every lecture?
Yes, for YouTube (including live replays), Vimeo and Google Drive share links or folders. Recordings that sit inside a learning platform with no shareable link have to be downloaded first and then uploaded.
Does it know who is talking in a discussion section?
Speakers are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters, which helps in a seminar where students take turns. The transcript keeps a timestamp on each line so you can jump to that moment in the recording.
What about lectures in another language?
All 99 supported languages are detected automatically, and a lecture that switches language is handled on its main language. Lecture audio is transcribed on our own servers and is never used for training. Ask the lecturer before recording where your institution expects it.
Related
More on lectures and cost.
One course, one pack. Start with this week's lecture.
Transcribe a lectureOperated by Neugence Technology Pvt. Ltd. · contact@whipscribe.com · Security · Privacy · Terms