Cepstral

by Cepstral

Don’t want to install Cepstral? Drop the file here.

The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free: a recording up to 20 minutes transcribes in full, a longer one is previewed, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, and credits never expire.

Long-running embedded TTS — IVR and telephony.

Linux, Windows, macOS, API  ·  from $29.99 per voice

TL;DR

Best for legacy IVR and embedded TTS deployments with per-voice licensing. Pricing: from $29.99 per voice (desktop) / Enterprise contact sales.

Category
Products
Pricing
from $29.99 per voice (desktop) / Enterprise contact sales
Platforms
Linux, Windows, macOS, API

What it is

Cepstral is a long-running US TTS vendor known for IVR-grade voices with per-voice perpetual licenses. The desktop SwiftTalker product is still sold to end users. Consent posture: synthetic voices only.

Best for: Legacy IVR and embedded TTS deployments with per-voice licensing.
Watch out for: Concatenative voices — sounds dated next to neural TTS.

Install / use

Go to Cepstral cepstral.com

What people actually do with Cepstral-style transcription

The tool is the means. These are the jobs — each one priced at published rates, each one wired up on its own page.

Wire it into Google DriveMake.comZapiern8nZoomSlack

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsNo
Streaming / real-timeNo
Languages supported9
HIPAA eligibleNo

Cepstral vs Whipscribe

FeatureCepstralWhipscribe
CategoryProductsTranscription APIs
PricingNot verified$6–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · first 20 minutes free
Speaker identificationNot verifiedNamed in the summary, key quotes and chapters
Word timestampsNot verifiedYes
StreamingNot verifiedNo
Languages999
PlatformsLinux, Windows, macOS, APIWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Cepstral

Frequently asked about Cepstral

How much does Cepstral cost?

Cepstral does not publish a self-serve price — it is quoted by the vendor on contact. Expect an enterprise-style agreement rather than a card-and-go signup.

Does Cepstral work on Mac, Windows and Linux?

Cepstral runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and API.

How do I install Cepstral?

Download the installer for your platform from the vendor. No terminal needed.

How many languages does Cepstral support?

Cepstral lists 9 languages.

What are the limitations of Cepstral?

Concatenative voices — sounds dated next to neural TTS.

Who is Cepstral best for?

Legacy IVR and embedded TTS deployments with per-voice licensing.

Is Cepstral open source?

No. Cepstral is a proprietary product. If you need source you can read and run yourself, the open-source tools in this directory are the place to look.

Can I use Cepstral in the browser?

No — Cepstral is a Linux, Windows, macOS and API application, not a web app. You install it rather than sign in to it.

What kind of tool is Cepstral?

In this directory Cepstral is filed under tts, enterprise tts as a product.

What are the alternatives to Cepstral?

There is a side-by-side page at /tools/cepstral-alternatives comparing Cepstral with the closest tools in the same category on price, platform and features.

Can I automate Cepstral-style transcription without running it myself?

Yes. If what you want is transcripts rather than the tool itself, Whipscribe does the same job as a hosted API: submit a file or URL, poll a job id, pull the result as txt, json, srt, vtt or docx. $0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. The automation recipes on this site show it wired to Drive folders, Zoom recordings, S3 buckets and no-code platforms.

How is Whipscribe different from Cepstral?

Cepstral is another vendor's product; Whipscribe is a per-minute transcription service. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and never used for training, and every job returns five formats plus an AI summary, quotes and topics. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export.

What does transcription cost if I use Whipscribe instead of Cepstral?

$0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: a 3-hour recording is about $2.16, a thousand-hour archive is about $720 once. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, so you can see what your recording holds before paying anything.

Where is the Cepstral category heading?

Three things are moving across the whole speech-to-text market right now: summaries, action items and speaker insights generated on top of the transcript rather than sold separately; private, secured deployment where the audio never leaves a boundary you control; and agent access — transcription exposed as a tool that Claude, Cursor or a workflow runner can call directly. Whipscribe ships all three today: per-job insights, our own servers, and an MCP server.

Whipscribe is a hosted transcription service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.

Transcribe your recordings

Explore

Have the recording already?

Skip the setup and send the file or the link: see MP3 to text for long recordings, a podcast episode as text from its link and the SRT file generator.

Comparing tools before you pay?

If you would rather pay a service than run software yourself: see the best transcription services side by side, cheap transcription services and the real cost per hour and how our transcription services work.