Descript

by Descript

The leading text-based audio and video editor for podcasters and video creators — transcribe, edit by editing the transcript, clean voices with Studio Sound, and clone voices with AI Speech, all in one app.

Looking at Descript? Try this first.

Drop your audio. Transcript in seconds. First transcript free, then $2 a file or $8 = 1,000 min

TL;DR

Edit audio and video by editing text. Drop a file in, Descript transcribes it (30+ languages, ~95% accuracy), and the transcript becomes your timeline — delete a sentence, the audio cut goes with it. Layered with AI Speech (voice cloning + stock voices, regenerate speech by typing), Studio Sound (one-click noise removal + voice enhancement), screen recording, multitrack audio, captions, filler-word removal, and Underlord — their agentic AI co-editor that drafts cuts from a prompt.

Best for podcasters, video creators, and async-comms teams who edit recordings every week. Pricing (verified 2026-05-10 on descript.com/pricing): Free (60 min media/mo, 100 one-time AI credits) · Hobbyist $16/mo (10 hrs, 1080p watermark-free) · Creator $24/mo (30 hrs, 4K, full Underlord access) · Business $50/mo (40 hrs, brand kit, 30+ language translation) · Enterprise (custom, SSO/SCIM). Monthly billing shown; annual is cheaper per month.

Category
Products
License
—
Stars
—
Last push
—
Pricing
free / from $16/mo
Platforms
macOS, Windows, Web

What it is

Descript is a production suite built around the transcript as the editing surface. If you edit audio or video, the transcript-first workflow is genuinely great. If you just want a transcript file to paste into show notes, Descript is more tool than you need. Last price check: 2026-04-20.

Best for: Podcasters and video creators who want transcript-driven editing + overdub + studio polish.
Watch out for: Not a transcription API or a pure transcript tool — it's a production suite; heavier than a podcaster actually needs for just transcripts.

Install / use

Go to Descript www.descript.com

Where Descript fits · top workflows

Descript is one product but it serves several distinct creator workflows. Pick the row closest to your job — each card lists the Descript feature doing the heavy lifting.

Podcast editing
Transcript-driven cuts

Multitrack audio editing where deleting a sentence from the transcript deletes the audio. Filler-word removal in one click. Studio Sound rescues USB-mic recordings. The original Descript use case and still the strongest fit.

Multitrack + Studio Sound
Video repurposing
Long-form → shorts

Drop a long-form YouTube edit in, Descript transcribes it, then Underlord drafts a 9:16 short from a text prompt. Captions, B-roll suggestions, and stock media are inline.

Underlord (AI co-editor)
Voice cloning / fixes
Type to regenerate audio

Train a voice on your own recordings, then fix flubs by typing the corrected line. Used heavily by podcasters re-recording sponsor reads and creators dubbing missed words without re-tracking the whole take.

AI Speech (formerly Overdub)
Async-meeting recap
Loom-style with edits

Screen + cam recording with auto-transcribe, then edit out the awkward openings, ums, and tangents before sharing. The killer combo over plain Loom is that you can polish the recording instead of shipping raw.

Screen Recording + Editor
Studio Sound cleanup
One-click voice enhancement

Background-noise removal + voice enhancement on any track. Strong enough that creators run it on recordings made in cars, cafés, and untreated home offices and ship the result.

Studio Sound
Captions + translation
30+ language reach

Auto-captions on every export (animated, brand-styled), plus instant transcript / caption / audio translation across 30+ languages. Business plan adds proofread translation for higher-stakes content.

Captions + Translation
Pattern: if you spend more than 30 minutes a week cutting recordings, the transcript-as-timeline workflow is a real productivity unlock. If you just need a transcript file to paste into show notes or share with a colleague, Whipscribe hands you the same accuracy without the editor surface.

Getting started in 3 steps

Descript is a desktop app (macOS + Windows) with a web companion. Here's the shortest path from sign-up to your first exported edit — no special hardware required.

1Sign up + install the app

Free tier, no card required. macOS 12+ or Windows 10+. Web app works in any modern browser as a fallback.

1. Go to descript.com and sign up (Google / email, no card).

2. Open descript.com/download to grab the desktop app.
   System requirements:
   - macOS Monterey (12) or newer  · Apple Silicon native
   - Windows 10 or newer           · x64

3. Install + sign in. Your account state syncs
   with the web app at descript.com.

# free tier covers 60 minutes of media
# per month + 100 one-time AI credits —
# enough to evaluate the full workflow.
Download landing page: descript.com/download ↗. Web app: web.descript.com ↗.
2Import + transcribe your first file

Drop a file in, transcription runs automatically, the transcript becomes the timeline.

1. New Project → drag in an .mp3 / .mp4 / .wav / .mov
   (Descript also imports from YouTube URLs, Zoom
   cloud recordings, and Riverside / SquadCast.)

2. Pick the language (auto-detect works for 30+).
   Transcription runs in the background; partial
   text appears within seconds for short files.

3. Edit by editing text:
   - Select a sentence in the transcript → ⌫ deletes
     the audio/video too.
   - Right-click filler words → "Remove all 'um's".
   - Need to fix a flub? Highlight the wrong word,
     type the right one, AI Speech regenerates the
     audio in your trained voice.

# multitrack audio: drag in extra tracks
# (intro music, sponsor read, guest mic).
# Each gets its own transcript lane.
Auto-detection covers 30+ languages with ~95% accuracy per Descript's own marketing claim (verified descript.com/transcription ↗, 2026-05-10).
3Export with captions + chapters

MP4 / MP3 / WAV for the finished cut · SRT / VTT / TXT / DOCX for the transcript · animated captions for shorts.

1. Publish → Export.

2. Pick a preset:
   - Video    → MP4 (up to 4K on Creator+)
   - Audio    → MP3 / WAV
   - Transcript → SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX, PDF
   - Captions  → burned-in animated, or
                  sidecar .srt / .vtt

3. Optional: add YouTube chapters from the
   transcript outline (Underlord can auto-
   draft chapter timestamps from the content).

4. Hit Export. Watermark-free on Hobbyist+;
   Free tier exports with a Descript watermark.

# bonus: "Publish to YouTube / Spotify / Riverside"
# pushes the rendered file + chapter list directly
# to the destination, no manual upload.
Full export format list documented in the Descript Help Center (browse help.descript.com ↗ → "Exporting").

What people actually do with Descript-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.

Cut short-form clips out of a webinar automaticallyThe clips worth posting are buried somewhere in a 60-minute recording and finding them by scrubbing costs more than the…60-min webinar ≈ $0.48Turn long screen recordings into course modulesA three-hour screen recording is the most valuable asset a course business owns and the least usable. Nobody re-watches…3-hour recording ≈ $1.44Write SOPs from how-we-do-it recordingsProcess knowledge lives in someone's screen recording and leaves when they do.…40 recordings ≈ $6.40

Wire it into ZapierMake.comAmazon S3SlackGoogle DriveEmergent

Features

Speaker diarizationYes
Word-level timestampsNo
Streaming / real-timeYes
Languages supported22
HIPAA eligibleNo

Links

Descript vs Whipscribe

FeatureDescriptWhipscribe
CategoryProductsTranscription APIs
PricingNot verified$8–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · $2 single unlock · free instant preview
Speaker diarizationNot verifiedYes
Word timestampsNot verifiedYes
StreamingNot verifiedNo
Languages2299
PlatformsmacOS, Windows, WebWeb, API, MCP

Where this category is heading

From the vendor changelogs we track weekly — what changed in August 2026, and what it means if you are choosing now.

Insight on top of the transcript, not sold separately

AssemblyAI moved summarisation onto an LLM this month; every vendor is racing to return action items, quotes and topics with the text rather than as an add-on.

Whipscribe today Every Whipscribe job already returns an insights payload — summary, key quotes, topics and speakers — from the same job id, at no extra charge.

Private, secured deployment

Deepgram shipped self-hosted container images in August — the market is moving toward audio that stays inside a boundary the customer controls, because teams with customer calls or unreleased material are refusing shared model endpoints.

Whipscribe today Whipscribe runs on our own GPUs in a private, secured cloud. Audio is never forwarded to OpenAI or any third-party model.

Agents calling transcription as a tool

The fastest-growing way to use a transcription API is not a form — it is Claude, Cursor or a workflow runner calling it mid-task through MCP.

Whipscribe today Whipscribe ships an MCP server: transcribe, search and summarise from an assistant without wiring anything.

Async and batch over one-file-at-a-time

AssemblyAI's 1.0 SDK unified async, realtime and sync; Deepgram's CLI went to 0.3. The unit of work is becoming the folder or the bucket, not the file.

Whipscribe today Submit with an Idempotency-Key and a batch_id, poll by job, retry safely. The S3 connector runs a whole prefix in one grant.

More languages, unevenly

Deepgram added Afrikaans, Georgian and Armenian and improved a dozen more this month. Coverage is widening while quality still clusters around English and the large European languages.

Whipscribe today 99+ languages auto-detected. Ask for a language explicitly when you know it — auto-detect on a short or noisy clip is the most common cause of a wrong-language transcript.

Source: Deepgram and AssemblyAI changelogs, scanned 2026-08-24.

Alternatives to Descript

Looking for a Descript alternative? How Whipscribe compares →

Otter.ai
Otter.ai

Meeting-bot transcription product for Zoom/Meet/Teams.

free / Pro $8.33/mo annual ($16.99 monthly)
Rev
Rev

Human + AI transcription, highest accuracy tier on the market.

AI from $0.25/min · human from $1.99/min
Trint
Trint

Enterprise-focused transcription + collaborative editor for newsrooms.

from $69/seat/mo (annual) · $90 monthly

Frequently asked about Descript

How do I open Descript in the browser?

Descript's web app is at web.descript.com — sign in there with the same account as the desktop app. If you landed here looking for that login, that link is what you want. If you only need a transcript out of an audio or video file — no editing studio — Whipscribe turns a file or URL into a speaker-labelled transcript with SRT/VTT/DOCX export in about a minute.

What is Descript?

Edit audio and video by editing text. Drop a file in, Descript transcribes it (30+ languages, ~95% accuracy), and the transcript becomes your timeline — delete a sentence, the audio cut goes with it. Layered with AI Speech (voice cloning + stock voices, regenerate speech by typing), Studio Sound (one-click noise removal + voice enhancement), screen recording, multitrack audio, captions, filler-word removal, and Underlord — their agentic AI co-editor that drafts cuts from a prompt.

Is Descript free?

Partly. Descript has a free tier with paid plans above it — published pricing: free / from $16/mo. Free-tier limits change more often than this page does; verify on the vendor's pricing page.

How do I get started with Descript?

There is nothing to install — Descript is used in the browser. Create an account on the vendor's site and upload or connect your audio.

How many languages does Descript support?

Descript lists 22 languages.

What are the limitations of Descript?

Not a transcription API or a pure transcript tool — it's a production suite; heavier than a podcaster actually needs for just transcripts.

Who is Descript best for?

Podcasters and video creators who want transcript-driven editing + overdub + studio polish.

What should I know before choosing Descript?

Best for podcasters, video creators, and async-comms teams who edit recordings every week. Pricing (verified 2026-05-10 on descript.com/pricing): Free (60 min media/mo, 100 one-time AI credits) · Hobbyist $16/mo (10 hrs, 1080p watermark-free) · Creator $24/mo (30 hrs, 4K, full Underlord access) · Business $50/mo (40 hrs, brand kit, 30+ language translation) · Enterprise (custom, SSO/SCIM). Monthly billing shown; annual is cheaper per month.

Is Descript open source?

No. Descript 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.

What kind of tool is Descript?

In this directory Descript is filed under product, editor as a product.

What are the alternatives to Descript?

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

Are there setup recipes for Descript?

Yes — this page carries 3 tested setups: Sign up + install the app; Import + transcribe your first file; Export with captions + chapters.

Can I automate Descript-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. $0.008 a minute — about $0.48 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 Descript?

Descript is another vendor's product; Whipscribe is a per-minute transcription service. We run the models on our own GPUs in a private cloud — audio is never forwarded to OpenAI or any third-party model — and every job returns five formats plus an AI summary, quotes and topics. Your first transcript in the web app is free at any length, no card.

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

$0.008 a minute — about $0.48 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: a 3-hour recording is about $1.44, a thousand-hour archive is about $480 once. Your first transcript in the web app is free at any length, no card, so you can check accuracy on your own audio before paying anything.

Whipscribe is a managed faster-whisper + whisperX 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.

Explore

All transcription tools · Audio technology hub · Transcribe any platform · Audio & video formats · How-to guides · Glossary · Playbooks · Apps · Broadcast & radio · Podcast transcripts · Use cases · Blog · Transcription API · Integrations · Automations · For your industry