Focus Forward transcription

by Focus Forward

Don’t want to sign up for Focus Forward? 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.

Focus Forward is a human transcription firm. Here is what it publishes about rates and turnaround, and what an automatic transcript costs and returns for the same recording.

Web  ·  per-minute rates

TL;DR

Human transcription firm focused on market research.

Best for market research firms running focus groups and IDIs wanting researcher-graded transcripts. Pricing: per-minute rates.

Category
service
Pricing
per-minute rates
Platforms
Web

What it is

Focus Forward specializes in market research transcription — focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographies.

Best for: Market research firms running focus groups and IDIs wanting researcher-graded transcripts.
Watch out for: Market-research specialism; less ideal for plain general transcription.

Install / use

focusfwd.com — per-minute rates

What people actually do with Focus Forward-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 supported5
HIPAA eligibleNo

Focus Forward vs Whipscribe

FeatureFocus ForwardWhipscribe
CategoryserviceTranscription APIs
Pricingper-minute rates$6–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · first 20 minutes free
Speaker identification—Named in the summary, key quotes and chapters
Word timestamps—Yes
Streaming—No
Languages599
PlatformsWebWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Focus Forward

Frequently asked about Focus Forward

How much does Focus Forward cost?

Focus Forward is a paid product — published pricing: per-minute rates. Pricing changes; verify on the vendor's own page before budgeting.

Does Focus Forward work on Mac, Windows and Linux?

Focus Forward runs in the browser, so it works on any desktop OS with a modern browser, and on phones and tablets.

How do I get started with Focus Forward?

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

How many languages does Focus Forward support?

Focus Forward lists 5 languages.

What are the limitations of Focus Forward?

Market-research specialism; less ideal for plain general transcription.

Who is Focus Forward best for?

Market research firms running focus groups and IDIs wanting researcher-graded transcripts.

Is Focus Forward open source?

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

Is there a Focus Forward desktop app?

No — Focus Forward is browser-only. There is nothing to install and nothing runs on your machine.

What kind of tool is Focus Forward?

In this directory Focus Forward is filed under service, human transcription as a service.

What are the alternatives to Focus Forward?

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

Can I automate Focus Forward-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 Focus Forward?

Focus Forward 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 Focus Forward?

$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 Focus Forward 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.

What we measured, last 30 days

2,547 recordings, 1,244 audio hours, 66 languages detected. An hour of audio came back in 3.5 minutes for half of the recordings and within 18.0 minutes for nine in ten, measured from the moment the file landed to the finished transcript. Refreshed 2026-10-07; method on how we test.

Transcribe your recordings

Explore

Long recording to get through?

One file up to 10 hours, as an upload or a link: see MP3 to text for long recordings, a podcast episode as text from its link and the SRT 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, the cheapest way to transcribe an hour of audio and our transcription service with prices and turnaround.