Pinecast

by Pinecast

Don’t want to sign up for Pinecast? 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.

Indie-favorite podcast host with technical features and fair pricing.

Web  ·  freemium

TL;DR

Best for technical creators who value RSS portability and a no-nonsense host. Pricing: freemium.

Category
Products
Pricing
freemium
Platforms
Web

What it is

Pinecast is an indie-run podcast host with strong RSS hygiene, tip jars, private feeds, and a generous free tier. Beloved by technically-minded podcasters.

Best for: Technical creators who value RSS portability and a no-nonsense host.
Watch out for: Small team; growth-marketing features lighter than competitors.

Install / use

Go to Pinecast pinecast.com

What people actually do with Pinecast-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 Make.comn8nNotionAmazon S3ZapierSlack

Features

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

Pinecast vs Whipscribe

FeaturePinecastWhipscribe
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
Languages—99
PlatformsWebWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Pinecast

Frequently asked about Pinecast

Is Pinecast free?

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

Does Pinecast work on Mac, Windows and Linux?

Pinecast 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 Pinecast?

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

What are the limitations of Pinecast?

Small team; growth-marketing features lighter than competitors.

Who is Pinecast best for?

Technical creators who value RSS portability and a no-nonsense host.

Is Pinecast open source?

No. Pinecast 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.

Is there a Pinecast desktop app?

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

What kind of tool is Pinecast?

In this directory Pinecast is filed under podcast host as a product.

What are the alternatives to Pinecast?

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

Can I automate Pinecast-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 Pinecast?

Pinecast 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 Pinecast?

$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 Pinecast 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 an episode to transcribe?

Paste the episode link or upload the file: see how to transcribe a podcast, a podcast transcript from a feed link and how to transcribe an MP3 of any length.

Looking at paid options?

Before you choose a transcription tool or service: see an honest roundup of the best transcription services, cheap transcription services and the real cost per hour and transcription services from $6.