Read.ai

by Read AI Inc.

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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.

Meeting copilot with engagement analytics and AI-generated recaps.

Web, Chrome Extension, iOS, Android  ·  free / from $19.75/mo

TL;DR

Best for managers who want meeting-engagement scoring, sentiment analytics, and recap emails delivered to attendees. Pricing: free / from $19.75/mo.

Category
Products
Pricing
free / from $19.75/mo
Platforms
Web, Chrome Extension, iOS, Android

What it is

Read.ai joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls and produces transcript, summary, action items, and a proprietary engagement and sentiment score for each participant. The Seattle-based startup raised a $21M Series A in 2024 from Madrona and Goodwater. Read also extends into chat and email — its Read for Gmail extension generates AI replies and summarizes long threads. Free tier covers up to five meetings per month; paid plans unlock unlimited recordings, larger transcript history, and CRM integrations. Pricing and product details listed here were last reviewed by Neugence on 2026-05-12; check the vendor site for current values before quoting.

Best for: Managers who want meeting-engagement scoring, sentiment analytics, and recap emails delivered to attendees.
Watch out for: Engagement scoring is heuristic and proprietary; can feel invasive to participants; recap quality varies.

Install / use

read.ai — Free tier, Pro $19.75/mo, Enterprise contact sales

What people actually do with Read.ai-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 ZoomSlackNotionAirtableLoomMake.com

Features

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

Read.ai vs Whipscribe

FeatureRead.aiWhipscribe
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
PlatformsWeb, Chrome Extension, iOS, AndroidWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Read.ai

Frequently asked about Read.ai

Is Read.ai free?

Partly. Read.ai has a free tier with paid plans above it — published pricing: free / from $19.75/mo. Free-tier limits change more often than this page does; verify on the vendor's pricing page.

Does Read.ai work on Mac, Windows and Linux?

Read.ai runs on Web, Chrome Extension, iOS and Android.

How do I get started with Read.ai?

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

What are the limitations of Read.ai?

Engagement scoring is heuristic and proprietary; can feel invasive to participants; recap quality varies.

Who is Read.ai best for?

Managers who want meeting-engagement scoring, sentiment analytics, and recap emails delivered to attendees.

Is Read.ai open source?

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

Who makes Read.ai?

Read.ai is made by Read AI Inc..

What kind of tool is Read.ai?

In this directory Read.ai is filed under meetings, notetaker, analytics as a product.

What are the alternatives to Read.ai?

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

Can I automate Read.ai-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 Read.ai?

Read.ai 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 Read.ai?

$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 Read.ai 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

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