Snips (legacy)
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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.
Acquired-by-Sonos on-device assistant platform — now lives inside Sonos Voice Control.
Best for historical reference — Snips was the privacy-first on-device assistant before Sonos absorbed it. Pricing: Discontinued.
What it is
Snips raised on the promise of fully on-device voice. Sonos acquired the company in 2019 and used the tech to ship Sonos Voice Control in 2022. The open Snips platform is gone.
Watch out for: Public Snips platform shut down January 2020; tech now ships only in Sonos products.
Install / use
Discontinued — see Sonos Voice Control
What people actually do with Snips (legacy)-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.
Features
| Speaker diarization | No |
| Word-level timestamps | No |
| Streaming / real-time | Yes |
| Languages supported | 6 |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
Snips (legacy) vs Whipscribe
| Feature | Snips (legacy) | Whipscribe |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Products | Transcription APIs |
| Pricing | Not verified | $6–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · first 20 minutes free |
| Speaker identification | Not verified | Named in the summary, key quotes and chapters |
| Word timestamps | Not verified | Yes |
| Streaming | Not verified | No |
| Languages | 6 | 99 |
| Platforms | Hardware | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to Snips (legacy)
Frequently asked about Snips (legacy)
What do I need to run Snips (legacy)?
Snips (legacy) is hardware — a physical device rather than software you install.
How do I get started with Snips (legacy)?
There is nothing to install — Snips (legacy) is used in the browser. Create an account on the vendor's site and upload or connect your audio.
How many languages does Snips (legacy) support?
Snips (legacy) lists 6 languages.
What are the limitations of Snips (legacy)?
Public Snips platform shut down January 2020; tech now ships only in Sonos products.
Who is Snips (legacy) best for?
Historical reference — Snips was the privacy-first on-device assistant before Sonos absorbed it.
Is Snips (legacy) open source?
No. Snips (legacy) is a proprietary product from Sonos (Snips acquisition). If you need source you can read and run yourself, the open-source tools in this directory are the place to look.
Who makes Snips (legacy)?
Snips (legacy) is made by Sonos (Snips acquisition).
What kind of tool is Snips (legacy)?
In this directory Snips (legacy) is filed under voice assistant, edge, deprecated as a product.
What are the alternatives to Snips (legacy)?
There is a side-by-side page at /tools/snips-legacy-alternatives comparing Snips (legacy) with the closest tools in the same category on price, platform and features.
Can I automate Snips (legacy)-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 Snips (legacy)?
Snips (legacy) 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 Snips (legacy)?
$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 Snips (legacy) 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.
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Long recording to get through?
One file up to 10 hours, as an upload or a link: see how to transcribe an MP3 of any length, transcribing a podcast episode and the SRT generator.
Rather have it done for you?
Free tools cost setup time. When you want a finished transcript instead: see an honest roundup of the best transcription services, the cheapest way to transcribe an hour of audio and our transcription service with prices and turnaround.