SWAYAM
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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.
India's national MOOC platform with captioned video across school and college courses.
Best for indian students taking accredited online courses from IIT, IIM, IGNOU, and other partner institutions. Pricing: free.
What it is
SWAYAM is the Government of India's national MOOC platform under the Ministry of Education, hosting courses from IITs, IIMs, IGNOU, NPTEL, and other partner institutions. Captions are added by partner institutions on a course-by-course basis.
Watch out for: Caption coverage depends on the host institution; quality varies by course.
What people actually do with SWAYAM-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 | No |
| Languages supported | None |
| HIPAA eligible | No |
SWAYAM vs Whipscribe
| Feature | SWAYAM | 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 | — | 99 |
| Platforms | Web, Android | Web, API, MCP |
Alternatives to SWAYAM
Frequently asked about SWAYAM
Is SWAYAM free?
Yes. SWAYAM is free.
Does SWAYAM work on Mac, Windows and Linux?
SWAYAM runs on Web and Android. It is not listed for other platforms; check the vendor for anything beyond Web and Android.
How do I get started with SWAYAM?
There is nothing to install — SWAYAM is used in the browser. Create an account on the vendor's site and upload or connect your audio.
What are the limitations of SWAYAM?
Caption coverage depends on the host institution; quality varies by course.
Who is SWAYAM best for?
Indian students taking accredited online courses from IIT, IIM, IGNOU, and other partner institutions.
Is SWAYAM open source?
No. SWAYAM is a proprietary product from Government of India (MoE). If you need source you can read and run yourself, the open-source tools in this directory are the place to look.
Who makes SWAYAM?
SWAYAM is made by Government of India (MoE).
What kind of tool is SWAYAM?
In this directory SWAYAM is filed under mooc as a product.
What are the alternatives to SWAYAM?
There is a side-by-side page at /tools/swayam-alternatives comparing SWAYAM with the closest tools in the same category on price, platform and features.
Can I automate SWAYAM-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 SWAYAM?
SWAYAM 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 SWAYAM?
$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 SWAYAM 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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