Every episode becomes searchable text, chapter-able timestamps, and show-notes-ready output. $1/hour pay-as-you-go. No seats. No signup to try.
Built for podcasters
Not generic features — the specific things that make transcripts earn their $1.
A 45-minute interview becomes ~7,000 words of indexable content. Paste into your episode page and every named entity, question, and topic becomes searchable. Audio alone has no such ceiling.
Word-level and segment-level timing in every export. Hand-cue chapters or feed the transcript to an LLM for auto-chaptering. Drops straight into YouTube chapter format or Apple Podcasts chapter spec.
Clean TXT or DOCX plus a JSON with per-segment times. Paste into Buzzsprout, Transistor, Simplecast, Spotify for Creators, or a WordPress block — the timestamps and speaker labels survive.
Host, Guest, Guest 2 labels on every turn. Rename once per episode; transcript updates. Zoom, Riverside, or local multi-mic recordings — same workflow.
$1 per hour of audio, no seats, no monthly minimum, credits do not expire. A weekly 60-minute show is ~$52/year total.
Open-source Whisper on private infrastructure. Unpublished episodes are never sent to OpenAI, Google, or any third-party transcription service. Delete files anytime.
Side-by-side
Descript is an editor. Whipscribe is a transcript utility. Here is what changes when you pick each.
| Feature | Whipscribe | Descript |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Transcript file you paste anywhere | Edit audio/video by editing the transcript per descript.com/transcription (checked 2026-04-23) |
| Diarization | Per-turn speaker labels | Automatic speaker labels per descript.com/transcription (checked 2026-04-23) |
| Word-level timestamps | In SRT · VTT · JSON | Per-word timestamps in exports per help.descript.com (checked 2026-04-23) |
| Free tier | 30 min/day anonymous, no signup | Free plan available per descript.com/pricing (checked 2026-04-23) |
| Paid pricing | $1/hour, PAYG, no seats | Creator plan from $12/month per descript.com/pricing (checked 2026-04-23) |
| If you only want a transcript | Built for this — nothing extra | Pay for an editing surface you will not open |
Evidence rows live in transcripto_legal/content_audit/_tools_claims_evidence.jsonl. Full breakdown on the Descript alternative page.
Answers podcasters ask first
Yes. Word- and segment-level timestamps ship in every export. Hand-cue or feed the transcript to an LLM for auto-chaptering, then paste as YouTube chapters or Apple chapter-spec.
At $1/hour, ~$52/year. No seats, no monthly minimums. If you already qualify for the 30 min/day free tier, short cuts stay free.
Yes. Host, Guest, Guest 2 labels on every turn. Rename once, full transcript updates.
They add thousands of crawlable words to an otherwise audio-only page. Not a silver bullet, but the ceiling is strictly higher than audio alone.
TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT, JSON with per-word timing. Paste into Buzzsprout, Transistor, Simplecast, Spotify for Creators, or a WordPress block.
Go deeper
$1/hour pay-as-you-go. 30 minutes free every day. No seat, no signup.
Try Whipscribe →