Rev's distinguishing feature in 2026 is that it still sells human transcription. As AI transcription has become free and near-ubiquitous, Rev's automated tier has lost its edge — but the human service at $1.99 per audio minute remains the answer for audio that machines get wrong: heavy accents, poor recordings, crosstalk, specialist vocabulary, and anything going into a legal or published context where errors are expensive.
At a glance
Platforms
Web, iOS, Android
Human transcription
$1.99 per audio minute (some tiers reported from $1.50)
Human transcription is the product. Nothing else in this directory offers it. When accuracy genuinely matters — court filings, published interviews, medical research — a human is still meaningfully better than any model.
Captions and subtitles as a service. Properly timed, formatted caption files, not just a transcript you have to convert.
Established and reliable. A large company with real turnaround guarantees, which matters when a deadline depends on it.
Subscription discounts are steep. Rev Max brings AI transcription to roughly $0.025 a minute — a tenth of the pay-as-you-go rate — if you have the volume.
A 45-minute free tier. Enough to evaluate.
Where it falls short
AI transcription at $0.25/minute is poor value now.Vibe and Buzz run Whisper locally for free with comparable accuracy and speaker labels. Paying $15 an hour for machine transcription is hard to justify unless you're already in Rev's workflow.
Human transcription is genuinely expensive. $1.99/minute is $119 an hour. A one-hour interview costs more than a year of most subscriptions here. Correct for what it is, but budget accordingly.
Pricing is complicated. Pay-as-you-go rates, subscription tiers, Rev Max hour bundles, and stacked subscriber discounts on human work. Working out your actual cost takes effort.
Reported rates vary. Human transcription appears variously as $1.50 and $1.99 per minute depending on source and tier. Confirm before ordering.
Confusable with Temi. Rev owns Temi, which does automated transcription at $0.25/minute — the same rate as Rev's own AI tier. Which brand to use is not obvious.
Pricing
Human transcription is $1.99 per audio minute, with some tiers reported from $1.50. AI transcription is $0.25 per minute. Subscriptions include a free tier at 45 minutes a month, Essentials from $25.49/seat/month billed annually, a Pro plan, and custom Unlimited pricing, with allowances expressed as AI minutes per seat. Rev Max starts at $29.99/month for 20 hours of AI transcription or $59.99 for 40 hours, bringing the effective AI rate to about $0.025 a minute.
Who it's for
Anyone whose transcript has to be right — legal, medical research, published journalism, accessibility compliance — and who can justify $1.99 a minute for a human. For everyday machine transcription, use free local tools or a cheap subscription instead; Rev's automated tier is priced for a market that has largely moved on.
Last verified: 10 August 2026. Rates vary by tier and are reported inconsistently; confirm before ordering.
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