Temi Review: What $0.25 a Minute Actually Gets You

Temi is the AI-only sibling of Rev. Same company, very different product, very different price. It's been a quiet $0.25-a-minute fixture in the transcription market since 2018, and for a certain kind of recording it still earns its place. For everything else, the savings disappear the moment you open the editor.

I've put plenty of files through it. Here's the honest read.

What is Temi, and who owns it?

Temi is Rev's AI transcription product. Rev built it as a self-service, automated alternative to their human-transcribed service, which runs at $1.50 a minute. Same upload flow, very different output.

Set the bar from Rev's human transcripts aside. Temi isn't trying to compete with that. It's trying to be the fastest, cheapest way to get a usable transcript out of clean audio so you can edit it yourself.

How much does Temi cost?

$0.25 a minute, billed by the minute, no subscription. A 30-minute interview costs $7.50. A 90-minute board meeting costs $22.50. No monthly fee, no tier system, no per-seat pricing.

That flat rate has been stable for years, which is rare in this market. Most competitors play with subscriptions, hour-bundles, or "unlimited" tiers that actually throttle.

For wider context, see how much AI transcription really costs.

How accurate is Temi?

Temi claims around 90–95% accuracy for clean audio. The number is real, but "clean audio" is doing all the work in that sentence.

What counts as clean in practice: - One speaker, or two to three speakers taking clear turns - A real mic close to each voice (not a laptop pickup across a room) - Quiet background, no music bed, no overlap - Native English with standard accents

What pushes Temi off the cliff: - Speakerphone recordings - Echoey conference rooms - Group discussions with interruptions - Strong regional accents or code-switching - Music or applause overlapping speech

For more on what to expect from any AI tool, read transcription accuracy and what to actually expect.

Speaker labels and the editor

Temi does include speaker identification. It will detect distinct voices and split the transcript into "Speaker 1," "Speaker 2," and so on. You rename them yourself in the editor. The detection isn't always right. Similar-sounding voices get merged, and a quiet speaker can drop out of the label set. For background on how this works, what speaker diarization actually is is the primer.

The editor is the best thing about Temi. The browser app syncs audio to text as you scrub, lets you click any word to jump there, and has keyboard shortcuts that make corrections fast. Export formats include TXT, DOCX, PDF, VTT, and SRT, which covers most downstream needs including captions. Most cheap AI tools dump you a flat text file and call it done. Temi doesn't, and that's most of the reason to use it.

Where Temi falls short

A few hard limits worth knowing before you commit:

• English only. No Spanish, no French, no anything else. If you work with multilingual content, Temi is not your tool.
• No human review tier. If a file is messy, you can't escalate inside Temi. Your only option is to manually fix it or send it to Rev as a separate human order.
• Max file length: 4 hours. Long-form podcasts and conferences need to be split.
• Free trial: 45 minutes. Generous-ish, but burn it on a messy representative file, not a perfect one, so you see what real accuracy looks like for your audio.

Who Temi is for (and who it isn't)

Temi is a sensible default if you check most of these boxes: - You're recording clean audio on purpose (lapel mic, headset, or close phone capture). - You speak English and so do your subjects. - You're transcribing solo or small-group recordings with clear turn-taking. - You'd rather pay per minute than commit to a subscription.

Solo journalists, podcasters with quality mics, researchers doing one-on-one interviews, and students with clean lecture recordings get good value here.

Skip it if any of these describe your work: - Multi-speaker focus groups or roundtables. Accuracy and diarization will frustrate you. - Non-English or multilingual content. Temi can't help. - Field recordings with ambient noise or speakerphone audio. Clean it first or use a more robust tool. - Compliance needs like legal depositions or medical documentation. You want a human-reviewed product, not an AI-only one.

For those harder files, a pay-per-minute service like transcribe a video with VTS usually fits better: multiple languages, no subscription, and diarization that handles overlapping voices more gracefully.

Temi vs the alternatives

A quick spread, USD, AI-only tier where applicable:

Prices change. Always verify on the vendor's pricing page before you commit. For current state on the others, see Otter's pricing and a cheaper alternative and Sonix per-hour pricing.

The verdict

Temi is a fair tool with a stable price. If your audio is clean, single-language, and you mostly need a fast first pass to edit, it does what it promises. If your work involves non-English speakers, messy field recordings, or compliance-grade accuracy, the $0.25 you save up front usually costs you more on the back end in cleanup time. Buy clean audio first, then pick the tool that matches the file.

Sources

• Temi official site and pricing
• Rev pricing including human transcription
• Otter pricing
• Sonix pricing