Almost every transcription tool works the same way: pick a monthly plan, get a bucket of minutes, and pay whether or not you use them. That model works for a newsroom transcribing every day. For most people, it quietly wastes money.
Transcription is bursty
Most people don't transcribe on a schedule. You have a week where you process ten interviews, then nothing for two months. A subscription bills you for the quiet months anyway, and the unused minutes rarely roll over. You end up paying for capacity you never touched.
What we did instead
VTS has no monthly plan. You get three short clips free every month, and beyond that you top up a wallet and pay per minute of audio. No plan to choose, nothing to cancel, no expiry on what you've paid for.
- Free to start. The first three clips each month cost nothing — enough to actually try it on your own files.
- Pay for what you use. Beyond the free tier it's a flat per-minute rate, shown before the job runs.
- Top up any amount. Add what you need; the balance doesn't expire.
The price is shown before charging. You're only ever charged for what you use.
The tradeoff
Pay-as-you-go isn't always cheaper. If you transcribe hours of audio every single day, a flat-rate subscription elsewhere may beat per-minute pricing — and we'll say so plainly. VTS is built for the much larger group of people whose usage is occasional and spiky, where a subscription is mostly dead weight.
Paste any public link or upload a file and get a clean transcript in minutes. First 3 clips every month are on us — no card required.
If your needs change, nothing about VTS has to. There's no plan to upgrade and no contract to escape — you just use it when you need it.
