Comparison

txscribe vs Descript, when the transcript is the point

Descript is an editor: it transcribes your audio or video so you can cut the recording by editing the text. If you're making a podcast or a video, that is what you want, and it's not what we do.

This page is for the other job: turning interviews, lectures and research recordings into text you can quote from and check against the audio. The table and the list below set out where each is stronger for that job.

Descript's details checked on its own pages on 2026-09-26; each links to its source. Plans and prices change — if something here is out of date, tell us at support@txscribe.ai.

Price

txscribe

Pro: $24.99 a month, billed monthly. One plan, no seats.

Descript

Hobbyist $24 a month, or $16 a month billed annually; Creator $35 a month, or $24 a month billed annually; Business $65 a month, or $50 a month billed annually — each per person. Source

Time included

txscribe

Pro: 30 hours a month. Without an account: one recording, up to 10 minutes.

Descript

Free: 60 media minutes a month. Hobbyist 10 media hours a month, Creator 30, Business 40, per editor. Media hours count every file uploaded or recorded, whether or not it is transcribed; top-ups are sold on Creator and Business only. Sources 1, 2

Longest recording

txscribe

Up to 8 hours per file on Pro. Without an account, the first 10 minutes of one recording.

Descript

Files longer than 15 hours fail to transcribe automatically. Uploads up to 1 GB on Free, 10 GB on Hobbyist, 20 GB on Creator and 50 GB on Business. Sources 1, 2

Languages

txscribe

82 languages (110 regional variants in the picker). Speaker labels offered in all of them — in 96, only on recordings of up to 2 hours, and not where that pass fails.

Descript

Its pricing page says 25 languages, its help centre lists 26, and its transcription page says "30+"; the help centre says Chinese, Japanese and Russian are not yet supported. One language per file. Sources 1, 2, 3

Speaker names

txscribe

Speakers come back numbered. Rename one once and every line follows; names you have used before are offered again.

Descript

Automatic speaker detection on every plan ("Detect 8+ speakers"). Sources 1, 2

Exports

txscribe

TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT, Final Cut Pro captions, Premiere Pro markers, transcripts for NVivo, MAXQDA and ATLAS.ti, and JSON, on every plan, including Free. Up to 100 transcripts at once as one ZIP, and the audio or video file you uploaded can be downloaded again.

Descript

Transcripts as DOCX, TXT, RTF, Markdown or HTML, with optional timecodes and speaker labels; subtitles as SRT or VTT. Sources 1, 2

Translation

txscribe

A translated copy of the whole transcript, on every plan.

Descript

Translated captions and transcripts in 61 languages, limited on Free and paid for in AI credits; AI dubbing of the audio in 30 languages. Sources 1, 2

Custom word list

txscribe

Up to 1,000 names and terms, on every plan.

Descript

A transcription glossary of up to 30 terms, English only. Its pricing table shows it on Business only; its help centre says all plans. Sources 1, 2

Checking against the audio

txscribe

Words come back with timestamps: click any line to jump to that moment in the recording. A line you correct keeps its paragraph's timing rather than per-word timing. Answers to questions about a transcript link to the moments they came from.

Descript

The playhead highlights the current word as it plays, and a Correct mode fixes the text without changing the audio. Sources 1, 2

Training on your recordings

txscribe

We do not use your recordings or transcripts to train models.

Descript

Its privacy policy and Terms say user content may be used to train its AI models unless you opt out; its help centre says models in production use no user data, and research uses only data from users who opted in. Sources 1, 2, 3

Where Descript is the better choice

Editing the recording itself. Descript edits audio and video by editing the transcript: delete or move words and the media follows, without destroying the original. Source We change the transcript, never the audio.
Video, captions and dubbing. Translated captions and transcripts in 61 languages, limited on Free and paid for in AI credits; AI dubbing of the audio in 30 languages. Sources 1, 2 We translate the transcript's text; we don't dub audio.
Fine control over timing. Corrections can be applied to every instance of a word at once, Descript re-aligns the audio after each one, and you can adjust a word's start and end by hand. Sources 1, 2 A line you correct in txscribe keeps its paragraph's timing rather than per-word timing.
Very long recordings. Files longer than 15 hours fail to transcribe automatically. Uploads up to 1 GB on Free, 10 GB on Hobbyist, 20 GB on Creator and 50 GB on Business. Sources 1, 2 Our limit is lower — see the table.
Teams. Creator scales to a team of 3 and Business to a team of 5, billed per person. Source txscribe has shared workspaces on every plan — invite people as admins, editors or viewers, and comment on transcripts together — but no team billing: there are no seats or pooled minutes, each member transcribes on their own plan, and there is no single sign-on.
A security report to hand over. Its pricing and security pages list SOC 2 Type II. Sources 1, 2 We have no SOC 2 report.

What txscribe doesn't do well

Speaker labels stop at 2 hours in 96 of our 110 language variants: there a separate pass labels the speakers, and a longer recording — or one whose pass fails — comes back without labels and says so, with no speakers to rename.
A recording that switches language partway may come back translated rather than transcribed — or not at all — and nothing marks it as missing. Name the main language instead of leaving it on automatic.
Summaries do not point back to the moment each line came from. Answers to questions do.

Try it on one of your recordings.

Up to 10 minutes, no account and no card. A table can tell you the limits; only your own audio tells you whether the transcript holds.

Start free