Why We Dropped "Unlimited": How Included Hours Work, and the Fine Print Elsewhere
Transcribe.so plans used to say "unlimited, under fair use". They no longer do. Every paid plan now includes a set number of transcription hours each month: 20 hours on Starter, 50 on Pro and 140 on Business. This post explains how those hours work, why we dropped the word, and, because the rest of the market still uses it, what "unlimited" actually means at each vendor that claims it.
If you want the full 10-tool comparison beyond pricing, read our best smart transcription tool in 2026 roundup.
How included hours work
- Every paid plan includes a set number of hours. Starter ($9/mo) includes 20 hours a month, Pro ($19/mo) 50 hours and Business ($49/mo) 140 hours. Enterprise contracts set their own number.
- What counts. The audio length of every transcription you start in the billing month, wherever you start it: the web app, Claude, ChatGPT, the API or WhatsApp. Deleting a transcript does not give its hours back. AI Q&A, summaries, chapters and search don't count. Translation has its own monthly minutes, and clips are paid from your balance.
- When they reset. Hours reset at the start of each billing month and don't roll over. On annual plans the hours still arrive monthly, counted from the day you subscribed.
- When they run out, you choose. You can wait for them to reset, turn on extra usage at $1 an hour, or upgrade. Extra usage is off unless you turn it on, and you choose a monthly limit. We tell you by email and in the app when you have used 80% and 100% of your hours.
- Nothing is slowed down. There is no slow lane and no throttle: when you reach your hours, new jobs don't start until you choose what to do, and nothing is charged without your say.
- Every feature is on every plan. Plans differ only by numbers: included hours, the longest file (2 hours on Starter, 5 on Pro, 10 on Business, 12 on Enterprise) and files at once (2, 5, 15 and 50 respectively).
- Without a plan. Pay as you go is $1 per audio hour from your wallet, with files up to 90 minutes, and new accounts get a $3 signup credit.
Included hours apply to every plan from 9 November 2026, counted from the start of each subscriber's current billing month. We emailed every subscriber, and anyone who does not accept the change can cancel within 60 days for a refund of their last charge.
Why we dropped "unlimited"
Any limit we enforce makes the word false, and our plans always had limits: file length, files at once, and a fair-use guideline. That guideline promised that jobs beyond it would be queued at lower priority. A slower lane is still a ceiling, just one you cannot see until you hit it, and selling a ceiling under the word "unlimited" is exactly the pattern this post criticizes in other vendors.
A small number of accounts also ran automations that transcribed hundreds of hours a month on the cheapest plan. A flat price cannot cover that without raising the price for everyone else. So we chose a number you can read on the pricing page, generous enough that most subscribers never reach it, and a clear choice when you do: wait, pay $1 an hour only if you turn it on, or upgrade. No hidden lane, no surprise charge.
What "unlimited" means at other vendors
The four ways vendors limit "unlimited"
Every fine-print catch we found falls into one of four patterns:
- Meter something adjacent. Minutes are unlimited, but storage, file uploads, or "AI credits" are not, so heavy use still hits a wall; it is just a differently named wall.
- Cap the unit. Volume is unlimited, but each file or conversation has a maximum length, so long recordings must be split.
- Restrict the seat. Unlimited applies to exactly one human, enforced by account-sharing bans.
- Fair use. Genuinely uncapped in normal use, with a throttle (not a wall) for extreme bursts.
None of these is inherently dishonest. The problem is when the pattern hides behind the headline. Here is who does what.
Claim by claim, verbatim
TurboScribe: real unlimited, single seat, capped file length
TurboScribe's Unlimited plan is the most genuinely unlimited product in the market. We could not re-check its pricing page on October 13, 2026, so we do not print its price here; check its pricing page for the current figure. Their FAQ says it plainly: "There are no caps on overall usage and customers regularly transcribe hundreds of hours per month. The only rule is you can't share your login/account with others."
The limits that do exist: a per-file length and size cap (check its pricing page for the current limit), one seat with no account sharing (pattern 3), and no team plan at all. What you give up is everything around the transcript: no API, no built-in AI summaries or chat, no team workspace. If raw volume at a low flat price is the entire requirement, this is the honest budget pick.
Fireflies: unlimited minutes, metered storage and AI
Fireflies advertises "unlimited transcription" on its free tier. The catch is pattern 1 twice over: free storage is capped at 400 minutes per team, so older transcripts effectively rotate away, and every AI feature draws from a monthly credit allowance (20 on Free and Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise). Paid tiers raise storage (8,000 minutes per seat on Pro at $10/month annual, unlimited on Business at $19) but the AI credit meter never goes away.
Read a Fireflies quote as: transcription is unlimited, remembering and analyzing your transcription is not.
Notta: "unlimited transcription" with an upload counter
Notta's Business plan ($16.67/month billed annually) lists "Unlimited transcription", directly above a cap of 200 file uploads per month and 200 AI summaries per month, with no carryover. Recordings also cap at 5 hours each on every tier, including Enterprise (patterns 1 and 2 together). For meeting-bot usage the upload cap rarely binds; for file-transcription workloads it absolutely does, because the thing being counted is files.
One more clause worth knowing: after downgrading to Free, Notta only shows the first 3 minutes of your existing transcripts.
Otter: unlimited minutes, capped conversations, 6 languages
Otter's Business tier advertises unlimited transcription minutes. The units are capped instead (pattern 2): conversations max out at 4 hours, and file imports are limited on lower tiers (3 lifetime imports on Free, 10 per month on Pro). Transcription is also available in 6 languages, which is its own kind of limit if your recordings are not in them.
Quota vendors, for contrast
Transkriptor, Happy Scribe, Sonix, Rev, and Descript do not claim unlimited at all; they sell monthly quotas, and the fine print there is about expiry and overage instead: Transkriptor's "unused minutes will expire after one month", Happy Scribe's $0.20/minute overage, Sonix's $10/hour overage, Descript's media-hours buckets. A quota with clear overage pricing is arguably more honest than a decorated "unlimited", which is the direction we took ourselves: a published number of hours, with extra usage only if you turn it on.
How to read any transcription pricing page in 60 seconds
Five questions expose every catch in this post:
- What is actually metered? Search the page for "storage", "credits", "uploads", and "per month". The metered noun is the real product boundary, whatever the headline says.
- What is the longest single file? If it is not published, assume you will find out the hard way. Vendors that publish it: TurboScribe (see its pricing page), Notta (5h), Otter (4h conversations), Transcribe.so (2-12h by plan).
- What happens at the limit? A hard wall, an overage charge, or a slower queue are three very different experiences at 11pm before a deadline.
- What do AI features cost after the transcript? Credit systems (Fireflies, Notta, Descript) mean the summary of your meeting has a unit price even when the transcript does not.
- What happens to your data when you stop paying? Notta's 3-minute preview clause is the cautionary example; check export rights before you accumulate an archive.
The comparison in one table
| Tool | The claim | The catch | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| TurboScribe | "Unlimited Transcriptions" | Single seat, per-file length and size cap, no API or AI features | Seat + unit cap |
| Fireflies | "Unlimited transcription" (Free) | 400 min storage/team, AI credits on every tier | Adjacent meter |
| Notta | "Unlimited transcription" (Business) | 200 uploads/mo, 200 AI summaries/mo, 5h recordings | Adjacent meter + unit cap |
| Otter | "Unlimited minutes" (Business) | 4h conversation cap, import limits below Business, 6 languages | Unit cap |
| Transcribe.so | No unlimited claim: 20, 50 or 140 hours a month by plan | Per-plan file length and files at once; extra usage at $1 an hour only if you turn it on | Included hours |
| Transkriptor / Happy Scribe / Sonix / Rev / Descript | No unlimited claim | Monthly quotas with expiry or overage | Quota |
Frequently asked questions
How many hours does each Transcribe.so plan include?
Starter includes 20 hours of transcription a month, Pro 50 hours and Business 140 hours. Enterprise contracts set their own number. The hours reset at the start of each billing month and don't roll over.
What happens when my hours run out?
You choose. You can wait for them to reset, turn on extra usage at $1 an hour, or upgrade. Extra usage is off unless you turn it on, and you choose a monthly limit. Nothing is charged without your say, and no job is slowed down.
Is any transcription service actually unlimited?
TurboScribe comes closest in 2026: genuinely uncapped on volume for one person, with a per-file length limit and no API or built-in AI features. Every other "unlimited" we reviewed is capped by storage, uploads, AI credits, or conversation length. Transcribe.so does not claim unlimited; it states the hours each plan includes.
What does "fair use" mean in transcription pricing?
Fair use means the vendor does not meter normal usage but reserves the right to slow down or stop extreme outliers. The details that matter are the window it is measured over and the consequence: a policy that queues excess jobs at lower priority is still a limit, just an unstated one. We replaced our own fair-use guideline with a published number of included hours for that reason.
What are AI credits in transcription tools?
AI credits are a separate currency for features beyond the raw transcript: summaries, chat questions, generated documents. Fireflies allots 20-50 credits per month depending on tier, and Notta charges roughly 100 credits per AI question and 1,000 per generated presentation from a monthly allowance. If you rely on summaries or transcript Q&A, the credit meter is your real limit, not the transcription quota. Transcribe.so has no credits: summaries and chapters come with every transcript, and AI Q&A has a daily allowance (100 questions a day on Starter, 200 on Pro, 1,000 on Business).
Why do transcription services cap file length?
Long files are expensive to process in one pass, so most vendors cap them and make you split recordings: Otter at 4 hours per conversation, Notta at 5 hours, TurboScribe at its own cap (we could not re-check its pricing page on October 13, 2026). Transcribe.so accepts single files up to 12 hours on the Enterprise tier (10 hours on Business), which covers depositions, conferences, and full-day recordings without splitting.
Is a plan cheaper than pay-as-you-go?
Break-even comes fast. At Transcribe.so's $1 per audio hour pay-as-you-go rate, the $9/month Starter plan pays for itself at 9 hours a month and includes 20; against Sonix's $10/hour rate, one hour a month already justifies it. If you transcribe weekly, a plan is almost always the cheaper option; pay-as-you-go exists for occasional use.
Is there a money-back guarantee?
Yes. If you are not satisfied with a paid plan, request a refund within 7 days of your first charge on that plan and we refund it in full, as long as you have used less than 10 hours of transcription since that charge. The plan guarantee can be used once per account and per payment card. Refunds that meet these conditions are usually issued automatically. The unused part of a wallet top-up can be refunded within 7 days of purchase. You can request either from your Billing page.
See the numbers for yourself: transcribe.so gives you a $3 signup credit, plans from $9/month with 20 to 140 hours a month included, and every AI feature on every plan with no credit system.