The two jobs need different tools. To turn speech into text, Otter’s Pro plan works out at about $0.85 per transcribed hour on monthly billing ($16.99 for 1,200 minutes) and about $0.42 on annual billing; Descript is an editor that includes transcription with 10 to 40 media hours a month. To turn text into speech, ElevenLabs charges roughly $0.14 to $0.20 per generated minute by plan, and its free plan carries no commercial licence, so anything you publish needs at least Starter ($6 a month).
Transcription: cost per hour
Otter states its allowance in minutes, so the hourly cost is a division:
| Otter plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | Allowance | Per hour, monthly | Per hour, annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free | 300 min a month, 30 min per meeting, 3 lifetime imports | Free | Free |
| Pro | $16.99 per user | $8.33 per user | 1,200 min a month (20 hours), 90 min per meeting, 10 imports a month | $0.85 | $0.42 |
| Business | $30 per user | $19.99 per user | Unlimited recording, up to 4 hours a conversation, 6,000 imported minutes | Not derivable | Not derivable |
The per-meeting caps matter more than the price for some jobs: a two-hour interview will not fit a Basic (30 minutes) or Pro (90 minutes) meeting, and Otter’s imports are limited to 3 for life on Basic and 10 a month on Pro. See the Otter review.
Descript is priced in media hours, which cover material you upload or record, not finished output:
| Descript plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | Media hours a month | AI credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 1 (watermark) | 100 one-time |
| Hobbyist | $24 | $16 | 10 | 400 a month |
| Creator | $35 | $24 | 30 | 800 a month |
| Business | $65 | $50 | 40 | 1,500 a month |
On the same division, Hobbyist is $2.40 an hour of media on monthly billing and $1.60 on annual, but you are paying for an editor, not only text. Fireflies is another meeting-transcription option; we did not compile its pricing for this page.
Voice: cost per generated minute and the licence
ElevenLabs states an approximate number of minutes per plan and says annual billing is ten times the monthly price:
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | Credits a month | Approx minutes stated | Per minute, monthly | Commercial licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Not offered | 10,000 | About 10 | Free | No |
| Starter | $6 | $5 | 30,000 | About 30 | $0.20 | Yes |
| Creator | $22 list ($11 first-month promotion) | $18.33 | 121,000 | About 121 | $0.18 | Yes |
| Pro | $99 | $82.50 | 600,000 | About 600 | $0.165 | Yes |
| Scale | $299 | $249.17 | 1,800,000 | About 1,800 | $0.166 | Yes |
| Business | $990 | $825 | 6,000,000 | About 6,000 | $0.165 | Yes |
The $11 Creator figure is a promotion shown on the page, not the list price, and we keep it out of the per-minute figures. Extra usage is quoted on the page at roughly $0.17 to $0.36 a minute depending on plan. Details are in the ElevenLabs review; for other voice tools see Murf, Speechify and Adobe Podcast, whose pricing we did not compile.
Which one
- Meeting notes for one person: Otter Pro if meetings are under 90 minutes; annual billing halves the price per hour.
- Long interviews or many imports: Otter Business (4-hour conversations, 6,000 imported minutes) or Descript, which prices media hours; Otter Basic and Pro cap a conversation at 30 and 90 minutes.
- Voiceover for videos you will publish: ElevenLabs Starter or above, because the free plan has no commercial licence.
- Video and podcast editing by transcript: Descript.
Pair this with the video tools hub if the voice is for video, and the pricing tracker for every plan with its check date.
Method
Researched from the three vendors’ pricing pages, read 29 Sep 2026. USD list prices. Per-hour and per-minute figures are our division of the stated allowance and assume you use all of it. ElevenLabs minutes are the page’s own “approximately” figures. Transcription accuracy is not on any pricing page and is not assessed here; we did not run tests.
For the meeting-notes tools side by side, see Otter against Fireflies against Descript.
Price comparisons: transcription cost per hour and ElevenLabs vs Murf vs WellSaid.