AI TranscribeTranscription in numbers: speed, cost and limits (2026)
A reference page of the concrete numbers behind transcription on iPhone — the figures we cite across this site, in one place. All app prices and limits verified against official pricing pages, July 2026.
Speed
- Manual transcription takes a practiced human roughly 4 hours per 1 hour of audio; professional typists get to ~3×.
- AI transcription runs far faster than real time: a 30-minute memo in about a minute, a 2-hour meeting in a few minutes (details).
- Conversational English runs ~130–150 words per minute — so one hour of speech is roughly 8,000–9,000 words, or about 30 book pages.
File sizes (why upload time varies)
- WAV/AIFF (uncompressed): ~10 MB per minute
- MP3/M4A (compressed): ~1 MB per minute
- Opus voice notes (WhatsApp): well under 1 MB per minute — voice-optimized
Free-tier limits, verified July 2026
| Service | Free allowance | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Otter | 300 min/month | 30 min/conversation; 3 file imports per account, lifetime |
| TurboScribe | 3 files/day | 30 min max per file |
| Notta | 120 min/month | 3 min max per conversation |
| Fireflies | Unlimited minutes | ~400 min storage/team; 150 min/file uploads |
| Rev | 45 AI min/month | English only |
| Whisper Memos | None | Subscription-only after brief trial |
| Apple Voice Memos | Fully free | iPhone 12+, iOS 18+, ~10 languages, new recordings only |
| AI Transcribe | Free tier | 1 hour/day time allowance |
Paid pricing, verified July 2026 (billed annually → monthly)
| Service | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Whisper Memos | $5/mo | $10/mo |
| Notta Pro | $8.17/mo | $13.99/mo |
| Otter Pro | $8.33/mo | $16.99/mo |
| TurboScribe Unlimited | $10/mo | $20/mo |
| Fireflies Pro | $10/mo | $18/mo |
| Rev Essentials | $25.49/mo | $29.99/mo |
| Rev human transcription | — | $1.99 per audio minute |
| AI Transcribe Pro | Weekly or annual subscription | — |
Language coverage
- Apple's built-in Voice Memos transcription: ~10 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese), per Apple's documentation.
- AI Transcribe: 32 transcription languages with automatic detection; transcripts translate into 46 target languages.
- Speaker labeling is unavailable in a few languages across the industry's diarization engines (in AI Transcribe: Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese).
Length limits worth knowing
- AI Transcribe: live recording up to 2 h, file imports up to 3 h (audio & video)
- Whisper Memos: 90 min per recording
- Fireflies uploads: 150 min per file
- TurboScribe Unlimited: files up to 10 h
- Notta paid: recordings up to 5 h
Prices and limits change; every figure above carries its verification date (July 2026) and comes from the provider's official pricing page or documentation.