Speech-to-Text App: Pay Per Minute

Speech-to-Text App: Pay Per Minute

Speech to Text - Transcription is a speech-to-text app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. You tap record, talk, and the text appears, ready to copy. There is no account and no subscription. You pay for the minutes you actually transcribe, about 4.5 US cents a minute, and you get free tokens to try it. I built it because I wanted exactly this for myself.

How the app works

The flow is stripped down on purpose:

• Open the app
• Tap to record
• The text appears, ready to copy

The app detects which language you speak, so you don't have to pick one. The text comes with punctuation and paragraphs, so it reads properly instead of arriving as one long sentence. Then you paste it into email, notes, Slack or a document.

What does the app cost per minute?

The app uses tokens instead of a monthly fee. One token equals one cent (0.01 US dollars) of what you paid. Transcription costs about 4.5 tokens per minute of audio, so roughly 4.5 US cents, and each transcription is rounded up to the next whole token.

| Token pack | Price | Lasts about | |---|---|---| | Small | 4.99 US dollars | 110 minutes | | Medium | 9.99 US dollars | 220 minutes | | Large | 19.99 US dollars | 440 minutes |

The App Store shows the price in your own currency. New users get 50 free tokens, enough for about 11 minutes of transcription. There is no commitment and no fee quietly renewing in the background. Chat and modules (see below) also use tokens, but they are charged per question rather than per minute.

That is a different model from most transcription apps, which charge every month however much you use them. Transcribe half an hour a week and it costs under 1.40 US dollars. Use it heavily for a while and you only pay for that stretch.

Speech to text that handles your language

The app copes with different accents and speaking speeds, and you don't need to set the language first because it detects it. That makes it useful for more than short notes:

• Meetings: record and keep a text to go back to
• Interviews: journalists and writers get the conversation into text
• Lectures: students can record and search the text afterwards
• Voice memos: a thought in the car or on a walk becomes a note

Is it a Whisper app?

Plenty of people search for a Whisper app, because Whisper is the OpenAI model that made good transcription available to everyone. This app now uses OpenAI's newer transcription model, reached through a server we run, so you don't need your own API key. For you that means nothing to install and no key to manage. If you want to run Whisper locally yourself, you set it up on a computer instead.

If you want to understand the technology behind these models, we have written about what an LLM is. Transcription models are related to them, trained on audio instead of text.

Dictate on iPhone and use the text on your Mac

The app is built for dictating. Transcribe on your iPhone or iPad and paste the text straight onto your Mac through Apple's Universal Clipboard: speak, copy, paste. It is a smooth flow if you juggle a phone and a laptop.

Chat with your notes and build modules

Every transcription is saved in a history that works as a voice diary you can search and copy from. You can also chat with your notes: ask follow-up questions, request a summary or find what was said. For things you do over and over, build modules, such as a meeting format or a journal template, and speak straight into them. The history can be exported as CSV, JSON or text.

Your data and privacy

The app has no login, no ads and no tracking. Your transcriptions are stored on your device. When you record, the audio goes through our server to OpenAI to be turned into text. The server holds it only in memory while the request runs and never stores it, and the audio file is deleted from your phone as soon as the text is back. The app asks before anything is sent, and you can turn that off at any time. If you transcribe sensitive conversations, it matters to know exactly this, so read the full privacy policy.

Who is the app for?

• Journalists and writers who want interviews in text
• Business owners dictating emails and notes between meetings
• Students recording lectures
• Anyone who simply writes slower than they talk

Give it a try

The app is available on the App Store and is perfect for anyone who often dictates notes, wants to transcribe meetings, or simply wants to skip typing on their phone.

Download Speech to Text - Transcription on the App Store