Descript Pricing 2026: Plans, AI Credits and What You Actually Get

Media minutes count every minute of audio or video you upload or record in Descript, whether or not you transcribe it, and each still image counts as 1 second. A 1-hour Rooms recording uses 60 minutes no matter how many people join. So Hobbyist’s 10 hours a month covers about ten 1-hour uploads, and Creator’s 30 hours about thirty.

AI credits pay for AI features. Some costs are predictable and grow with the length of the media; Studio Sound and Remove Filler Words are capped at 30 credits per use. Underlord, Descript’s AI co-editor, is different: Descript says the same kind of request can cost different amounts depending on the model and the work involved, and even chatting with Underlord uses a few credits. The Usage tab in your settings shows what each run cost.

Rollover. Unused media minutes and AI credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Only purchased top-ups carry over, for up to 12 months.

Top-ups on Hobbyist. If you run out mid-month on Hobbyist, you can’t buy more; you have to upgrade to Creator. On Creator and Business, top-ups cost $35 for 350 AI credits, $80 for 1,000 and $200 for 4,000, and media time costs $25 for 5 hours, $80 for 20 hours and $150 for 50 hours. Top-ups are non-refundable, and if you drop to Free you keep the balance but can’t use it until you upgrade again.

Extra people. Prices are per person. Each Editor seat adds to the shared pool of minutes and credits and is billed separately, so 3 people on Creator billed yearly cost $72 a month ($864 a year).

Some tools on Hobbyist. Hobbyist has no custom font upload, limits stock media search to the first 12 results and can’t export a timeline to Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or other editors; those need Creator or Business. Translation proofreading is Business only.

Long refund windows. Plans can only be refunded within 48 hours of the invoice date (7 days for added Editor seats). Cancelling or downgrading keeps your plan until the end of the term, with no prorated refund.

Mobile editing. Descript runs as a desktop app on Mac and Windows and in the browser. There is no mobile app.

Your old price. On November 17, 2025 Descript began moving Legacy and Sunset plans to its current plans at each subscriber’s next billing date. Descript said most prices wouldn’t change but some could increase, and once you leave a legacy plan you can’t go back to it.

Worth it for podcasters, interviewers and long-form YouTubers who like editing a video by editing its transcript. Hobbyist at $16 a month billed yearly covers 10 hours of media, 1080p exports without a watermark and the AI tools, which is fair value if you publish a few long videos a month.

Pick Creator ($24 a month billed yearly) if you need 4K, custom fonts, unlimited stock media, timeline export or the option to buy top-ups. Business ($50) mainly adds more minutes and credits, brand controls, translation proofreading and up to 5 seats.

Think twice if your usage is hard to predict: heavy Underlord use can burn through credits, and on Hobbyist you can’t top up. And if you mostly make short vertical clips with styled captions, a caption-first tool can cost less than transcript editing you won’t use.

StoryCut (our product). Starter is $9/mo, or $7/mo billed yearly: 1080p exports with no watermark, videos up to 7 minutes and 20 videos at a time, with captions that start as soon as the upload finishes. Pro ($19/mo, or $14/mo billed yearly) adds clean audio (ElevenLabs voice isolation), silence removal, caption translation and AI voice dubbing. It is built for short vertical videos, not long-form editing, and it has no desktop app.

CapCut. The editor is free on phone, desktop and web, with filler-word detection on desktop. Pro is $19.99 a month or $179.99 a year in the US.

VEED. Creator is $20 a month, or $9.67 a month billed yearly, per user: 1080p with no watermark and unlimited auto subtitles (50 hours a month fair use), in the browser.

Opus Clip. If you mainly use Descript to cut clips from long videos, Opus Clip Starter is $15 a month for 150 minutes of source video, with a Virality Score and no watermark.