Descript

Descript's premise is a single inversion: transcribe the recording first, then treat the transcript as the edit surface. Cut a paragraph from the document and it is cut from the video. Everything else in the product follows from that, including who it is for — people who are fluent in words and not in timelines.

The AI tooling divides into two quite different groups, and they have different track records. The first group repairs recordings you already made: Studio Sound for audio cleanup, Remove Filler Words, Create Clips, voice clones for fixing a line by retyping it, and translation and dubbing into more than 30 languages with a proofreading step. Transcription itself covers 25 languages. The second group generates new material — Underlord, the AI co-editor, generated video and generated avatars. The first group is the verified core workflow this product is sold on; the second is what the three accounts reviewed here criticise, with one of them concluding the connector-driven generative workflow is "not ready for use in any serious commercial capacity yet" and another finding it unable to work in French.

The commercial design runs on two meters and the important one is easy to misread. Media minutes count the minutes of media imported or recorded into Descript per editor per month — 60 on Free, 600 on Hobbyist, 1,800 on Creator and 2,400 on Business. That is input, not output. Importing an hour of raw footage to cut a three-minute clip spends an hour, and re-importing the same music bed into a new project spends it again. A user raised exactly that case publicly and Descript's own reply confirmed the mechanic, pointing to importing from an earlier project rather than re-uploading as the way around it. Media minutes can also be topped up separately when a month runs long.

The second meter is AI credits — 400, 800 and 1,500 a month on the three paid plans, with 100 given once on the free plan — which the generative tools draw against. So a plan can run out of the thing you bought it for while still having plenty of the other thing.

Prices are per person per month and the pricing page loads showing annual rates: $16 for Hobbyist, $24 for Creator and $50 for Business, against $24, $35 and $65 billed monthly, with the vendor putting the annual saving at up to 35%. The free plan is a real tier rather than a trial, but its exports carry a watermark; removing that is the first thing Hobbyist buys, and 4K export arrives at Creator. Team size is capped by plan — three on Creator, five on Business, both billed per seat — so a growing team meets a structural ceiling rather than a price one.

On data handling the vendor's position is stated rather than implied: project information is described as confidential even from Descript, the company says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant, and opting out of model training, custom retention, SSO, SCIM and audit logs are Enterprise controls. Reduced rates for students, educators and non-profits exist but are handled by application rather than published.