Scribie is unique among transcription services thanks to its ‘human-in-the-loop’ model: It primarily uses an automatic process, but a human edits the final version of a script before sending it back to you. The strategy works well, producing accurate files in testing. Scribie charges a competitive rate and has a slick, easy-to-use web interface. That said, no mobile apps are available for the service. By contrast, the AI-enhanced Otter has superb mobile apps and useful tools for live meetings, while GoTranscript offers the best human-based transcripts we received in testing, making these two services our Editors’ Choice winners.
How Much Does Scribie Cost?
Scribie has straightforward pricing that starts at $0.80 per audio minute. The standard turnaround time is 24 hours. You pay an extra $0.50 per minute for a strict verbatim transcription or $1.25 per minute for a quicker turnaround. Scribie says it also offers a subscription option upon request.
(Credit: Scribie/PCMag)
For comparison, GoTranscript’s fully human-based transcription service starts at $1.20 per minute with a five-day turnaround. Transcripts with a one-day turnaround time cost $1.60 per minute, and timestamps cost extra. TranscribeMe charges $1.25 per minute for its equivalent service with a turnaround time of up to three days. Adding timestamps and speaker identification, which Scribie includes in its base rate, adds to that price. Rev’s human-based service costs $1.99 per minute and has a turnaround time of 12 hours.
As for automated transcription services, some offer pay-as-you-go pricing, and others use a subscription model. TranscribeMe’s per-job automated service costs just $0.07 per minute. Otter’s Pro subscription ($8.33 per user per month, billed annually) supports up to 1,200 automated transcription minutes per month. Rev’s Basic VoiceHub plan ($9.99 per user per month, billed annually) is very similar.
Getting Started With Scribie
You need a Scribie account to submit an order. Scribie’s web dashboard has a spacious, modern design. It has navigation items on the left, a large file upload area at the top, and a list of your files at the bottom. It even has a dark and light mode. We occasionally encountered navigational bugs on the site, but it works well overall.
Scribie lets you upload a file from your computer, various online storage services, or YouTube, but you can’t record live audio like with Otter and Rev. Once you are ready to submit an order, simply look for your file in the list of uploads and click the associated Transcribe button under the Actions column. Scribie then brings you to a page where you can specify order options, add any comments, and submit the job.
(Credit: Scribie/PCMag)
The left-hand menu has an In Progress section for tracking orders. Once your order is complete, you can find it in the Delivered section. From there, you can open the transcript in the web editor, save it to your local device, share it, or upload it to a cloud storage service of your choice. You can also order a Re-Review if you feel Scribie delivered subpar results.
Scribie doesn’t offer mobile apps. You can log in to Scribie via your phone’s browser and upload files, although the website doesn’t translate well to a smaller screen size. You often have to scroll horizontally and vertically to access features. For comparison, Otter, Rev, and Trint all have slick, full-featured mobile apps with recording and editing capabilities.
Editing and Collaboration
Scribie’s web editor matches the design of the dashboard and includes mostly standard functions. You get tools for adjusting the playback volume and speed, along with those for quickly parsing a file. Scribie provides a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts via the drop-down menu at the upper right, but oddly none for adding bold, italics, or underlining. (Ctrl + B seemed to work fine for making text bold, however). You can add notes in a sidebar area, though you don’t get any of the advanced AI summarization tools of Otter, let alone the story-building features of Trint.
(Credit: Scribie/PCMag)
Scribie supports team workspaces for editing, listening to, and sharing transcripts with colleagues. To do so, you need to create a team, invite your coworkers, and specify roles (user, supervisor, manager, team admin).
How Accurate Is Scribie?
As mentioned, Scribie typically uses an automatic process for the initial transcription, and then a human steps in to complete the job and ensure accuracy. For situations in which the transcript contains many errors (often due to low audio quality), a human transcriber takes over to produce the transcript manually. You can read about the details here.
We tested Scribie with a two-minute iPhone audio recording of a passage from Marguerite Henry’s “Misty of Chincoteague” series. We chose the 12-hour turnaround option, which added $1.25 per minute to the order. It came back much faster than 12 hours (just 48 minutes in this case).
Scribie’s human-verified transcript is nearly flawless. Difficult place names like Assateague, Chincoteague, and Pocomoke are all accurate. The last time we tested the service, the only curious error was the capitalization of “pony” throughout the transcript. In this year’s review, that’s not an issue.
For comparison, Otter returned a document with three errors related to proper nouns and place names but many more errors in punctuation. TranscribeMe made seven errors in its automated transcript, also mostly related to proper nouns and punctuation. Rev made more errors than Otter related to proper nouns (six) but was much better at capitalization and punctuation.
While we don’t have any concerns about how Scribie performs, some users are still likely to want the option to skip the automated transcription process altogether in favor of a human editor. For comparison, GoTranscript and Rev both offer fully human-based transcription services.
Is Your Data Safe With Scribie?
Scribie’s privacy policy outlines its basic safeguards for protecting your files, including having employees and contractors sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Additionally, Scribie will sign an NDA upon request.
According to its website, the company says it will “disclose personal information when we believe it violates our Terms of Service or is appropriate to comply with the law, to protect our or our users’ rights, as well as to protect our users from fraudulent, abusive, and unlawful use of our site.” It also says the company reserves the right to disclose its customers’ “personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our website.”
We couldn’t find any way to enable multi-factor authentication in the account settings section, which is something we prefer to see.
Verdict: Reasonably Priced Human-Verified Transcription
Scribie is worth checking out if you need an affordable, pay-as-you-go service that goes beyond standard machine transcription. It returns accurate files in short order, and its web interface is generally pleasant to use. However, we wish Scribie offered a dedicated mobile experience and a few more advanced features. As such, it falls short of our Editors’ Choice winners. GoTranscript gives you the flexibility to choose between fully automated and human-based transcription services, while Otter has top-notch mobile apps and genuinely useful AI capabilities.
Ben Moore contributed to this review
The Bottom Line
Scribie is a cost-effective transcription service that delivers quality files quickly, but it can really use a mobile app to keep up with the competition.
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About Meg St-Esprit
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