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Descript cost calculator
Descript’s price is only partly the subscription number. Each plan carries two meters - media minutes and AI credits - plus an export quality ceiling, and the plan you need is whichever one covers all three. Put your month in and see which that is.
The calculator runs entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and nothing you type leaves the page.
Descript Hobbyist
Hobbyist is the cheapest published plan whose media minutes, AI credits and export quality all cover these inputs.
$16 a month billed annually - $192 a year
$24 a month if you pay monthly, which is $288 over a year.
| Media minutes you need | 300 of 600 included |
|---|---|
| AI credits, estimated | 50 of 400 a month |
| Export quality | 1080p asked for, 1080p on this plan |
The credit figure is an estimate, not a quote. The mapping is none = 0, some = 100 credits per 10 hours of media and heavy = 300 per 10 hours. Descript’s own documentation says some AI actions have no fixed cost - the price depends on what the AI ends up doing - and that unused credits do not roll over from one month to the next, so a real month can land either side of this.
Every plan figure was checked against Descript’s published pages on 14 August 2026 and is set out, with sources, in the Descript pricing breakdown. Descript can change its pricing at any time.
What Rooster would cost for the same inputs
$4.99 a month at the founder price, or $9 a month billed annually ($108 a year). Move the controls above and that does not change: your Rooster bill won’t grow with your workload.
The founder price is locked in for as long as you stay subscribed and is open to the first 250 subscribers who join by 10 January 2027. Once it closes, monthly billing for new subscribers is $12.99.
Both start with a free trial. The plan and the reasoning behind it are on the pricing page.
How this works out an answer
Hours become media minutes at sixty a piece, because the meter counts what enters the project rather than what you export: retakes, imported clips and B-roll you end up cutting all draw from the same pool. AI credits are estimated from how heavily you say you use the AI features. The quality you pick has to be one the plan can export. The calculator then names the cheapest plan that satisfies all three, which is not always the one the hours alone would suggest.
The free plan is only ever offered when your month needs no AI credits at all. It grants 100 credits once rather than monthly, so treating that grant as an allowance would recommend it to people it would strand part way through the month. Its exports also carry a watermark, which the result says.
Where the figures come from
Every plan price, media-minute allowance, credit allowance and export ceiling was read from Descript’s own published pages on 14 August 2026 and is set out with its sources in the Descript pricing breakdown. Descript can change its pricing at any time, and articles written before its September 2025 restructure describe plans that no longer exist, so check the date on anything that disagrees with this. If you spot a figure we have not caught up with, tell us.
Why Rooster’s number does not move
Rooster is a Mac video editor that runs the record, transcribe, edit and export loop on your own machine. Because the work happens on hardware you already own, Rooster does not need to charge by the minute or the action - one flat price whatever the month looks like. You can try Rooster free. What runs where is written up on the how it works page, and the two editors are compared feature by feature in Rooster vs Descript.