Free Descript Alternatives
Descript’s free plan against six verified free transcription APIs - Deepgram, Speechmatics, AssemblyAI, Gladia, Groq and Scaleway - with credit, card and catch.
Esta sección está en inglés.
Descript’s free plan is a text-based editor: 60 media minutes a month, 100 one-time AI credits, 720p local export and transcription in 25 languages, with no card. Past that you move to Hobbyist ($16 a month billed annually, $24 monthly) for 10 media hours. The catalog does not list a free video editor, so this page covers the half of Descript it can back with verified offers: transcription. The six rows below are free speech-to-text services that give you the transcript to edit, subtitle or search; they are APIs, so you bring your own tool for the cutting. Every row is a live offer from the same data as the free AI audio tools hub, re-checked monthly. For the full list of speech-to-text options see free speech-to-text APIs; for AI video generation see the free AI video tools hub.
Los datos de las ofertas se verifican y se muestran en inglés.
| Opción | Qué es gratis | Tarjeta | La letra pequeña |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deepgram Free $200 Credit | $200 | No | Credit is tied to the Pay As You Go plan; billing switches to pay-as-you-go once the $200 credit is spent. |
| Speechmatics $100 Free Credit | $100 | No | The $100 sign-up credit lasts 12 months and service pauses once it reaches zero; adding a card switches the account to pay-as-you-go. |
| AssemblyAI Free Credits | $50 | No | Free tier caps streaming at 5 new streams per minute (vs 100/min paid), and LLM Gateway usage is not covered by the credits; the credits do not expire. |
| Gladia Free Credits | Free credits | No | One-time credit that expires one year after signup, with no monthly reset; once used you must top up or upgrade to continue. |
| Groq Free Tier | Free tier | No | Rate limits apply at the organization level and are tight (e.g. 30 RPM and 1K RPD on many models); the docs caution limits may change and exceptions exist. |
| Scaleway Generative APIs Free Tier | 1,000,000 tokens | No | Free Tier applies to your most expensive tokens first; once exceeded, per-token billing starts with a 1,000-token minimum billing unit. |
Las 6 opciones, en detalle
Deepgram Free $200 Credit
$200 in free credits for Deepgram speech-to-text and TTS, no card
- Applies to the Pay As You Go plan
- No expiration on the credit
- No minimums
- Moves to pay-as-you-go billing after the credit is used
La letra pequeña: Credit is tied to the Pay As You Go plan; billing switches to pay-as-you-go once the $200 credit is spent.
Speechmatics $100 Free Credit
$100 in Speechmatics speech-to-text and TTS credit, no card, valid 12 months
- $100 sign-up credit lasts 12 months
- 2 concurrent real-time sessions on the Free tier
- Service pauses when the credit balance reaches zero
- 1 credit = $1; card only needed to continue on pay-as-you-go
La letra pequeña: The $100 sign-up credit lasts 12 months and service pauses once it reaches zero; adding a card switches the account to pay-as-you-go.
AssemblyAI Free Credits
$50 in free credits for speech-to-text, streaming, and voice agent APIs
- Free-tier streaming concurrency: 5 new streams per minute
- Free-tier accounts may default to different models than paid accounts
- Credits cover Pre-recorded STT, Real-time STT, Voice Agent API, Speech Understanding and Guardrails; LLM Gateway is not included
- Credits do not expire
La letra pequeña: Free tier caps streaming at 5 new streams per minute (vs 100/min paid), and LLM Gateway usage is not covered by the credits; the credits do not expire.
Gladia Free Credits
One-time €50 speech-to-text credit, valid one year, up to ~312 hours
- One-time 50 EUR credit at signup, valid for one year, no monthly reset
- Roughly 312 h async on Solaria-3, 185 h on Solaria-1 or 73 h real-time at current rates
- 25 concurrent async and 30 concurrent real-time requests on Self-serve
- Top up or upgrade once the credit is used
La letra pequeña: One-time credit that expires one year after signup, with no monthly reset; once used you must top up or upgrade to continue.
Groq Free Tier
Free rate-limited Groq API access to hosted open models, no card
- Per-organization limits tracked as RPM, RPD, TPM, TPD
- openai/gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b: 30 RPM / 1K RPD / 8K TPM / 200K TPD
- qwen/qwen3.8-27b: 30 RPM / 1K RPD / 8K TPM / 200K TPD
- whisper-large-v3 and turbo: 20 RPM / 2K RPD, 7.2K audio sec/hour, 28.8K audio sec/day
La letra pequeña: Rate limits apply at the organization level and are tight (e.g. 30 RPM and 1K RPD on many models); the docs caution limits may change and exceptions exist.
Scaleway Generative APIs Free Tier
1M free tokens and 60 minutes of transcription on Scaleway APIs
- 1,000,000 free tokens (Serverless, token-billed models)
- 60 minutes free audio transcription
- Free quota split proportionally across projects by consumption
- Minimum billing unit of 1,000 tokens after the quota
La letra pequeña: Free Tier applies to your most expensive tokens first; once exceeded, per-token billing starts with a 1,000-token minimum billing unit.
Gratis para siempre si lo alojas tú
Proyectos de código abierto que hacen lo mismo en tu propio hardware, sin cuota.
Preguntas frecuentes
Esta sección está en inglés.
- Is Descript free?
- Yes, there is a Free plan with no card: 60 media minutes a month, 100 one-time AI credits, 720p local export, unlimited projects and transcription in 25 languages, with its AI tools limited. Hobbyist starts at $16 a month billed annually ($24 monthly) for 10 media hours and 1080p export. This was read from Descript’s pricing page on November 1, 2026.
- Is there a free alternative to Descript?
- For transcription, yes: Deepgram gives $200 in credit, Speechmatics $100, AssemblyAI $50 and Gladia a one-time €50, none with a card. They return a transcript through an API; none of them is a video editor, so they replace Descript’s transcription, not its text-based editing.
- Which free option transcribes the most audio?
- Gladia estimates its €50 credit at about 80 hours of pre-recorded audio. Groq’s free plan serves Whisper models at up to 28,800 audio seconds (8 hours) a day, and Scaleway’s free tier includes 60 minutes of whisper-large-v3 transcription.
- Do these Descript alternatives need a credit card?
- No - none of the six rows asks for a card. Deepgram moves to pay-as-you-go billing once the credit is spent, and adding a card at Speechmatics switches the account to pay-as-you-go.
- How current is this comparison?
- Every row is generated from the aifree.dev catalog, whose offers are re-checked monthly. Credits and limits shift quietly, so a row changes or disappears when the vendor does.
Guías paso a paso
- How to Get a Free Groq API Key (en inglés)
- Free OpenAI API Access in 2026: What's Actually Free (en inglés)
- Free Text-to-Speech APIs in 2026 (en inglés)
- Free Speech-to-Text APIs in 2026 (en inglés)
- Free DeepSeek API in 2026: What Is Actually Free (en inglés)
- Free Qwen, GLM and Kimi API in 2026: Where They Are Free (en inglés)
- Free Hugging Face Inference: Credits, ZeroGPU and Spaces (en inglés)
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- Best Free AI APIs for Vietnamese in 2026: Benchmark Scores and Free Tiers (en inglés)
- Best Free AI APIs for Spanish, Portuguese and Indonesian in 2026: Published Scores and Free Tiers (en inglés)
- Free AI Credits for Hackathons: No Card, No Waiting (en inglés)
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