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Transcription cost calculator

Plug in your event hours, captioning method, and number of languages. Get a monthly cost estimate based on industry-public rates so you can budget accurately before signing a vendor contract.

Total spoken-audio hours captioned per month.

0 means source-language only.

Automated
$30
/ month
Hybrid
$624
/ month
Human (CART)
$3,000
/ month
Estimated monthly cost
$30
20 hours · Automated ASR

Estimate based on industry-public rates ($1.50/hr automated, $150/hr human, +30%/+85% per language). Vendor quotes vary; EventRecast specifically uses per-event pricing — contact us for an actual quote.

The cost of captioning live events varies more than most teams expect. The same 4-hour conference can cost $5 (automated, single-language) or $1,500 (human captioners, multi-language) depending on the choices. This calculator surfaces the tradeoffs so the budget conversation isn't a 'pick a number' exercise.

Numbers below are estimates based on industry-public rates. Your actual vendor quote may differ. EventRecast specifically uses per-event pricing rather than per-hour, so the calculator is a planning tool, not a quote.

How to use the calculator

  1. Enter your monthly event hours

    Sum the hours of audio content you'll caption per month. A 4-track conference over 2 days at 8 hours/day is 64 hours; a weekly 1-hour webinar is 4 hours/month.

  2. Pick a captioning method

    Automated (ASR) is the cheapest and the default for most modern event programs. Human (CART) is significantly more expensive but produces 98%+ accuracy for high-stakes content. Hybrid uses automated by default with human upgrades for keynote sessions.

  3. Add language coverage

    Single-language (source only) is the baseline. Each additional translated language adds ~30% to automated costs and considerably more to human costs. International event programs typically run 3-5 languages.

What the cost ranges are based on

**Automated ASR**: industry-published rates from Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, AWS Transcribe, Azure Speech, and similar APIs cluster around $0.02-0.04 per minute, or $1.20-$2.40 per hour. The calculator uses $1.50/hour as a midpoint estimate. Captioning platforms (including EventRecast) bundle these underlying API costs with their own infrastructure and charge above the raw ASR rate; this calculator estimates the underlying delivery cost, not the platform markup.

**Human captioners (CART)**: rates published by NCRA-affiliated agencies and the broader stenography market typically run $2-3 per minute or $120-$180 per hour. The calculator uses $150/hour as a midpoint.

**Hybrid**: assumes automated for 80% of content with human upgrades for 20% (keynote sessions, public-facing high-stakes content). Cost is roughly 0.8 × automated + 0.2 × human.

**Translation multiplier**: each additional language multiplies the base captioning cost by ~1.3 for automated (translation runs as a follow-on pass on automated source captions, with ASR-equivalent compute). For human captioners, additional languages typically require additional captioners — closer to a 1.7-2.0× multiplier per language.

What the calculator doesn't cover

**Setup, training, and integration costs**. Onboarding a new captioning platform across an event program has fixed costs (training AV teams, integrating with the conference app, updating accessibility statements) that vary too much per organization to estimate.

**Equipment**. Audio interfaces, dedicated broadcaster laptops, network upgrades — these are infrastructure costs that aren't captured here. They're typically small relative to ongoing captioning costs but real.

**Volume discounts**. Captioning vendors typically discount large monthly commitments. The calculator estimates list-price equivalent rates; vendors will quote lower for committed volume.

**Live editing**. For high-stakes content where human accuracy matters but full CART is overkill, some platforms offer real-time editing of automated captions. This adds 30-50% on top of automated cost — much less than full CART. Not in the current calculator inputs but worth knowing.

Frequently asked questions

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Related

Pricing

EventRecast's actual pricing tiers (real numbers, not estimates).

ASR (glossary)

What automated speech recognition is and how it produces the captioning cost basis.

CART (glossary)

Human captioning by trained stenographers — the gold standard for high-accuracy contexts.