Descript Pricing: What Each Plan Costs and How Far the Credits Go

Descript Pricing Plans: What Each One Includes

Descript sells five plans: Free, three paid plans with public prices, and Enterprise on request. The paid plans are priced per person, so a team pays for each editor.

• Free: $0

  For testing

  One editor, 1 hour of media a month, 100 AI credits, 720p export and 5GB of storage. You don't need a credit card. It's the right place to find out whether editing a video by editing its transcript suits you.

• Hobbyist: $16 a month billed yearly, $24 billed monthly

  One person, 1080p

  One editor, 10 media hours and 400 AI credits a month, 1080p export without a watermark and 100GB of storage. It includes Underlord, Studio Sound, Remove Filler Words, Create Clips and AI Speech with custom voice clones. Our read: this is the plan for a solo podcaster or YouTuber who publishes about once a week.

• Creator: $24 a month billed yearly, $35 billed monthly

  4K and top-ups

  Up to three editors, each billed separately, with 30 media hours and 800 AI credits a month for each. Export goes up to 4K and storage to 1TB. Descript describes it as full access to Underlord and more than 20 other AI tools, with AI video generation and the whole stock media library. It is also the first plan that lets you buy top-ups.

• Business: $50 a month billed yearly, $65 billed monthly

  Teams

  Up to five editors, each billed separately, with 40 media hours and 1,500 AI credits a month each, and 2TB of storage. It adds team-wide Brand Studio, proofreading for translated captions and dubbing, and priority support.

• Enterprise: custom price

  Large teams

  Credits and media hours are sized to the team. Descript lists single sign-on, audit logs, data controls and a dedicated contact. You get a quote from its sales team.

The full comparison

Swipe sideways to see every column.

Source: Descript's pricing page and its plan comparison table, checked October 10, 2026. Prices are per editor, per month. Media time and AI credits are per editor too, and they go into a pool shared by the Drive, which is Descript's name for a team's workspace.

One detail to keep in mind on Hobbyist: Descript's pricing page says it has access to Underlord, while Creator has full access. The page doesn't spell out the difference, so if a specific Underlord feature matters to you, ask Descript before you choose.

Media Minutes and Descript AI Credits: How the Two Allowances Work

This is the part of Descript pricing that decides which plan you need. Descript counts two things, and they have nothing to do with each other.

Media minutes count what you bring in. Uploading an audio or video file uses its length. So does anything you record in Descript: screen, webcam, microphone or a Rooms session. A still image counts as one second. One friendly rule for podcasters: a Rooms recording counts the length of the session once, not once per guest, so an hour with five people uses 60 minutes.

AI credits count what the AI does. Descript's Help Center names Underlord, Studio Sound, Remove Filler Words, Green Screen, Eye Contact, AI speech, avatars and generated video, among others. Everything on that list is an AI feature. Cutting and rearranging in the transcript isn't on it.

Neither one rolls over. Both allowances reset when your plan renews, and what you didn't use is gone. On a team, each editor's minutes and credits go into one pool that every editor on the Drive can draw from.

What an AI action costs in credits

Descript doesn't publish a full price list for credits. These are the figures it does give.

Descript's changelog of August 5, 2026 raised the most Underlord can spend on thinking in one turn from 100 to 200 credits. The per-second price for smoothing dates from September 17, 2026.

Underlord is the one to watch. Descript says its cost is not fixed. The same request can use a different number of credits from one run to the next, depending on the model and on how much work the task takes.

At the top of the range, the thinking step of one Underlord turn can use up to 200 credits. By our math that is half of Hobbyist's monthly 400, before the cost of any tool it runs. A chat message uses only a few, so the range is wide. Cleanup is easier to budget: at 30 credits at most per file, 400 credits cover at least 13 passes of Studio Sound, again by our math.

We haven't measured Underlord's cost ourselves, so check it with your own material before you plan a month around it.

You don't have to guess where you stand. In our Free plan account, the top bar shows both numbers next to the Upgrade button: 100 credits and 60 minutes. The Underlord panel on the right carries a Beta label, and Descript's Help Center confirms it is still in beta. For the detail, the Help Center points to Settings, then your Drive, then the Usage tab, which lists what each Underlord run cost.

What Happens When You Run Out: Descript Top-Ups

As of October 2026, Creator and Business accounts can buy extra AI credits or media hours as one-time top-ups. Free and Hobbyist accounts can't. On Hobbyist you wait for the next renewal or move up a plan. On Free, the pricing page lists the credits as one-time, so more credits means a paid plan.

Source: Descript's Help Center page on top-ups, checked October 10, 2026. Top-ups are shared by everyone on the Drive and can't be refunded.

Top-ups behave differently from the monthly allowance, in a helpful way. Descript only draws on them once the month's allowance is used up, and they carry over from month to month for up to a year after you buy them.

This is the practical difference between the two middle plans. If you run out on Hobbyist, your options are to wait for the renewal or move up a plan. On Creator, a busy month costs you a one-time top-up and your plan stays the same.

Descript Hobbyist vs Creator: Which Plan Is Enough?

For one person, we'd narrow it down to these two. On yearly billing, Creator costs $8 a month more, which is $96 over the year by our math.

Source: Descript's pricing page, checked October 10, 2026.

Ten hours of media is generous for a weekly show. By our math, a weekly one-hour show recorded as one file uses four to five hours a month, so Hobbyist's media time is unlikely to run out first. Our read: the credits are more likely to be the tighter number, and how tight depends on how much you hand to Underlord. If you record inside Descript, check one more line: recording sessions are capped at 5 hours a month on Hobbyist and 15 on Creator.

• You publish a weekly show or video in 1080p

  Hobbyist

  Ten hours and 400 credits should cover a weekly show with audio cleanup for one person. By our math, that is at least 13 cleanup passes a month at Descript's maximum of 30 credits each. Start here and watch your usage for a month.

• You need 4K, or you work with one or two other editors

  Creator

  4K export and shared seats start on this plan. Each editor is billed, and each one adds 30 hours and 800 credits to the shared pool.

• You plan to use Underlord or AI video on most projects

  Creator

  Twice the credits, and top-ups if a month runs heavy. On Hobbyist you would have to wait for the renewal or change plan.

• You run a team with brand templates or proofread translations

  Business

  Brand Studio for the whole team, proofread translation and dubbing, and priority support are the reasons to pay $50 per editor a month on yearly billing.

Yearly or Monthly Billing, Seats and Refunds

Descript's plan cards lead with the yearly rate. It is the lower figure, and it is charged in one payment for the year.

Swipe sideways to see every column.

Prices from Descript's pricing page, checked October 10, 2026. The yearly totals and the savings are our math.

Seats. Hobbyist is for one person. Creator can grow to three editors and Business to five, and every editor is a paid seat. Viewers and people invited to a single project can't use features that draw on minutes or credits.

Refunds. Descript's refund policy gives you 48 hours from the invoice date to ask for a refund on a plan, and seven days on an added editor seat. Top-ups can't be refunded. If you cancel or downgrade, the change takes effect at the end of the billing period, with no refund for the unused time.

Cancelling. A cancelled account moves to the Free plan when the paid period ends. Your projects stay available, without the features that belong to the paid plan.

Descript Discounts: What Is Available

Three ways to pay less than the list price exist today, and all three are on Descript's own pages.

• Yearly billing

  Open to everyone: by our math, about a third off Hobbyist and Creator, and about a quarter off Business, compared with paying monthly.

• Education and nonprofit plan

  Students, teachers and staff at accredited schools can apply, and so can nonprofits with charitable status. The plan has all Hobbyist features at $8 per editor a month paid yearly, or $12 paid monthly. You apply with your school or nonprofit email and Descript reviews the request.

• Promo codes

  Descript's checkout accepts promo codes, with limits: one code per purchase, used once, and only on a new account upgrading from Free to a paid plan. Descript's promo code page doesn't list a public code, so check any code you find against these rules before you count on it.

Sources: Descript's Help Center pages on the education and nonprofit plan and on promo codes, checked October 10, 2026.

We also looked for a lifetime deal, since people search for one. Descript's pricing page lists monthly and yearly subscriptions only.

What the Descript Free Plan Includes

The Free plan costs $0 and needs no credit card. Descript's pricing page presents it as a plan, with no time limit stated, and doesn't offer a separate free trial of the paid plans.

You get one editor, 1 hour of media a month, 720p export, 5GB of storage, two hours of recording sessions and limited use of Underlord and the AI tools. That should be enough to try the transcript-based workflow on a short video.

In our own Free plan account, the counter showed 100 credits and 60 minutes on October 10, 2026. That fits both pages, and a single reading can't show whether the credits renew.

Descript vs Other Editors: Where Each One Fits

Comparing Descript pricing with other editors on price alone can mislead, because each tool is built around a different job. Descript is built around editing spoken content through its transcript. We don't list other tools' prices here, since they change often: each of our reviews has the current plans. Here is where the tools we've reviewed are the better fit.

• Riverside

  Remote recording

  Riverside (4.4) is built around capturing high-quality recordings from remote guests. For interview-led shows with light edits, it is the better fit.

• CapCut

  Short-form video

  CapCut (4) is geared to short-form content. For short social clips, it is the better fit.

• VEED

  Browser editing

  VEED (4.2) is a browser-based editor with automatic subtitles. For quick subtitled videos with nothing to install, it is the better fit. Our VEED vs CapCut comparison covers both.

• Gling

  Rough cuts

  Gling (4.1) automates the rough cut of talking-head video by removing silences, filler words and bad takes. If you finish in a professional editor and only want that first pass done, it is the better fit. We compare the two in Descript vs Gling.

You'll find all of them, and more, in our video editing tools directory.

Descript Pricing Changes in 2026

We read every entry in Descript's changelog from April to September 2026. None of them announces a change to Descript pricing or to the plan names. Most of what changed is about how credits are spent.

Source: Descript's changelog, checked October 10, 2026. The latest entry on that date was September 17, 2026.

Descript pricing FAQ