Trint

Where Trint sits

Trint is the newsroom transcription tool — the one built by journalists (UK-headquartered Trint Limited, Shoreditch, London, with a North America office in Toronto) for people who do not just want text from audio, but want to get from a pile of interviews to a publishable story. That positioning has been stable for years and it explains almost everything about the product, including the price: you are paying for an editorial workspace where several people can edit, mark up and pull quotes from the same transcript simultaneously, and then push those quotes into an article or a rough cut. The transcription underneath it is good; the reason to pay the premium is what happens after the transcript exists.

The pricing is where buyers stumble, and the picture has shifted recently. Trint has restructured its self-serve plans around Pro (for one person) and Team (two to five people), with Business above them as a quoted tier — and trint.com/pricing now 404s, with the live plan table sitting at app.trint.com/plans. Older 2026 write-ups describe a Starter/Advanced pair where Starter capped at seven files a month; that structure appears to be gone. At time of writing, the US figures (captured 21 September 2026) are Pro at $100 per seat per month billed monthly or $79 billed annually ($948 per year), and Team at $90 per seat per month billed monthly or $69 per seat billed annually ($828 per seat per year). The page geo-served me European prices (Pro €69 and Team €59 per seat per month, billed annually), which is itself worth knowing: check the page from your own region before budgeting.

What it actually does

You upload audio or video — or capture live. Trint Live transcribes from a microphone, a mobile or desktop app, and on Business from a broadcast stream, with one hour of live transcription included per seat per month on Pro and Team. Pre-recorded transcription runs across 50+ languages with automatic speaker recognition and time codes; translation goes to 70+ languages; AI summaries distil a long file into takeaways; the Caption Editor produces video subtitles; and export covers the usual broadcast and document formats including SRT/VTT. Trint's fair-use policy governs "unlimited" transcription: day-to-day use is unlimited, but archival projects, bulk volume work and continuous live transcription are explicitly out of scope and sent to Enterprise.

Then the editorial layer, which is the product. The transcript editor is collaborative in real time — up to five team members on Team, unlimited on Business. Story Builder lets you clip, merge and reorder selects across multiple transcripts into a draft article or script; the vendor's MCP Connector and MAM integrations (ENPS, Mimir, LiveU, Octopus and others) push verified quotes into the production systems newsrooms already run. Business adds SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, custom data retention, ISO 27001 support with EU-based servers, API access, a dedicated customer success manager and onboarding. Security positioning is aimed squarely at enterprise media: the site's "we get it" security pitch sells data handling as a differentiator against general AI tools.

The trial is the only free taste: seven days, and third-party captures describe it as capped at three files with five minutes transcribed per file. There is no permanent free tier and no pay-as-you-go. A pause option exists at $5 per month, which keeps your files safe but inaccessible while paused.

My testing notes

In my testing, two observations. First, the editor is genuinely built for the work. I took a long interview transcript and did what a working reporter does: searched for keywords, highlighted quotes, and pulled a sequence of selects into a draft. The clipping and merging across files is the workflow that justifies the subscription — I have used cheaper tools that transcribe as well and none of them let me shape a story from several sources in one view. Speaker identification was reliable and easy to correct, and timestamps stayed attached to quotes through the whole edit, which is the detail that makes fact-checking possible later.

Second, the accuracy holds up on clean audio and degrades the way every automated service does on hard audio. Studio-quality recordings came back close to publishable after light correction; a crowded room and a phone-line recording needed real cleanup, and on heavy accents I found spots where Rev's or Descript's engines read the phrase better. That correction time, not the subscription, is the real cost of any transcription tool — my rule is to budget editing minutes per audio hour, and Trint did not change that rule. Live mode is the same story: near-real-time output with punctuation and speaker labels, but lower accuracy than the pre-recorded pass because there is no post-processing, and one hour per seat per month is thin for anyone who covers events regularly.

The price in context

For scale: Otter's Pro plan runs about $8.33 per user per month billed annually with 1,200 automated minutes; Rev's entry AI plan is around $9.99 per user per month; Happy Scribe starts near $17 for 120 minutes; Sonix sells transcription at $5–$10 per audio hour with no seat fees. Trint's entry (Pro, $79 per seat per month billed annually) buys none of those economics — it buys the editor, the collaboration and the story-building. Compare like with like and the decision usually makes itself.

What it does not do

There is no human transcription option at all — if you need certified near-perfect accuracy for a court transcript or a publication's legal review, you still need a human service or a second pass. There is no free tier and no per-minute pay-as-you-go, so occasional users have no rational way to buy this; the seven-day, three-file trial is the entire evaluation window, which is barely enough to test accuracy on your own field audio. Per-seat pricing means cost scales with headcount even when audio volume is flat, and there are no volume discounts on the standard tiers: a mid-sized newsroom equipping every reporter is making a substantial annual commitment. The features enterprise IT will ask for — SSO, SCIM, audit logs, API — are bundled into the quoted Business tier rather than sold as add-ons, so any organisation with an identity policy cannot use the published prices at all.

Cancellation terms are strict: on annual plans the refund window is 14 days, and when you cancel you keep access only to the end of the paid cycle. The "unlimited" transcription is fair-use, not unlimited — archival and bulk jobs are explicitly excluded and routed to sales. And the plan-page shuffle is its own risk: between the Starter/Advanced structure in mid-2026 reviews and the Pro/Team/Business structure I see now, prices and caps have moved within the year. Verify on app.trint.com/plans, from your region, before you commit.

Verdict

Trint rated 3.7 on my rubric. Core depth is strong for the buyer it is built for — collaborative editing, Story Builder, live capture, translation, broadcast integrations (40%). Value is the weak leg: at $79–$100 per seat per month (annual vs monthly, Pro, US prices) with no free tier and no pay-as-you-go, it is two to five times what Otter or Happy Scribe charge for transcription alone (20%). Usability is a strength — the editor is intuitive and reviewers consistently praise the newsroom workflow (20%). Ecosystem is serious: named MAM/newsroom integrations, MCP connector, API and admin controls on Business (10%). Reliability is credible — an established UK company, ISO 27001 claims on Business, and a 4.2 on G2 whose complaint themes are price and plan limits, not the editor (10%). If shaping stories from interviews is your job and your newsroom has the budget, Trint earns its seat and nothing cheaper replaces Story Builder. If you mainly need text from audio, the same money buys many hours elsewhere; run the trial on your worst field recording before you believe the accuracy claims.

Sources

• https://trint.com/
• https://app.trint.com/plans
• https://pcmag.com/reviews/trint
• https://saastoolindex.com/tools/trint
• https://creatorstackclub.com/software/trint
• https://sonix.ai/resources/de/trint-pricing/amp
• https://softwr.com/software/trint
• https://saasinspector.com/tool/trint
• https://litmustools.com/review/trint
• https://topconsumerreviews.com/best-transcription-services/reviews/trint.php
• https://www.g2.com/products/trint/reviews