Add-on: Transcription Service

$79/year — Bring your own API key

Transcripts at near-wholesale API cost, orchestrated by Benecaster.

AI transcription without a middleman markup.

Transcripts do three things that matter: they make episodes accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing listeners, they let search engines index your spoken content, and they let subscribers scan an episode before committing to listen. Most podcasters skip them anyway — because the workflow is annoying. Either you’re paying a transcription service that marks up the underlying API cost, or you’re managing API calls and file storage yourself.

Transcription Service removes that friction. It connects Benecaster to your own transcription API account — OpenAI Whisper, AssemblyAI, Deepgram, or Rev.ai. You bring the API key; transcription costs go directly to your provider at their published rates. Benecaster doesn’t mark them up or sit between you and the billing. Request transcription from the episode editor with one click — the job runs in the background, and the transcript appears timestamped on the episode page when it’s done.

Transcripts are stored with full timestamps, displayed as an interactive reader (click any timestamp to jump the player), and indexed for search. You control which episodes get transcribed and which don’t.

Four providers. You choose.

Provider	Notes
OpenAI Whisper	Popular, well-documented, competitive per-minute pricing
AssemblyAI	Strong accuracy, good speaker detection
Deepgram	Fast, cost-effective at scale
Rev.ai	Human review options available via their platform for high-accuracy needs

One API key, shared across all your shows. Per-show and per-episode transcription is opt-in independently — enable transcription for the shows and episodes where it matters.

Transcripts that do more than sit on a page.

Timestamped transcript storage with the full provider response
Interactive transcript on episode pages — click any timestamp to jump the audio player
Plain text extraction for search indexing (works with core Standard Search and AI Search add-on)
Same tier-based visibility controls as episode content — show or hide transcripts by subscription tier
The transcript visibility setting applies to both the on-page display and the <podcast:transcript> tag in the RSS feed — subscribers on ineligible tiers don’t see the transcript in their podcast app either
SEO-optimized transcript rendering
Transcript edit and correction interface — fix mishearings before publishing
Export transcript as SRT (video captions), VTT (web players), or plain text
Episode list status indicator: each episode shows transcription state — not configured, ready to transcribe, processing, or complete
Transcription trigger from the episode editor — request transcription with one click; the job runs in the background

What does transcription actually cost?

Transcription costs vary by provider and audio length. As a rough guide at typical podcast lengths (30–90 minutes per episode):

OpenAI Whisper: approximately $0.006/minute — a 60-minute episode costs ~$0.36
AssemblyAI: similar range, varies by feature tier
Deepgram: competitive pricing, volume discounts available

A podcaster releasing two 60-minute episodes per month spends roughly $1–2/month in API costs at these rates. Provider pricing changes — check each provider’s current rates before selecting.

Benecaster adds no markup. The $79/year is for the add-on software; API usage is billed directly by your provider to your account.

Even More Powerful With

AI Search — Transcript content is indexed alongside episode titles and show notes, so subscribers can search the spoken content of your episodes in plain English. For interview shows, this is the difference between AI Search finding the right answer and missing it entirely — most of what was actually said lives in the audio, not the description.
Guest Manager — When diarization is enabled, transcript segments are attributed to speakers. Map those speaker labels to Guest Manager profiles and the connection runs both ways: guests accumulate attributed transcripts on their archive pages; you can search your back catalogue by what a specific guest said.
Standard Search (core) — Transcript text is automatically included in keyword search results with no additional configuration.

When all three are active together — Transcription, Guest Manager, and AI Search — your guest content becomes fully attributed and semantically searchable. Subscribers can find what a specific guest said about a specific topic, across your entire archive.

Requires / Works with

Requires: Benecaster with any paid plan
Requires: An API key from a supported transcription provider (OpenAI, AssemblyAI, Deepgram, or Rev.ai)
Works with: Core Standard Search (included free) and AI Search add-on for transcript-inclusive episode search