Descript pricing: every plan, both meters, and the cost of clips on GPT-Video

The short answer

Descript costs little per hour, but each plan has two allowances to track. You choose a tier by the number of media hours you upload, then watch a second allowance of AI credits that runs down whenever you use a generative feature. GPT-Video has one meter. A credit buys a source minute at Standard quality.

If you want a transcript editor, Descript wins on price. If you want finished vertical clips from long recordings, GPT-Video costs more per hour and does that single job end to end.

What Descript costs

Every price above is per person. Descript says yearly billing saves up to 35% against monthly, and the pricing page opens on the yearly view, so the first number a visitor sees is the lower one. Enterprise has no public price.

Non-profit, education and lifetime deals

Descript has a separate plan for non-profits and schools. It costs $12 per editor a month, or $8 a month billed yearly, and it carries the Hobbyist features with up to 3 editor seats per Drive. Eligible groups are non-profits with valid charitable status, such as 501(c)(3), and students, educators and administrators at accredited schools. You apply through a form and Descript approves the request. We did not find the media hours or AI credits for this plan, so check them before you count on ten hours.

There is no lifetime deal on the pricing page, which we read again on 2026-10-18. Billing is monthly or yearly by card. GPT-Video does not sell a lifetime deal either.

The two meters

Media minutes count the length of anything you upload or record, which includes video, audio, screen captures and sessions in its recording rooms. AI credits are separate and count the use of tools like Underlord, Studio Sound and Green Screen. Unused media minutes and AI credits do not carry into the next month, although top-ups you buy do, for up to a year, and they are spent after the monthly allowance.

The same meters apply when you use the API or the MCP server. Requests return an error once either allowance is gone, so an automated workflow can stop in the middle of a month.

What clips cost on GPT-Video

At Standard quality a credit pays for one source minute; Draft uses half of that and Maximum uses two and a half times as much. Buying 500 more costs $25. Creator has room for a small team.

No GPT-Video plan stays free. A new account can still clip without paying for a while, because confirming the email grants free access: 50 credits, 14 days to use them, no card and up to 2 exports a day. The edits you then ask for spend nothing, since only uploaded minutes are counted. Places are limited.

Comparing the bills

Convert Descript to a price per media hour and the picture is clear. Hobbyist is $2.40 an hour, Creator is about $1.17 and Business is about $1.63, because Business gives 40 hours for $65. GPT-Video at Standard on Creator is $0.061 a minute, which is about $3.66 an hour.

So Descript costs roughly a third as much per hour of media on its Creator plan. That figure does not buy the same work, though. A Descript media hour covers editing, transcribing, cleaning audio and exporting, and the pages we read describe clipping as highlighting parts of a transcript and adding animated captions. They do not mention an automatic reframe that follows a face. GPT-Video spends its credits on finding moments, cropping to vertical and captioning them.

What else the Descript price includes

Beyond the allowances, the tiers differ in export quality and storage. Hobbyist exports in 1080p with 100 GB of storage, while Creator and Business export in 4K, with 1 TB and 2 TB. Business also adds team collaboration.

Every paying user gets the documented API and a Zapier connection. Descript lists an MCP server as well, usable from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, though its help center leaves open which plans carry it. One limit shows up in the notes we read: files cannot be exported through the API yet, so finished exports still happen in the app. For a team that wants to automate the whole path from upload to published file, that is worth checking before you plan around it.

Who should pay for which

A podcaster who edits whole episodes, removes filler words and publishes audio and video should start with Descript. The free plan costs nothing, and Creator at $35 is hard to beat for that work.

A clipper or creator who turns recordings into shorts every week, and who does not edit the long version at all, should compare a real recording on both, using Descript's free plan and GPT-Video's free access. The GPT-Video and Descript comparison goes through features, and the price list shows every plan with its credits. The podcast clipping workflow shows the steps from upload to export.