HappyScribe $0.20 a minute vs a $0.20 Sume caption job

HappyScribe charges $0.20 per minute for extra AI transcription and subtitle credits, while Sume charges $0.20 for one burned-in caption job on a clip of up to 60 seconds. The two numbers look alike but buy different things: HappyScribe sells subtitle files by the minute, Sume returns a rendered video with captions on it. A 15-second clip costs $0.05 of credit at HappyScribe and $0.20 at Sume, a 60-second clip $0.20 at both.

What the HappyScribe page says

The pricing page lists Basic with 120 minutes a month, Pro with 600 and Business with 6,000, and says additional top-up credits are charged at $0.20 per minute on every paid tier. It also lists human proofreading from $2.00 per minute, with 65-plus languages and delivery in 4 hours or more.

What the Sume job does

The docs say a standalone caption job takes a public HTTPS video URL, runs speech-to-text unless you send script_text, and returns a captioned video. Each accepted job reserves and captures $0.20, priced for videos of at most 60 seconds. You pick a style such as slam or punch, can override colors and placement with design, and can pass a language hint.

Steps: caption one short clip

• Host the clip at a public HTTPS URL.
• POST to /v1/video-captions with video_url, a style and an Idempotency-Key.
• Poll the job, then download the captioned file from the result.
• If the clip is silent the job fails with caption_no_speech; send cues with text, start and end to burn authored text instead.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: caption-demo-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://example.com/clean.mp4","style":"slam","language":"en"}'

What Sume does not do

Sume does not hand you an SRT file from this job and has no human proofreading tier. HappyScribe lists proofreading from $2.00 per minute; Sume has no equivalent, so if a person must verify the text, that review happens outside the API.

A 200-clip example

Say you caption 200 clips of 20 seconds each. HappyScribe credit top-ups at $0.20 per minute total about 67 minutes, which is $13.33, though plan allowances may cover some of it. On Sume, 200 jobs at $0.20 is $40.00. The extra $26.67 buys 200 rendered videos with burned-in styled captions instead of 200 subtitle files, and removes your own render step. If you were going to burn captions yourself anyway, price that engineering and compute against the difference before choosing.

Plan allowances change the math

HappyScribe's Basic, Pro and Business plans include 120, 600 and 6,000 minutes a month before top-ups apply, so a team inside its allowance pays no marginal $0.20. Sume has no allowance: every accepted job reserves and captures $0.20. If your volume is steady and under the plan minutes, the subscription is cheaper per clip; if it is bursty, a metered job removes the unused-minutes cost.

Which to pick

Choose HappyScribe when you need subtitle files, long recordings or human review. Choose Sume when the deliverable is a short vertical clip with captions already burned in and you want one request per clip.