Rev AI Reverb at $0.20 an hour is cheaper than Sume's transcript

On a pure per-minute line Rev AI is cheaper: its page lists English Reverb transcription at $0.20 per hour, about $0.0033 a minute, and Whisper Large at $0.005 a minute, against Sume's $0.01 per audio minute (plus inspect compute). If all you need is a raw transcript API at the lowest price, Rev AI wins. Sume is worth it only when the transcript is one step in a media pipeline you already run there.

Rates side by side

Rev AI also lists Reverb foreign-language transcription at $0.30 per hour, forced alignment at $0.003 per minute and free credits equal to 5 hours of Reverb for new users.

Why a media team might still pay more

With Sume the transcript sits inside video inspect, which also returns frames and metadata, and the same API keys, balance and job lifecycle cover captions, trim and timeline render. If your files are already on media.sume.com, there is no second vendor, second invoice or second webhook format to maintain. That is a real saving in engineering time, not in list price.

Steps: decide by workload

• Estimate monthly audio hours.
• At 100 hours, Rev Reverb lists $20 and the Sume transcript line $60 before inspect compute.
• If you do not need the other Sume steps, call Rev AI directly.
• If you do, run one clip through video inspect and use the measured cost.

What Sume does not do

Sume does not list a Reverb-class tier, a foreign-language discount or a standalone forced-alignment price. For captions Sume accepts your script via script_text, but that is caption alignment inside a caption job, not a separate alignment API.

Cost at three volumes

At 10 hours a month, Rev's Reverb line lists $2.00 and the Sume transcript line $6.00 before compute. At 100 hours, $20.00 against $60.00. At 1,000 hours, $200 against $600. The difference is $4 per 10 hours of audio. For most media teams the engineering time to run two vendors costs more than that, but at transcription-heavy scale it does not. Count how many hours you actually transcribe before deciding that a bundle is worth it.

Free credits and trying it

Rev AI gives new users free credits equal to 5 hours of Reverb, so you can test it at no cost on your own files. On Sume you test by funding a small balance and reading usage.cost on each job. Run the same three files on both, and compare accuracy on names and numbers as well as cost. A price gap of a few dollars a month disappears if one of the two gets your brand names wrong.

Verdict

Rev AI is the lower list price for transcripts alone. Sume is a bundle choice. Tell your team which of the two you are buying before comparing cents.