sAInote pricing: what the free tier covers and what Pro adds
sAInote pricing has three tiers: Guest and Free each give 15 minutes of audio one time, while Pro gives 360 minutes — six hours — of audio every month, renewing monthly. Guests need no account and no card; a free account adds saved, searchable note history. Pro adds custom Pro Assistant instructions, the Special Names spelling glossary, and recordings from 20 minutes up to 2 hours. Usage is always counted as minutes of audio, never per request or per word. sAInote, an AI voice-to-text app, runs in the browser and as native iPhone, iPad and macOS apps.
Guest, Free and Pro side by side
- Guest: 15 minutes, no account
- Record or upload up to 15 minutes of audio in the browser with no sign-up and no card. It is a one-time allowance, not a monthly one. Quick Note and Smart Summary both work. Nothing is saved to a history.
- Free account: same 15 minutes, plus history
- A free account also comes with a 15-minute allowance, and it is one time rather than monthly. What it adds is history: every note is saved, synced across your devices and searchable by transcript and processed text. What it adds is history: every note is saved, synced across your devices and searchable by transcript and processed text.
- Pro: 360 minutes every month
- Pro renews 360 minutes of audio — six hours — each month. It includes all three processing modes, the Special Names glossary, recordings from 20 minutes to 2 hours processed in the background, and priority support.
- Three processing modes
- Quick Note returns a verbatim transcript. Smart Summary removes filler, repairs sentences and adds headings and lists without changing facts. Both work on every plan, guests included. Pro Assistant, your own saved instruction, is Pro only.
- Long recordings, up to 2 hours
- Every plan handles recordings up to 20 minutes immediately. From 20 minutes to 2 hours, processing moves to the background and is Pro only. Two hours is the hard cap; longer recordings are rejected.
- Special Names spelling glossary
- Pro accounts can add colleague, client, product and jargon names to a personal spelling reference, so those words are spelled correctly instead of guessed phonetically. It affects spelling only; it never rewrites what was said.
Plan comparison
| Guest | Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minutes included | 15 | 15 | 360 (6 hours) |
| Renewal | One time | One time | Every month |
| Account required | No | Yes | Yes |
| Card required | No | No | For Pro |
| Quick Note (verbatim) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Smart Summary (AI-edited) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pro Assistant (your own instruction) | No | No | Yes |
| Edit & Translate | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Special Names spelling glossary | No | No | Yes |
| Saved, searchable history | No | Yes | Yes |
| Recordings up to 20 minutes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Recordings 20 minutes to 2 hours | No | No | Yes |
| Speaker separation on long recordings | No | No | Yes |
| Priority support | No | No | Yes |
Uploads are capped at 64 MB per file on every plan, and 2 hours is the hard limit for a single recording. A 3-minute recording costs 3 minutes of balance in any mode.
How to work out which sAInote plan you need
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1
Add up your audio, not your files
Count the minutes you actually speak in a typical month, not the number of recordings. A 3-minute note costs 3 minutes of balance in any mode, so duration is the only figure that matters.
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2
Check your longest single recording
If nothing you record runs past 20 minutes, the free tiers handle it. If you record meetings, lectures or interviews that run between 20 minutes and 2 hours, you need Pro.
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3
Try it with the 15 guest minutes
Record in the browser and run both Quick Note and Smart Summary on your own audio before deciding anything. No account, no card, no install, nothing to cancel.
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4
Create a free account if you want history
Sign in with a 6-digit email code, a magic link, Apple or Google. There is no password. Your allowance stays 15 one-time minutes, but your notes become saved and searchable.
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5
Upgrade only when you hit a wall
Move to Pro when you run out of minutes, need your own saved instructions, need Special Names, or need to process a recording longer than 20 minutes.
Why sAInote pricing counts minutes of audio
Usage is measured in minutes of audio and nothing else. A 3-minute recording costs 3 minutes of balance whether you process it as Quick Note, Smart Summary or a Pro Assistant instruction. The mode you choose changes the output, not the cost.
Per-file pricing would punish short notes: a 40-second voice memo would cost the same as a 90-minute interview, which pushes people to hoard recordings instead of capturing thoughts as they come. Per-word pricing is worse, because you cannot know the word count before you speak — you would be agreeing to a bill whose size depends on how fast you talk.
Minutes are the one number you can check before you record. A meeting invite says 45 minutes. A lecture slot says an hour. That maps directly onto the 360-minute monthly Pro allowance: roughly eight 45-minute meetings, or six hours of anything else. It also means you can look at next week's calendar and know in advance whether you will run short.
Who should stay on the free plan, and who needs Pro
Stay free if you record occasionally and briefly. Voice memos, a few ideas dictated on a walk, short interview answers, one lecture you want cleaned up — Quick Note and Smart Summary are fully available on Guest and Free, with no reduced quality. The honest catch is that the 15 minutes are one time, not monthly: once they are gone, they do not come back next month.
Go Pro if audio is part of your job. 360 minutes a month covers meetings, client calls you recorded yourself, lectures, field notes and long dictation. Pro is also the only tier that accepts a recording longer than 20 minutes, up to the 2-hour cap, with speaker separation and chunked summarisation applied to the long ones.
Two Pro features have nothing to do with volume. Pro Assistant lets you write and save your own instruction — a standing format for meeting notes, or a particular rewrite style — and apply it to any recording. Special Names is a personal spelling glossary for colleagues, clients, products and jargon, so those words come out spelled correctly rather than guessed by sound. If you need either of those, minutes are not the deciding factor.
What every plan includes, on every device
The apps are not tiered by paid plan. The browser app, the iPhone and iPad apps and the macOS app — including Quick Capture on Control+Option+Command+N and the menu-bar item — are the same for Free and Pro accounts. Guests can try sAInote in the browser without an account. Your plan changes your minutes and your modes, not which device you are allowed to use.
Technical limits are shared too. Uploads are capped at 64 MB, and WAV, MP3, M4A, MP4, WebM, OGG and Opus are accepted. Recordings up to 20 minutes are processed immediately on every plan. The interface ships in 11 languages — Arabic, Bengali, English, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Turkish and Urdu, with right-to-left layout for Arabic and Urdu — while speech recognition covers considerably more. Edit & Translate, available in Smart Summary mode, edits and translates in one pass into roughly 35 target languages and remembers the language you picked.
Privacy does not change with the plan either. Audio goes to private cloud storage, is never public, never indexed and never shareable by URL, and is cleaned up on a schedule after processing. Sign-in is passwordless everywhere, and accounts can be deleted in-app, which anonymises the data.
The REST API is metered separately, per key
The API is not part of the Guest, Free or Pro allowances. It is authenticated with a secret key, and usage is metered per key rather than per account, with an optional monthly cap you can set so a runaway script cannot consume more than you intended.
It offers two modes that mirror the app: raw returns the transcript as spoken, and smart returns the transcript with AI editing applied. The same technical limits carry over — 64 MB per upload, the same accepted audio formats, and the same 2-hour ceiling per recording.
One difference matters for compliance work: neither the audio nor the text is stored for API traffic. Requests are processed and nothing is retained, which means there is no history to search and nothing to delete afterwards. If you are building on top of sAInote rather than using it as an app, that is usually the deciding detail.
sAInote pricing FAQ
Is sAInote free to use?
Yes, with a one-time allowance. Guests get 15 minutes of audio in the browser with no account and no card, and a free account gets 15 minutes as well. Both include Quick Note and Smart Summary. The allowance is one time rather than monthly, so when it runs out, Pro is the way to keep going.
Do the free 15 minutes reset every month?
No. The 15 minutes on Guest and Free are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one. They do not renew, roll over or reset. Only Pro renews: 360 minutes of audio, six hours, every month. This is the most commonly misread part of sAInote pricing, so it is worth stating plainly.
How many minutes does Pro include?
360 minutes of audio every month, which is six hours, renewing monthly. That covers roughly eight 45-minute meetings, or six one-hour recordings. Pro also allows recordings from 20 minutes up to 2 hours, adds the Pro Assistant mode and the Special Names spelling glossary, and includes priority support.
How are minutes counted — per recording or per word?
By the duration of the audio, not by requests, files or words. A 3-minute recording costs 3 minutes of balance whether you run Quick Note, Smart Summary or a Pro Assistant instruction. The processing mode changes the output, never the cost, so you can estimate usage straight from a calendar.
Do I need a credit card to try sAInote?
No. The 15 guest minutes need no account, no card and no install — you record directly on the page in your browser. When you do want an account, sign-in is passwordless: a 6-digit code or a magic link by email, or Sign in with Apple or Google. There is no password to create.
What is the longest recording sAInote will accept?
2 hours, and that is a hard cap — anything longer is rejected. Recordings up to 20 minutes are processed immediately on every plan, guests included. Anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours is processed in the background and is Pro only. Uploads are separately capped at 64 MB.
What does Pro unlock that is not about minutes?
Three things: Pro Assistant, Special Names and long recordings. Pro Assistant lets you save your own instruction and apply it to any recording. Special Names is a personal spelling glossary so names, products and jargon are spelled correctly rather than guessed by sound. Long recordings covers anything over 20 minutes, up to 2 hours.
Does the free plan save my notes?
Yes, if you have an account. Guest sessions save nothing. With a free or Pro account, every note goes into a searchable history that syncs across the web, iPhone, iPad and Mac apps, and search matches both the raw transcript and the processed output. Translated notes carry a badge.
Does my plan work on all devices?
Yes. Free and Pro accounts work in the browser and in the native iPhone, iPad and macOS apps, including the Mac global-hotkey Quick Capture on Control+Option+Command+N. Guests can try sAInote in the browser without an account. Your plan controls minutes and modes, not devices. Signed-in accounts share one history across every device you use.
Try it before you decide
The fastest way to size a plan is to run your own audio through it. Record 15 minutes in the browser without an account, compare Quick Note against Smart Summary, then decide whether 360 minutes a month is what you actually need.
Start with 15 free minutes
Related pages
- Transcription cost How transcription is priced: human services bill per hour of audio, software bills a minute allowance — with sAInote's real limits.
- FAQ sAInote is an AI voice-to-text app at sainote.com; this FAQ defines it and answers 24 questions about modes, limits and privacy.
- Mac dictation sAInote's macOS app puts dictation behind a global hotkey (⌃⌥⌘N), returning verbatim or AI-edited text in a floating panel.
- Meeting Transcription sAInote transcribes meeting recordings with speaker separation, up to 2 hours per file, with no bot joining your call.
- Transcribe an interview How to transcribe an interview for research with sAInote: Quick Note verbatim mode, speaker separation, 2-hour cap, 64 MB uploads.
- Lecture recordings Turn a lecture recording into structured revision notes with sAInote: Smart Summary, the 20-minute line, and Pro's 360 monthly minutes.
- Custom Vocabulary How sAInote's Special Names glossary makes transcription spell people, product and jargon names correctly instead of guessing phonetically.
- Audio Summarizer sAInote's Smart Summary edits audio recordings into structured notes without changing the facts; up to 20 minutes processed instantly on every plan, 2 hours on Pro.