Pricing
Transcription Services: cost and pricing in India
Indicative rate bands for transcription services, the five specification decisions that move the number most, and how a fixed quote is put together from a written spec.
- Pricing model
- Per delivered unit, fixed against spec
- Minimum
- ~50 hours or equivalent per language
- Turnaround
- 1-2 weeks per 100 audio hours per language.
- Quote time
- One working day
What drives the price of transcription
Verbatim and clean-read transcription of Indian-language audio by native speakers of the target variety, delivered against a written style guide with measured agreement.
- Language tier: widely spoken languages have deeper recruitment pools and cost less per unit than low-resource ones
- Demographic narrowness: a 50/50 gender split across three age bands is routine; a narrow cohort multiplies recruitment effort
- Modes — Verbatim, clean verbatim, or clean-read. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Timestamps — Utterance or word level. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Script — Native script, romanised, or dual-script delivery. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Tags — Speaker, noise, overlap, unintelligible, code-switch. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- QA threshold and rework policy: a higher accept bar means more re-collection, which is priced in rather than absorbed later
Where the cost sits in transcription
Transcribers matched to the dialect of the audio, not just to the language.
Turnaround: 1-2 weeks per 100 audio hours per language.
Indicative rate bands
| Scope | Unit | Indicative band |
|---|---|---|
| Widely spoken language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹3,200 – ₹6,500 |
| Regional language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹4,200 – ₹8,200 |
| Low-resource language or narrow cohort | per delivered hour | ₹5,500 – ₹11,000 |
| Verbatim transcription add-on | per audio hour | ₹900 – ₹2,400 |
| Pilot batch (10-20 hours) | fixed | Quoted separately, credited against the full run |
These are bands, not a price list. Two projects with the same hour count can differ by 3x on cohort design alone, which is why every number here is replaced by a fixed figure once we see your specification.
What the price includes
- Transcripts in your schema
- Style guide
- QA and agreement report
How the quote is built
- Style guide authoring and client sign-off
- Transcriber calibration and agreement measurement
- First pass transcription
- Independent second-pass review
- Automated rule checks and delivery
Where budgets get wasted
The most expensive mistake in a data purchase is buying volume before the specification is settled. Re-collecting 200 hours because the noise profile did not match deployment costs more than the entire QA layer would have.
The style guide is the deliverable that determines whether your data is usable. It is written first and shipped with the data.
Best suited for
- ASR training
- Search and analytics
- Compliance review
Frequently asked
How much does transcription cost per hour in India?
Most programmes land between ₹3,200 and ₹11,000 per delivered unit depending on language tier, cohort narrowness, recording condition and annotation depth. A written specification converts that band into a single fixed number.
Is there a minimum order?
Around 50 hours or equivalent per language for a production run. Pilots of 10-20 hours are accepted when they lead into a larger build, since most setup cost sits in specification and recruitment.
Do you charge for rejected audio?
No. You pay for delivered units that pass the agreed QA threshold. Rejected material is re-collected at our cost.
Can the price be fixed rather than estimated?
Yes. Once the specification is signed the price is fixed against it. Changes to quotas, conditions or annotation depth are re-quoted before work continues.
Related pages
Get a fixed price for transcription
Send the volume, languages and quality bar you have in mind and you get a scoped price within a working day.