Descript Freemium

What it is

Descript is a desktop and browser editor from Descript, Inc. that turns your recording into a transcript you can edit like a document: delete a sentence in the text and the matching audio and video are cut. It is used for podcasts, talking-head YouTube videos, webinars and the short clips cut from them. Its AI co-editor, Underlord, can now take a prompt and do multi-step edits, generate B-roll, images and short video clips, and add AI avatars.

Key features

• Text-based editing of audio and video, with automatic filler-word and silence removal
• Studio Sound to clean up voice recordings, plus Eye Contact correction and green-screen removal
• Underlord: prompt-driven editing, Create Clips for social highlights, AI templates
• Translation and AI dubbing into 30 languages; stock AI voices and custom voice clones
• Generative images, video clips and Kling avatars on the timeline
• Public API (free for paying users), an MCP integration for AI assistants, Zapier and a CLI

Models inside

Descript's help centre lists the generative models it runs: Google Veo 3.1, Kling v3.0 / v3.0 Pro / O3 Pro, Seedance 2.0, PixVerse v5 and MiniMax (Hailuo) for video; Nano Banana, Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2 and FLUX Kontext for images; Kling Avatar v2 for avatars. Premium models use more AI credits and some depend on your plan.

Pricing and rights

The Free plan gives 1 media hour a month and 100 one-time AI credits, exports at 720p and adds a watermark. Paid plans are billed per person: Hobbyist $24/month ($16 billed annually) with 10 media hours and 400 AI credits, Creator $35/month ($24 annually) with 30 hours and 800 credits, Business $65/month ($50 annually) with 40 hours and 1,500 credits, and custom Enterprise. Annual billing saves up to 35%. Generative features draw from the same credit pool, so heavy image and video generation uses it up quickly.

Who it is for

Podcasters, YouTubers, course creators and marketing teams who mostly edit speech and want transcripts, captions and clips from the same project.

Verdict

Descript remains one of the fastest ways to edit spoken-word video, and its model menu is now broad. The limits are media hours and AI credits, a free plan that is only good for testing (720p, watermark), and a timeline that feels less precise than Premiere or Resolve for multicam or effects-heavy work.