Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: A Detailed Comparison (2024)

Are you finding it hard to come across a fast and accurate transcription and subtitling service? There are many top-rated transcription companies out there that are great at what they do. However, there are three names you’ll always see pop up; Sonix, Happy Scribe, and Rev.

Today, we’re going to compare these three transcription services, including their core features, their benefits and drawbacks, pricing and plans, and much more.

But, before we get our hands dirty with the nitty-gritty details, here’s a quick comparison table that summarizes most of what you’ll learn in this article.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev Comparison

Sonix, Happy Scribe, and Rev are all great services to consider, but how do they stack up against each other?

Sonix Overview

Sonix is a state-of-the-art transcription and subtitling platform that integrates the most modern AI technology to create accurate transcripts, captions, subtitles, and more. 

Sonix is well known for its extremely high degree of accuracy, up to 99% in most cases, when converting both audio and video files into text, which is in part thanks to its advanced speaker recognition system.

Sonix is an extremely versatile tool that is perfect for a wide range of individuals including educators, content creators, professionals, and large enterprises. Thanks to its advanced subtitling and captioning capabilities, Sonix is the most versatile transcription service in the market.

Sonix offers services that cater to both singular individual needs and for larger and longer-lasting collaborations as well.

Core Features

Sonix has several core features worth talking about, with the following being the top ones:

Accurate Transcriptions & Translations

One of the biggest core features of Sonix is its ability to create transcriptions of both audio and video files using advanced artificial intelligence.

Thanks to its advanced speech recognition features, the custom dictionary, word-by-word timestamps, and speaker labeling, Sonix’s AI transcripts are often considered some of the most accurate in the world, up to 99%, which is practically the highest level of accuracy achievable with AI. Sonix is also able to accurately translate transcripts into over 39 different languages, even accounting for dialects and accents.

Sonix is certainly an option worth considering if you need quick and accurate transcripts, as it can handle several hours of transcription in just a few minutes.

AI Tools

Other than the AI transcription, Sonix has a range of extremely helpful AI tools that are going to make your life a lot easier. 

• AI Summaries: AI Summaries can create automated summaries of longer transcripts to make things more skimmable and help save you a lot of time.
• Thematic Analysis: Wondering what exactly people were talking about in an interview? Sonix can help with thematic analysis to give you a list of the main topics discussed in your files.
• Sentiment Analysis: This is another neat AI feature of Sonix that helps you understand the tone and sentiment of each speaker in a conversation.
• Speaker Labeling and Diarization: Want to know who said what? Sonix can help you differentiate between multiple speakers and diarize what each speaker said in a file.

Advanced Integrations

Sonix is widely known for its great integrative capabilities, having the ability to integrate with a multitude of productivity, research, multimedia, and web conferencing tools, such as the following: 

• Zapier
• Dropbox
• Google Drive
• Roam Research
• Salesforce
• Evernote
• Atlas,
• MaxQDA
• Adobe Premiere
• Final Cut Pro X
• Zoom 
• Microsoft Teams
• Loom, and so many more.

As far as integration capabilities are concerned, Sonix is up there with the best of them.

Collaboration Capabilities

Sonix offers many collaborative features, such as secure read-only sharing, multi-user access, share and edit transcript, user permissions management with granular access controls, shared team folders, and more. You can even assign transcription hour limits to certain users in your organization!  In terms of being able to collaborate with teammates, Sonix certainly stands out.

Sonix’s collaboration features are explained in detail in the video below.

Security

The Sonix system is extremely secure. It features TSL and AES-256 Storage Encryption, SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, enterprise-grade security file storage, two-factor authentication, and password policy enforcement, among others.

While other tools may support more languages than Sonix and have more AI features, there’s absolutely no transcription service that can match Sonix’s security features for enterprise customers.

Sonix Pricing

Sonix offers a variety of plans, ones suited for both singular and individual needs, as well as for longer-term collaboration. 

• Standard Pay-As-You-Go Plan: $10 Per Hour
• Premium Subscription: $5 Per Hour flat fee along with $22 per user
• Enterprise Subscription: You’ll need to contact the Sonix sales team for pricing

There is also a free trial of Sonix that comes with 30 minutes of free transcription. Click here to start your Sonix free trial.

Positives of Sonix

• The AI-generated transcripts, captions, subtitles, and translations feature a high degree of accuracy, up to 99%.
• Fast turnaround times
• Over 39 languages supported for both transcription and translation
• Very user-friendly interface with barely any learning curve
• Features fantastic team collaboration features
• Plenty of third-party integrations
• Top-tier security features

Downsides of Sonix

• Does not have a human review/transcription system

Happy Scribe Overview

Next up is Happy Scribe, another competitor in the transcription industry. A defining feature of Happy Scribe is that it uses a combination of AI and expert human transcribers to create text out of video and audio files, with its primary focus on human services. 

For those who value the personal touch of human intervention, Happy Scribe is worth considering. Although, keep in mind that human-powered services can be quite costly and their AI transcription is definitely not competitive with others due to their focus on human transcription. 

Core Features

Happy Scribe has a number of core features worth examining.

AI-Generated Transcripts

A main feature of Happy Scribe is that it uses artificial intelligence to generate transcripts from a variety of audio and video sources. Although it may have some issues at times with more difficult files, with an 85% average accuracy, it appears to work well for simpler needs.

Human-Powered Subtitles and Transcriptions

Where Happy Scribe really shines is that it doesn’t just use artificial intelligence but also incorporates human experts. It employs a vast network of expert human transcribers and translators to create both transcripts and subtitles.

The human-powered options for creating transcripts and subtitles are far more expensive but are ideal for those who value a human touch and want to push the accuracy of their content closer to the 100% mark without manually doing it.

Language Capabilities

Happy Scribe is able to translate transcripts and subtitles into over 120 different languages. This makes Happy Scribe a great option for organizations like news networks that work in a bunch of different languages globally.

Integrations and APIs

Happy Scribe is also pretty decent as far as APIs and integrations are concerned, as it features integrations such as Zapier and YouTube, although this is one section where Happy Scribe seems to lag behind, as the list of integrations is a lot shorter than Sonix’s.

Happy Scribe Pricing

• Basic Plan: $10 Per Month with 120 Minutes of Transcriptions
• Pro Plan: $17 Per Month with 300 Minutes of Transcriptions
• Business Plan: $29 Per Month with 600 Minutes of Transcriptions
• Enterprise Plan: Contact Happy Scribe for Pricing and Features

Happy Scribe also has a free trial that we really want to emphasize here on. Firstly, the ‘free minutes’ provided expired after transcribing only a 6-minute video file. One can make an argument that you can get a fair idea of how the tool works in those six minutes. But, the worst part here is that Happy Scribe does not let you download or export the subtitles until you upgrade your account to a paid plan.

That is a huge limitation considering tools like Sonix are giving you 30 minutes of actual transcription minutes with full access to the platform. So, in terms of the free trial, Happy Scribe leaves a lot to be disappointed with.

Human transcription is charged separately at $1.75 per minute. This means that an hour long audio/video file will cost $105, which is a bit pricey despite the high accuracy.

Positives of Happy Scribe

• Combines AI and human experts
• Human-powered work is very accurate
• Supports 120+ languages
• The interface is simple and user friendly

Downsides of Happy Scribe

• Human transcription is unfathomably expensive
• Extremely limited free trial
• Limited integrations
• The free trial is lacking in terms of minutes
• Although accurate, human services are slower than AI

Rev Overview

Rev is yet another big player that is trusted by professionals in various industries, whether the education or medical field, in marketing, and for smaller and larger needs alike.

One thing to note here is that Rev is more of a human transcription service than an AI transcription service. This is not to say that the AI services here aren’t any good, but Rev focuses its main advertising on the human side, so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that AI services are lower on their list of priorities. 

Core Features

Rev has a few great core features that are worth elaborating on.

AI Transcripts, Captions, and Subtitles

Using advanced artificial intelligence, Rev is able to create transcripts, captions, and subtitles with up to 90% accuracy, thanks to speech recognition, a large dictionary, and active learning.

Human-Powered Transcripts and Captions

Where Rev shines is with its human-powered transcription, captioning, and subtitling features. It has a workforce of 70,000+ professional freelance transcribers and translators.

These freelancers manually edit captions, subtitles, and transcripts for audio and video files. The downside here however is that transcripts and captions can take up to a day or longer and it’s not cheap either.

But, the fact remains that if you’re looking for human transcripts and don’t want to invest the resources into hiring one yourself, Rev is the best alternative. Here’s a video from Rev showing you how to order their human transcription services.

The Global Subtitle Translator

Rev functions mainly in English, but it has the Global Subtitle Translator, which allows users to translate subtitles and captions from English into over 15 different languages. To be clear, this is human-powered, and rates start at $5 per minute. The prices for this can reach up to $12 per minute, making it expensive.

Integrations

Rev has a pretty decent list of integrations as well. They’re limited in number as compared to other services like Sonix but there’s still a lot you can do here. Rev can integrate with the following main platforms.

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• JW player
• BrightCove
• Zoom
• Ensemble
• Warpwire 

The integrations appear to be especially geared towards video players and video meeting applications.

Rev Pricing

Rev has a wide variety of options to choose from in terms of pricing. Let’s talk about the AI transcription first.

• AI Transcription: $0.25 Per Minute
• AI Captions: $0.25 Per Minute
• AI Subscription: $29.99 Per Month (1,200 Minutes of Transcripts with a 14 Day Free Trial, $0.15 for every minute over 1,200 minutes).

As far as human transcription is concerned, the prices are a bit steep. 

• Human Transcription: $1.50 Per Minute
• Global Subtitles (Human Powered): $5 to $12 Per Minute

If you need a custom enterprise package, you’ll need to get in touch with Rev’s sales team.

Positives of Rev

• Accurate human transcriptions
• Human subtitle translations
• Decent integrations
• AI features a fast turnaround

Downsides of Rev

• Human services are extremely expensive
• AI accuracy is questionable at times

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Speed

As far as AI turnaround is concerned, Sonix is the fastest. It can handle several hours, up to four or five hours of content in just a few minutes. 

Both Happy Scribe and Rev don’t fall far behind on this front, with both being able to handle large quantities of content in minutes but not quite as fast. 

As far as human-powered services are concerned, Sonix doesn’t do that, and the turnaround time for Happy Scribe and Rev can be anywhere from several hours to days.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Accuracy

Thanks to Sonix’s advanced features, it’s accuracy is 99%, and it comes with a fantastic editing tool to catch any inaccuracies. 

Rev is roughly 90% accurate, whereas Happy Scribe sits at around 85%. That said, both of the latter tools offer human powered services, which are far more accurate, albeit also much slower and more expensive.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Security

Regarding security features, Sonix surpasses its rivals, offering sophisticated protections including SSL and encryption at rest, two-factor authentication, OAuth, personal information redaction, and single sign-on/SAML. 

Happy Scribe provides security measures like TLS encryption and disaster recovery plans, which are decent but not as comprehensive as those of Sonix.

As far as Rev is concerned, the security features there are limited to just TLS encryption and frequent backups.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Number of Integrations

Where Sonix really shines is with its integrations, with a plethora of productivity, research, multimedia, and web conferencing tools available for integration. Rev also has a few integrations, particularly focused on media. Happy Scribe is lacking on this front, as it does not have many third-party integration capabilities.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Plans and Pricing

Although Rev offers its AI services at $0.25 per minute, Sonix is more affordable at $10 per hour. With a subscription, the price of Sonix AI services can be whittled down to just $5 per hour. As far as Happy Scribe is concerned, it is more expensive than Sonix but less expensive than Rev.

On average, five hours of transcription will cost $50 with Sonix ($25 if you have the Premium plan, with 99% accuracy), $29 with Happy Scribe (with 85% accuracy, so keep that in mind), and $75 with Rev AI.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Available Languages

The winner on this front is Happy Scribe, as it can handle over 120 languages, whereas Sonix sits at 39, with Rev coming in last at 15. 

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Ease of Use

In general, all three of these services feature decent user interfaces. They’re all really easy to use, and for the most part, all you really need to do is upload your file, click on the service you want, and you’re good to go. Sonix’s UI looks pretty nice and is easy to use, and Happy Scribe is more or less the same.

Rev’s UI could use a bit of an uplift, though. The tool also makes things a little complicated by sending the files to your email, which makes it slightly more difficult to use than the others, although it’s not a deal breaker.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Customer Support

As far as Sonix and Happy Scribe are concerned, the customer support is up to par with the best SaaS solutions out there. But, Rev does have some negative reviews out there as far as customer support is concerned. 

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Which Should You Choose?

Let’s take a side-by-side look at how each of these services stack up against each other based on a number of important factors.

Sonix vs Happy Scribe vs Rev: Conclusion

At the end of the day, if you need an extremely fast turnaround and a highly accurate artificial intelligence-powered captioning, subtitling, and transcription service, one that is also extremely affordable, yet suitable for both individuals and large enterprises, then Sonix has to be the winner.

What are you waiting for? Start your free trial with Sonix today.