Usage and limits

How AI hours and caption transcripts are counted, and how fast you can call the API.

Plans

	Free	Basic	Pro	Scale
AI transcription	1 h	30 h	300 h	2,000 h
Caption transcripts	100	3,000	Unlimited	Unlimited
Requests per second	1	10	50	100

AI hours and caption transcripts are per month. See pricing for prices and yearly plans.

How AI time is counted

• Each AI transcription uses the media’s length, rounded up to the whole minute, with a 1-minute minimum. A 4 min 10 s video uses 5 minutes.
• You’re charged only when you get a transcript. Failed requests cost nothing.
• We check the media’s length against your balance before any work starts. If it doesn’t fit, you get AI_HOURS_EXHAUSTED with how much the video needs and how much you have.
• Captions never use AI time.

Refills and extra hours

Plan	Usage refills
Free	Every 30 days from sign-up
Paid	Every month, from the day your plan started

Plan hours reset each month. Unused plan hours don’t carry over.

Paid plans can also buy extra AI hours on the billing page. Extra hours never expire, and we use them only after your plan’s hours run out.

Check what’s left

GET /v1/me returns your current usage:

{
   "plan": "basic",
   "aiMinutes": { "remaining": 1720, "plan": 1720, "extra": 0, "monthly": 1800 },
   "captions": { "used": 212, "limit": 3000 },
   "refillsAt": "2026-11-27T00:00:00.000Z",
   "billingUrl": "https://app.bestvideotranscriptapi.com/dashboard/billing"
}

captions.limit is null on plans with unlimited caption transcripts.

Rate limits

Each account gets the requests per second its plan allows, shared between the REST API and MCP. Over the limit, you get 429 RATE_LIMITED and a Retry-After header that says how many seconds to wait.