How to read a transcription tool's documentation

Documentation is the maker's own set of pages that says what a tool does and what it costs. For transcription tools, four kinds of page matter: pricing, limits, languages and data handling. This page says what to look for in each.

Start with the date

Prices, plans and features change often. An undated page is a weak source. Many documentation pages show a last-updated line near the bottom, and it's worth scrolling down to find it before you trust anything above it. Google's page for its speech tool ends with "Last updated 2026-10-22 UTC."¹

A date like that says when the page was edited. Nothing more.

Look for notices of change too. OpenAI's file page says certain models "will shut down on February 26, 2027"². A tool you plan to build a routine around may have an end date.

Write down the date you read each page. This site does the same. Where a figure appears, it carries the day it was checked.

Pricing pages

Find the unit of billing first. It decides how a long meeting adds up. Amazon's pricing page says of standard transcription that "Usage is billed in one-second increments, with no minimum applied"³. The same page lists some other Amazon products "with a minimum per request charge of 15 seconds"³. So read the billing line for your exact product. Other makers may bill by the minute, by the hour or by monthly seat.

Then look for what changes the price:

• The region. Amazon notes that "Tiered pricing rates and discounts vary by region"³.
• Extras such as speaker labels or redaction, which may cost more
• Free tiers, and how long they last
• The currency, and whether tax is included

When you note a price, write the currency, the plan and the date.

Limits pages

A limit is a cap on what you can send. Amazon defines service quotas, "also referred to as limits," as "the maximum number of service resources or operations for your AWS account"⁴. Typical caps cover file size, audio length and the number of jobs at once.

One example: OpenAI's file transcription page states a cap of 25 MB per file². The page was checked on 2026-10-26, and the cap covers only that route. Quotas for one product don't carry over to another.

Language and feature pages

Check your language and your accent group, not just "English." Then check the mode you plan to use. Amazon's overview page says language and feature support is not the same for file jobs and live streams⁵. A tool can handle a language in one mode and not in the other.

A language on the list isn't a promise of equal accuracy. Accents, jargon and noise still matter, as the page on errors in transcripts explains.

Accuracy claims

Wikipedia calls word error rate (WER) "a common metric of the performance of a speech recognition or machine translation system"⁶. A percentage on a maker's page may be built this way. Ask what audio was tested and whether it resembles yours. The first page on how it works explains the measure.

Data pages

Read the privacy and data-retention pages for your exact plan. The questions are listed in privacy questions before uploading audio.

If a page is vague or has no date, treat its claims as unconfirmed. Ask the maker. Keep the reply, with the date, next to your notes.