Phonotheca and Happy Scribe
A Happy Scribe alternative built around the study
Both process audio in Europe. Phonotheca carries 50 audio hours a month at $29 against Happy Scribe Pro's 10, and keeps every interview in one archive you search, tag, quote, and export.
Participant 07
And when the funding came through, what changed first?
We stopped asking permission for small things.
AutonomyThat sounds minor until you have lived without it.
Open the sample workspaceNo account needed.
Which tool fits which job
Phonotheca fits when you have
- Interviews that accumulate across a study and get searched as one corpus
- Fifty audio hours a month to get through on a single subscription
- Recordings that must leave no copy behind once the transcript lands
- A project to export into NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, or Dedoose
Happy Scribe fits when you have
- Subtitles and captions to burn into video, with a styled subtitle editor
- Translation into other languages as part of the same job
- A procurement form that asks for SOC 2 Type II, which Happy Scribe holds
- Occasional files rather than a programme, where 120 minutes a month is enough
Both products change. Check each vendor’s site before you switch.
Three things that work differently here
Fifty hours at the same price point
Happy Scribe Pro is €29 a month for 600 minutes, which is 10 audio hours. Phonotheca Pro is $29 for 50, and Solo is $12 for 20. Nothing here counts files, and a recording runs as long as it ran.
An archive rather than a job queue
Every interview joins one workspace with search across all of it, tags that collect a theme from every recording, and quotes that copy out with speaker, source, and timestamp attached.
Deleted once the transcript lands
The transcription service holds no copy after the transcript returns, nothing is used to train models, and the DPA is published rather than requested. Happy Scribe keeps files until you delete them.
Side by side
| Capability | Phonotheca | Happy Scribe |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | $12 a month | €17 a month |
| Audio hours on the entry plan | 20 a month | 2 a month |
| Audio hours at the €29 or $29 tier | 50 a month | 10 a month |
| Overage | Hours pause | €0.20 a minute |
| Permanent free tier | Archive, search, export | 10-minute trial |
| Search across every interview | Included | Not included |
| Tagging and quote citations | Included | Not included |
| REFI-QDA export to QDA suites | Included | Not included |
| Subtitle editor and burned-in captions | Not included | Included |
| Translation | Not included | Included |
| SOC 2 Type II | Not included | Included |
| EU processing | Included | Included |
| Retention after transcription | Nothing kept by the processor | Files kept until deleted |
What the minute counter misses
Transcription priced per minute treats a study as a stack of separate jobs. Upload, wait, download, file it somewhere. That works while the files are few, and it stops working around the point where you can no longer remember which interview a line came from.
Phonotheca keeps them together. Interviews live in projects, a speaker renamed once carries through every quote and export from that recording, tags collect a theme across the whole corpus, and any passage copies out with its citation already attached.
Open a transcript and try itWe stopped asking permission for small things.
Participant 07 · 00:41:27 · Wave 2 interviews
Copy with citationPriced by the audio hour
Hours of audio are the limit on every plan, and files are never counted.
Free
Enough to see a corpus take shape.
$0forever
3 audio hours, once
- Unlimited projects, interviews, and tags
- Full-text search across every transcript
- Markdown, CSV, and REFI-QDA export
Solo
A study's worth of interviews, every month.
$12per month
20 audio hours a month
- Hours reset on your renewal date
- Everything in Free, never gated
Pro
RecommendedFor a fieldwork season or a whole cohort.
$29per month
50 audio hours a month
- Hours reset on your renewal date
- Everything in Solo
Prices are in USD, tax added at checkout. Compare the plans
Questions before switching
- What does Happy Scribe cost?
- Basic is €17 a month for 120 minutes, Pro is €29 for 600 minutes, and Business is €89 for 6,000. Annual billing lowers those to €8.50, €19, and €59 a month. Extra minutes are €0.20. The free tier is a 10-minute trial of AI transcription.
- How many audio hours does that work out to?
- Basic is 2 hours a month, Pro is 10, and Business is 100. Phonotheca Solo is 20 hours at $12 and Pro is 50 at $29, so the two products are closest at the top of Happy Scribe's range and furthest apart at the entry tier.
- Is Happy Scribe EU-hosted?
- Yes. EU residency does not separate these two products, and several European tools now qualify. What differs is retention. Phonotheca's transcription processor keeps no copy once the transcript lands, and the DPA and sub-processor list are published rather than requested.
- Which one is better for subtitles?
- Happy Scribe. It has a subtitle editor, styling, burned-in captions, and translation, none of which Phonotheca does. If the deliverable is a video with captions, that is the tool.
- Can I move my Happy Scribe transcripts over?
- Yes. Export them as TXT, SRT, or VTT and import the files into a project. Speakers and timings arrive as turns you can tag, search, and cite, and an import spends none of your transcription hours.
- Does Phonotheca handle other languages?
- Dozens, with the spoken language set per recording rather than left to detection, which is where accented and mixed-language audio usually goes wrong. Happy Scribe advertises a longer list and adds translation on top.
- What happens when the monthly hours run out?
- New transcription pauses until the cycle resets. The archive, search, tags, and export keep working, so nothing you have already built goes behind a paywall.
Compared with the other tools
Put one interview through both
Three audio hours are free and the archive stays open afterwards.