Checksub vs Grain Comparison 2026
Both cover transcription & show notes. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Checksub starts cheaper, at $12.
- Only Grain has a free tier.
Side by side
Checksub | Grain | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $12 | From $15 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free trial, then paid | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on (they differ) |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Checksub
Subtitles, dubbing and voice cloning
Checksub subtitles a video, translates the result and will dub it in a cloned voice with lip sync, which puts the whole localisation sequence behind one credit balance instead of three services. Credits are issued for the year rather than the month, so a batch of back catalogue does not need spreading across quarters. Subtitle files export as SRT and VTT for anybody who wants to burn them in elsewhere. The entry plan carries a watermark and one translation per project, which is the ceiling most people meet first.
Our note
The watermark is the real difference between the two plans, so price Starter as the entry point if the output is going anywhere public. Count your hours across the whole year before choosing, because credits do not reset monthly and a batch of archive footage will eat the Junior allowance in one sitting.
Only on this side
- Covers captions & subtitles
Grain
Notes and clips from calls, free tier included
Grain records and transcribes meetings, writes notes and lets a moment be clipped out and shared without anybody rewatching the recording. Its free plan carries unlimited meetings and unlimited notetaker seats, capped at forty-five minutes each and thirty days of history, which is a real working tier rather than a demo. Paying removes both limits and adds custom prompts. The conversational intelligence in the higher tiers is aimed at sales teams and does nothing for a solo creator.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.