Grain vs Sonix 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
- Sonix starts cheaper, at $10.
- Only Grain has a free tier.
Side by side
Grain | Sonix | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $15 | From $10 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier (they differ) | Yes | No |
| Billing (they differ) | Monthly or annual | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on |
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.
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.
Our note
The 45-minute limit rather than the seat count is what decides whether the free plan works, so check your typical call length before anything else. Against tl;dv, Grain gives away seats and caps duration while tl;dv gives away duration and caps the AI, which makes the choice a question about your calls rather than about the products.
Sonix
Transcription you can pay for by the hour
Sonix will bill by the hour rather than by the month, which is the right shape for somebody who transcribes a batch of interviews twice a year and nothing in between. Accuracy across its 54 languages is good and the editor lines the text up against the audio. Subscribers get storage and an AI workspace that the hourly rate does not include.
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.