Verbit or Dalm: a service for your organisation, or an app on your own Mac
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Verbit sells transcription and captioning to organisations: captions and transcripts for classrooms, depositions, broadcasts and meetings, help with ADA Title II requirements on campus, and transcripts ready to certify. Its plans are arranged through a demo; its self-serve service, where professional transcribers do the work, starts at $1.48 a minute. Dalm is an app for one person on a Mac: the speech is recognised on the Mac and the audio goes nowhere, while the transcript syncs to our servers automatically and a third-party language model reads it to write a summary. If a duty to students or a court depends on the text, stay with Verbit.
Verbit and Dalm, side by side
| Verbit | Dalm | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A service sold to organisations: transcription, captioning and AI-powered insights | An app for one person on a Mac |
| Who turns speech into text | Its own speech recognition and, on Verbit Go, skilled professional transcribers | A speech model on your Mac; no person is involved |
| While it happens | Captions and transcripts for classrooms, meetings, depositions and broadcasts | A draft on your own screen, marked preliminary; the full transcript when you stop |
| Getting a price | Its plans page leads to booking a demo; Verbit Go starts at $1.48 a minute | Free, Pro and Team plans with published prices |
| A free start | A free plan or free trial: Not found | A Free plan, not a trial |
| Running without the cloud | On your premises or offline: Not found | Speech is recognised on the Mac; the transcript syncs to our servers |
| Files with times | Captions as a service | No caption files; a transcript with the time and voice on every line |
Not found means Verbit’s own pages do not describe it, not that it cannot be done. What Verbit does is taken from its home page, plans page, privacy policy and service pages, checked on .
Who should stay with Verbit
- A college or university with duties to its students. Verbit’s home page addresses ADA Title II requirements and the needs of a whole campus. Dalm is not built for that: it makes a machine transcript that no person checks, and the app itself has not been through an accessibility audit. If your school provides Verbit for your classes, keep using it.
- Captions and transcripts while it happens. Verbit covers classrooms, meetings, depositions and broadcasts as they take place. While Dalm records, the draft appears only on your own screen, marked preliminary.
- A transcript for legal work. Verbit’s plans for legal work include final transcripts that are ready to certify. Dalm offers nothing of the kind.
- Words a person has heard and checked. On Verbit Go, transcripts are carried out by skilled professional transcribers. Dalm has no one to pass a recording to: the audio stays on your Mac, and you correct the model’s text yourself; that text is synced to our servers.
- Someone who takes the notes for you. Verbit’s live notetakers can join your session virtually, and it offers AI notetaker options as well. Dalm records only what reaches the Mac you are sitting at, so a meeting you miss stays unrecorded.
- One vendor for a whole organisation. Verbit’s plans are arranged through a demo, the way a department buys a service for many people. Dalm is bought by the person who uses it, or by a small group on Team.
When an app on your Mac is enough
- Your own interviews, sources and lectures. Dalm reads any audio or video file macOS can read, up to four hours long, with no limit on size, on the Free plan, and leaves the original where it was. Nobody else listens to it.
- Calls and rooms with nothing joining. On a call, your microphone and the sound your Mac plays are recorded as two streams, and nothing enters the call; in a room, the Mac’s microphone does the work.
- Recording without a meter running. No plan puts a limit on recording minutes, on the length of a recording, or on how long anything is kept.
Bought by an organisation, or by one person
| Verbit | Dalm | |
|---|---|---|
| How you buy it | Through a demo; its plans page lists no prices | Sign up yourself; Team for a group |
| Prices you can see | Verbit Go: from $1.48 a minute for a transcript made by its transcribers | Pro $16 a month or $12 a month billed annually; Team $40 a month for each member, or $32 a month billed annually (paid plans are not open yet) |
| A one-hour interview | From $88.80 on Verbit Go | Included in every plan, Free too |
| A free start | Not found on its plans page or its audio transcription page | A Free plan, not a trial |
No plan puts a limit on recording minutes, on the length of a recording, or on how long anything is kept. The Free plan has no end date and takes files you bring in. Plans and prices are on one page, and Dalm for a team on another; Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later, and until it is released, the waitlist is the way in. Verbit’s prices are from its own pages, checked on ; a plan for an organisation is priced through its sales team.
When the service is the point, not the transcript
What an organisation provides for deaf or hard-of-hearing people is the work Verbit sells, and the place to get it. Dalm makes a transcript with the time and the voice on every line, checked by no one but you; it does not produce caption files. How the times in a Dalm transcript work is set out on timestamps in a transcript.
Who hears the recording
| Verbit | Dalm | |
|---|---|---|
| Who listens | On Verbit Go, its professional transcribers; in a live session, its notetakers can join | No one: the speech is recognised on your Mac and no audio is sent anywhere |
| What happens to the words | Its privacy policy: it retains customer data to improve its services and technology, including machine learning by its speech recognition engine | The transcript syncs to our servers automatically; a third-party language model reads it, your notes and the names you gave voices to write the summary |
| Training | As in its privacy policy above | Dalm does not train models of its own; what the model provider does with the text is not set out on this site |
The audio is deleted once the text exists. Everything that leaves your Mac, listed.
Journalists, researchers, students: which one to use
- A journalist or podcaster with interviews to transcribe: Dalm, if the recordings are yours and should not be heard by anyone else; the text still syncs to our servers. Notes and transcripts for reporters.
- A researcher, an interviewer or a focus group moderator: Dalm for your own sessions, in the room or on a call. Transcripts of research interviews, and what you get after each kind of interview.
- A student: Dalm for your own notes and recordings. If your school gives you Verbit in class, keep it.
- A college, a court, a broadcaster: Verbit.
Comparing more tools? Transcription apps and services, sorted by the job.
Questions
- Is Dalm a good Verbit alternative?
- Dalm is a Verbit alternative only for people with their own recordings on a Mac — interviews, sources, research sessions — who want no one else to hear them: the speech is recognised on the Mac and no audio is sent anywhere, while the transcript syncs to our servers. For captions a school or employer provides to people who need them, live captions, transcripts ready to certify, or words checked by people, Verbit is the right choice.
- How much does Verbit cost?
- Verbit's plans page lists no prices and leads to booking a demo. Its self-serve service, Verbit Go, starts at $1.48 a minute for a transcript made by its transcribers, so an hour of interview starts at $88.80. Dalm Pro is $16 a month or $12 a month billed annually, Team is $40 a month for each member, and there is a Free plan. No plan puts a limit on recording minutes, on the length of a recording, or on how long anything is kept. Verbit's prices are from its own pages; the date is on this page.
- Can a Dalm transcript stand in for Verbit at a college?
- No. Verbit provides captions and transcripts that schools offer to students who need them, and its home page addresses ADA Title II requirements. Dalm makes a machine transcript that no person checks, and the app has not been through an accessibility audit. A student can use Dalm for their own notes; if the school provides Verbit, keep using it.
- Does Verbit use my recordings to train its AI?
- Verbit's privacy policy says it retains customer data to improve its services and technology, including machine learning by its speech recognition engine. Dalm does not train models of its own; the summary is written by a third-party language model, and what the model provider does with the text is not set out on this site. The audio is not sent anywhere, and the transcript syncs to our servers.
- Does a person listen to my audio at Verbit?
- Verbit Go transcripts are carried out by skilled professional transcribers, and in live sessions its notetakers can join. In Dalm no one listens: the speech is recognised on your Mac, and the transcript syncs to our servers. The audio is deleted once the text exists.
- Is there a free way to transcribe an interview instead of Verbit?
- Dalm has a Free plan that takes an audio or video file from your Mac, up to four hours long, and leaves the original where it was. The speech is recognised on the Mac; the transcript then syncs to our servers. Step by step: turning an audio file into text without uploading it.