Riverside pricing: what a recording studio charges for
Riverside and Riverside FM are two names for the same product — the old address now forwards to the new one. The number on their site changes. What does not is that it meters the recording, not the clips that come out of it afterwards.
We make a competing product, and we have not copied their prices
InTheClips is a clipping tool that overlaps with one feature of Riverside’s, so treat this the way you would treat any comparison written by a rival: check anything that matters against the source. Their current tiers are on their own pricing page, and that is deliberately the only place this page sends you for a number.
The reason is not tact. A price transcribed here is wrong the day they change it, and a page that quietly misquotes what a competitor charges deserves every bit of the distrust it earns. What is stable enough to write down is the unit, the arithmetic, and what to look at before subscribing to anything of this kind — including ours.
What is being sold is the recording, not the clip
Their plans meter what comes out of the studio, not what you post. On their own pricing page, a tier carries a monthly allowance of hours for downloading the separate tracks a session produces, plus a cap on how many recording sessions can run at once. That is the number to plan against, and it is set the moment a session ends, before anybody has decided which parts of it are worth cutting.
Which is why the clip feature can sit on top without changing that number. On their own account of it, the built-in tool that finds short clips inside a recording draws from neither the download allowance nor the separate pool of AI credits set aside for other AI extras. Turning a two-hour interview into a handful of shorts costs nothing further once the interview itself has been recorded and downloaded — it is the recording that was ever metered.
So the useful sum is hours recorded and downloaded a month, not clips wanted. Count the sessions you actually run through it in a month, multiply by their length, and that number against a tier’s allowance is what a plan costs you — a different answer from the one you get by counting the shorts you want out the other end.
The same sum, on oursWhat a month of a real interview draws from the meter
What comes back once the recording existsFour things to check, and they apply to us too
These are the four that generate the angry reviews across this whole category — not at one company, at most of them. Check them on whichever tool you are about to pay, this one included, and check them before the first charge rather than after the second.
Does a renewal arrive with warning
A subscription that renews silently is the single most common complaint written about tools in this category. Ask whether you get an email before the charge, not after it. Ours does not send one yet — asked of us, that is the answer, and ask it of anyone else too.
Is cancelling a button
If stopping requires emailing support, that is a decision somebody made, and in some EU countries the law gives you a cancel control instead — Germany under § 312k BGB, France under L215-1-1 — so how much of a choice it is depends on where you are. The test is whether you can find the cancel control yourself, in the account settings, before you subscribe.
Is the number recording time, download time, or something else
Recorded minutes, downloaded minutes and exported minutes are three different clocks, and a tool can be generous on one and tight on another. Ask specifically which one a headline figure is counting before you compare it to anything.
Does running out block you or bill you
Some tools stop you cold the moment an allowance is spent; others let you keep going and settle the difference later. Both are legitimate designs, but only one of them can produce a bill you did not expect — find out which kind you are signing up for before the first month, not during the twelfth.
The free tier is the part most worth understanding
Theirs is a one-time recording allowance, and it says so. On their own pricing page the free plan grants a fixed amount of multi-track recording rather than a monthly one, and exports from it carry their watermark — the free tier is for judging the studio, not running a show on it, and it is upfront about which of those it is.
Ours does not refresh either, and the export says so. Thirty minutes of video, granted once, no card, and every clip that comes out of it carries a small mark rather than pretending to be indistinguishable from a paid export. It is the honest version of a trial for a product whose costs scale with every minute it reads.
Either way, use the free tier for the comparison you actually care about. Put a real two-person interview through both and see what a download costs you in time and clicks on theirs, and what the ranked list of candidate clips looks like on ours. A tier is only cheap if what it produces is worth the next step.
What comes back from ours
Published in full on the pricing page, in the same unit this page argues for: hours of source video a month.
Four hours a month on Starter, eleven on Creator, twenty-seven on Studio — one credit per minute analysed. Exporting a clip is included up to a generous batch each month (80 on Starter, 220 on Creator, 540 on Studio), and only past that does one cost 3 credits, out of the same balance.
Nothing here draws against a separate pool. There is no per-seat price, no studio-slot cap and no AI-credit balance running alongside the hours — credits are the one number on the bill, whether they are spent on minutes analysed or on a clip exported past the plan’s included batch.
A third off, which is less than the half this category usually discounts a year by. Our monthly price starts higher than theirs; the yearly plan is about paying once rather than about the shop window.
Four hours a month means four hours a month, and it is worth checking wherever you subscribe: a plan whose allowance arrives once a year is a very different product from one whose allowance arrives every month, and the two are often sold in the same words.
The allowance is not bankable — it resets rather than rolling over, and there is no separate expiring balance layered on top of it. Cancelling drops the account to free without shortening the retention already promised on clips made while paying — ending a subscription stops new work rather than taking back old work.
Questions
What people are usually trying to work out when they search for the pricing of a tool like this, under either spelling.
How much does Riverside cost?
Their current tiers are on their own pricing page, and that is where to read them: a number copied onto a competitor’s site is out of date the day it changes. Worth knowing before you look — the meter is hours of recording downloaded a month, not a count of clips, so read the tiers against how much you actually record rather than against the feature list.
Is Riverside the same as Riverside FM?
Yes. Riverside FM was the product’s old name and address; when this page was researched, riverside.fm/pricing forwarded straight to riverside.com/pricing. Anything true of one is true of the other — the search terms are two spellings of one company.
Is there a free plan?
Yes, a fixed one-time amount of multi-track recording rather than a monthly allowance, with their watermark on what it exports — enough to judge the studio, and their own pricing page says as much. Ours works differently on purpose: thirty minutes of video, granted once, no card, with a small mark on what comes out of it.
Does the clip feature cost extra?
On their own account of their pricing page, the built-in tool that finds short clips inside a recording is not one of the features that draws from their separate AI-credit pool — that pool is spent on other AI extras instead. So once a session is recorded and downloaded, cutting clips from it does not add to the meter by itself.
What happens if I hit my download-hours cap?
Their own pricing page describes no overage charge, which reads as the allowance simply not extending past the cycle rather than billing you for the difference — worth confirming for the tier you are looking at rather than assuming either way.
How do I cancel a Riverside subscription?
Their help centre did not load for us when this page was researched, so we are not going to describe a process we have not read. What is true across the whole category, including us: look for the cancel control in account settings before you subscribe, not after — most billing portals let you check.
If you are comparing more than one
The recording tool, the editing suite most people also weigh, and the other pricing page written the same way.
Riverside alternative
For someone who already has the recording and only needs the clips out of it.
Descript pricing
An editor with hours attached, billed per seat. Two meters, and either can be the one that stops you.
Descript vs Riverside
One records the interview, the other edits it. Which one you need, decided in a paragraph.