The full Descript top-up cost, and who can buy one

A Descript top-up costs $25 for five media hours or $150 for fifty, and $35 for 350 AI credits or $200 for 4,000, per Descript’s help centre on 4 September 2026. Top-ups are sold only on Creator and Business. At $3 an hour at best, topped-up media time costs 3.75 times what a Creator plan hour costs.

Who can buy Descript top-ups

Two of Descript’s five plans can buy more capacity when a meter runs out. The rest cannot.

Creator and Business only

Top-ups are sold on Creator and Business and nowhere else, per Descript’s top-ups help article retrieved 4 September 2026.

Everyone else has one route

On Free and Hobbyist, exhausting either meter is a stop rather than a charge, and the only remedy is a tier change. Our pillar covers what that costs on Hobbyist.

Legacy and Sunset subscribers are excluded too. They can add transcription hours at $2 each instead, per Descript’s legacy and sunset plan guide retrieved 4 September 2026.

What a Descript top-up costs

Descript sells six bundles, three for each meter, and publishes a per-unit rate for every one.

AI credit bundles

Media hour bundles

🗓️ Pricing verified 4 September 2026. Software pricing changes frequently — confirm on the vendor’s site before purchasing.

Prices are one-time, per bundle, in US dollars, and larger bundles cut the unit rate. Media time is sold in hour bundles at checkout.

Several live guides still describe these rates as unpublished. Descript’s top-ups help article publishes all six, retrieved 4 September 2026.

What you actually get when you buy one

Three published terms decide whether a bundle is money well spent, all verified 4 September 2026.

Expiry and rollover

Bundles roll over month to month and expire twelve months after purchase. Your monthly allowance does not roll over; the bundle does.

How the drive pool draws down

A bundle is shared across every member of the drive and is drawn only once that month’s allowance is gone, so buying mid-month wastes nothing.

Each drive carries its own plan and is billed separately, per Descript’s billing guide retrieved 4 September 2026. A bundle bought on one drive does nothing for another.

Where you buy it

Purchases happen in the Usage tab of App Settings, and the capacity is live immediately, per the top-ups article retrieved 4 September 2026.

The parts that catch people out

Two of these cost money and one costs predictability. All were verified 4 September 2026.

Top-ups are final

A bundle is non-refundable once added to your account, per Descript’s published refund policy retrieved 4 September 2026. Plan purchases carry a 48-hour refund window from the invoice date and bundles carry none — the 48-hour refund window is covered in its own article.

You cannot price an AI run before you make it

Underlord is non-deterministic. The same task can spend different amounts depending on media length, model choice and what the AI generates, and every run is charged for both the agent working out what to do and the tool doing the work, per Descript’s usage guide retrieved 4 September 2026.

Studio Sound and Remove Filler Words are the exception, capped at 30 credits per application.

⚠️ This Costs You: The smallest credit bundle is $35 and cannot be returned. If an Underlord job emptied your balance, you had no way to price it beforehand — open the Usage tab and read what your last few runs actually cost before choosing a bundle size.

Top up or upgrade: where the line falls

Descript’s guidance on this is qualitative. The arithmetic below is ours, built from its published rates and allowances on 4 September 2026.

What an in-plan hour costs

Divide each annual per-person rate on Descript’s pricing page by the media hours it includes and an in-plan hour works out at $1.60 on Hobbyist, $0.80 on Creator and $1.25 on Business. Credits land at $0.040, $0.030 and $0.033. That calculation is App Compare HQ’s, from Descript-published parts.

What the upgrade buys at the margin

Creator to Business adds $26 per person per month, and with it 10 media hours and 700 credits. Ten hours for $26 is $2.60 an hour, under every media bundle in the table above.

The threshold

Annualised, that upgrade is $312 per person and delivers 120 extra hours. The same 120 hours bought as bundles costs $380 at the best published rate.

🔍 Why It Works This Way: Above roughly 100 extra media hours a year, upgrading is cheaper. Below it the bundle wins, because the upgrade recurs every month and the bundle is bought once. Run your own figures with the Subscription Cost Calculator.

What to do before you buy either one

Three steps, and the first one is free.

Count files, not finished minutes

The media meter charges for what you bring in, not what you publish. A one-hour interview delivered as four files spends four hours, and still images count a second each, per the usage guide retrieved 4 September 2026. Merge your tracks before upload and you may not need either purchase — what counts as a media hour is covered separately.

Check the Usage tab first

Open the Usage tab before you buy anything. It shows what each past run cost, which is the only way to size a bundle instead of guessing at one.

Then pick your route

✅ Do This: One heavy month, buy the bundle. Every month, change tier. On Hobbyist with no bundle available, the tier change is your only option and the pillar prices it.

🧾 Not Tested: We did not open a paid Descript account, so we could not see the top-up checkout, the Usage tab, or a purchase confirmation. Every figure here comes from Descript’s public pricing page and help centre, captured 4 September 2026. Nothing above describes using the software.

Descript top-up questions, answered