The best AI tools for podcasters: From scriptwriting to audio editing to marketing your show

Podcast microphone with microphones for hands working on a computer. The monitor contains a brain, which is connected to another brain the microphone is wearing as a hat

Even when you love it, podcasting can be a slog. Maybe the writing, recording, or even editing gives you a reason to get up in the morning — but then there’s all the other stuff. The show notes. The blog posts. The tweets and Facebook posts and newsletters. Then again, some people love to show off what they’ve made through marketing but find audio editing to be a slog. 

You’re not going to love every part of podcasting all the time, and that’s okay. For everything else, there’s AI. Recently, a ton of AI-powered tools have popped up to help podcasters with everything from writing to audio editing to marketing. We’ve rounded up the ones we find most useful below. The world of AI tools changes quickly, and we’ll do our best to keep this list updated.

Record or import audio, make edits, add fades, music, and sound effects, then publish online, export the audio in the format of your choice or send it directly to your hosting service.
Create your podcast from start to finish with Descript.

Scriptwriting and interviewing

  • ChatGPT: It’s the tool that set the world on fire. ChatGPT can improve your creative process by helping you come up with ideas for intros and outros, episode topics, even what you should say next. It’s also great for interviews — paste a guest’s bio or book blurb into the chat box and tell it to generate interview questions, and it’ll likely come up with a few you hadn’t considered. Price: Free at the moment, though there’s a waitlist for a $20/month premium version.
  • Jasper: Probably the largest AI writing platform that isn't ChatGPT, Jasper is especially good for generating marketing copy — but it's handy for writing scripts and interview questions, too. Podcasters will definitely want to check out its "content improver," "explain it to a child," and "text summarizer" templates.
  • HyperWrite: This is a Chrome extension that acts as an AI-powered writing assistant. You can ask it to give you suggestions (kind of like autocomplete on your phone) or it can write whole paragraphs from the topics you provide. It’s also got an image generation feature. Price: Free for the basic version.
  • Boo: Boo is an AI writing assistant that prides itself on its simple, distraction-free interface. It has a built-in ChatGPT-style AI assistant, smart autocomplete for writing suggestions, and templates for particular types of writing, like ads, blog posts, and newsletters. Price: After a 3-day free trial, plans start at $8 for 10,000 words a month.
  • Lex: Think Google Docs on AI. Lex has real-time collaboration, formatting, everything you’d want from a word processor in the cloud, but it also has an AI assistant that will help you come up with ideas for your writing. Price: Lex is currently in beta, but you can get on the waitlist to use it for free.
  • Sudowrite: This one's for the fiction podcasters. Sudowrite can help write vivid descriptions, adjust the story's pacing, and even generate a first draft based on a concept you give it. Price: Paid plans start at $10 for 30,000 AI-generated words a month.
  • Wordtune Read: When you’re doing a weekly show, you don’t always have time to read every guest’s book or devour all of the literature on a given topic. In fact, neither do the big-name interview show hosts; many of them have assistants that read things for them and then give them a summary. Think of Wordtune Read as the AI version of that assistant — paste text or a URL, upload a PDF, or use the Chrome extension, and the app will summarize whatever you’re reading into the key points you need to know. Price: The free plan enables 5 new summaries a month; after that, plans start at $9.99/month.

Wordtune Read. New York Times article on the right side, summary on the left.

Audio editing

  • Descript: Descript is an AI-powered editor that automatically transcribes your audio and video recordings so that you can edit them just like text. It also uses AI to remove background noise and improve recording quality with a click (via Studio Sound), detect filler words like “um” and “uh,” and can insert AI voices — even correct misspoken words with a synthesized version of your own voice, if you want — via its Overdub feature. Price: The free version enables 1 hour of transcription and 10 minutes of Studio Sound per month.
  • Podcastle: Podcastle is a cloud recorder and AI-powered editor that lets you record a remote interview, edit, and mix all in one app. It also has transcription capabilities, an AI-powered sound quality tool called Magic Dust, and AI voices. Price: The free version gives you unlimited recording, 1 hour of transcription, and three uses of Magic Dust.
  • Resound: Resound is an AI-powered audio editor built to automatically detect filler words like “um” and “uh” and remove them from your recording. Price: Free for up to one hour of editing a month; paid plans start at $12/month.
  • Adobe Podcast: This is Adobe’s answer to Descript — an AI-powered text-based audio editor that can automatically enhance speech. It also enables remote recording. Price: Adobe Podcast is in beta, so it’s currently free to those who request and are granted access.
  • Alitu: Alitu brands itself as an AI-powered one-stop shop for podcast production. You can record remotely with hosts or guests, polish up the audio, edit the content, generate transcripts, and publish all from a single platform. Price: After a 7-day free trial, the service is $38/month. 
  • Auphonic: Upload your file, and Auphonic will automatically optimize your recording and polish up the quality of the audio. You can choose from a variety of audio algorithms, including a leveler, normalization, filtering, and noise reduction, and it can even stitch an intro and outro onto your episode if you want. Price: Free for 2 hours of processed audio a month.
  • Cleanvoice.ai: Like Auphonic, Cleanvoice is a standalone AI audio tool that can remove unwanted sounds, but it focuses more on speech imperfections like filler words, stutters, and those spitty, clicky mouth sounds. Price: The first 30-minute recording is free, after which there are monthly options starting at 10 Euros/month (around $10.60 USD) or pay-as-you-go options starting at 1.30 Euros an hour (around $1.38 USD).
  • Listnr: If you want AI voices, Listnr’s got ‘em. Paste text into their text-to-speech converter, and the app will convert it into one of their 600 voices in seconds. At that point, it’s ready to turn into a podcast, use as a video voiceover, star in a Home Alone contraption to scare away burglars, whatever you need it for. Price: $9 for up to 10,000 words per month.  
  • Altered Studio: Whether it’s an announcer in your intro or different characters in a story, sometimes a podcast needs different voices. If you can’t afford voice actors, Altered Studio gives you the next best thing: it can transform recordings of your voice into more than 50 synthesized voices with different genders, ages, and tones. Price: After a free trial, plans start at $59/month.

Transcription 

  • Descript: Descript’s claim to fame is its automatic transcription. You can stop there, which is what most of the services on this list do, or you can keep going — edit within the transcript to edit the audio or video file itself (you can also make minor edits to the wording without changing the file), create animated captions to go under a video or audiogram, or add words you missed by synthesizing your own voice with Overdub. Price: The free version enables 1 hour of transcription and 10 minutes of Studio Sound per month.
Descript automatically transcribes your audio or video and allows you to edit the file right in the transcript.
  • Otter.ai: Otter will not only transcribe your audio files, but can also transcribe Zoom and Google Meet meetings in real time and make an automatic outline of your transcription. It has a clean, intuitive interface and has been trusted by journalists and people with other transcription-heavy jobs for years. Price: The free plan gives you 300 transcription minutes a month (with a max of 30 minutes per file), paid plans start at $8.33/month paid annually. 
  • Temi: Temi is as straightforward as transcription gets. Upload your audio or video file, make your own manual tweaks to the result, and export the transcript as a Word file, PDF, or various caption formats. Price: The free trial allows for one transcript under 45 minutes; it’s 25 cents a minute after that.
  • Rev Max: If you’ve heard of Rev, it’s probably for its human transcription service. Rev Max is the quicker, less expensive AI version. The plus for users is that if you have a transcript you absolutely need to have right, you can easily switch to human transcription and save your own time spent editing. Price: Rev Max is free for two weeks, after which you’ll get 20 hours of automated transcription and discounts on everything else for $29.99/month.
  • Trint: Like Descript, Trint produces  It can also translate your transcript to 54 different languages, making it handy for creators who have an international audience. Pricing: After a 7-day free trial, plans start at $48/month.
  • Sonix: This automated transcription platform features an in-browser editor that lets you search, play, edit, and share your transcripts, and its automated translation can convert your transcript into more than 38 different languages. Price: The pay-as-you-go option starts at $10 per hour of transcription.
  • SpeechText.AI: If your podcast discusses a lot of complicated terminology that automatic transcription repeatedly gets wrong, this service might be worth a try. After you upload your audio or video file, you can choose the industry you’re in to improve how the AI recognizes domain-specific words. 

Show notes and marketing

Read more: The best AI tools for podcast show notes, reviewed
  • Dubb: If you’re more interested in the recording part of podcasting than the marketing part, Dubb is for you. It uses AI to generate not only transcripts, but episode titles, show notes, newsletter content, Twitter threads, even generative AI TikTok videos. Price: You can get a podcast media kit for free, after which plans start at $24.99/month.
  • Capsho: Similar to Dubb, Capsho uses AI to generate podcast episode titles, descriptions, transcripts, show notes, blog posts, newsletters, social media captions, YouTube descriptions, virtually any written content you need to market your podcast. All you have to do is upload your episode to the platform. Price: After a 7-day free trial, plans start at $29/month.
  • Podcastmarketing.ai: Second verse, same as the first — this platform is another AI-powered tool that generates any written content you need to post and market your podcast. Its pricing scheme is a bit more flexible than the other platforms mentioned here, though, making it especially good for podcasters who don’t put out a weekly show. Price: Plans start at $9 for one episode a month, $16 for two episodes a month, and $30 for four episodes a month.
  • Listener.fm: Another AI-powered tool for podcast show notes (there can never be enough, in my opinion), Listener.fm allows you to upload an episode with or without extra information like the episode name, host, and guests, and get back three title options, three summary options, and timestamps of the themes covered in the episode. Price: The Pro plan is $19/month for unlimited uploads.
  • Melville: You're never going to believe this — it's another podcast show notes tool. Melville's differentiator is in its by-the-minute pricing (no monthly subscription fees) and its clean, intuitive interface. You can also ask the tool to regenerate your show notes in a different tone or format, which is something we haven't seen in other tools. Price: The first hour is free; after that, it's 22 cents per minute of your episode.
Melville
  • Swell AI: Swell is a surprisingly good show notes tool that has some AI bells and whistles these other tools don't — namely “Swell Chat,” a ChatGPT-like chatbox that can create any sort of copy from your episode, and “Swell Ask,” which lets you ask any question from your episode. It even gives you an embed code to put on your website so listeners can ask their own questions. Price: The free plan enables one upload amonth; paid plans start at $29 for five uploads a month or pay as you go for $8.99 an upload.
  • Podium: Podium is another tool that generates surprisingly readable show notes. It also has an AI chatbot that lets you generate other pieces of content — think Facebook posts, tweet threads, blog posts, etc. It's also one of the less expensive tools on this list. Price: The first three hours are free; paid plans start at $16 for six hours a month.

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