Riverside, Podcastle (now called Async), Cleanvoice and Alitu all promise to shorten the road from a recorded conversation to a finished episode — but they automate different steps, and each one meters your usage differently. This guide compares the production steps only: recording, cleanup, and transcript-based editing.
Pro, billed annually. Monthly billing is $35/mo. No free plan — 14-day trial.
Essentials, billed annually ($143.90/year). Monthly billing is $19.99/mo.
Subscription with 10 processing hours/month. Pay-as-you-go from $11 for 5 hours.
Single plan. Annual billing gives 2 months free ($380/year). 7-day free trial.
| Riverside | Podcastle (Async) | Cleanvoice | Alitu | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Interview shows that record remote guests on video | Creators who want recording, cleanup and editing in one place, cheaply | Podcasters and editors who keep their DAW and only want cleanup automated | Solo hosts who want the whole pipeline handled for them |
| Recording | Browser/app studio, up to 10 people, each recorded locally, up to 4K video and 48 kHz audio, separate tracks | Browser/iOS studio, up to 10 guests, local multitrack, up to 4K and 48 kHz WAV | None — upload files recorded elsewhere | Browser studio via private link, solo or up to 10 guests, local backups, lossless audio, 1080p video downloads |
| AI cleanup | Magic Audio: noise removal, filler and silence removal, normalization, EQ | Magic Dust enhancement, silence removal, auto-leveling | Its whole job: fillers, mouth sounds, stutters, dead air, background noise, audio enhancement | Automatic noise removal, leveling, mastering and EQ; Magic Filters remove fillers and silence |
| Transcript editing | Yes — edit the transcript to cut the media; unlimited transcription on paid plans | Yes — text editor plus chat-based editing; transcription is metered per plan | Transcription and summaries included, but editing happens back in your DAW via exported timelines | Yes — edit by text or simple waveform, inside a drag-and-drop episode builder |
| Free option | No free plan (discontinued in 2026) — 14-day trial of a paid tier, card required, auto-charges on day 15 | Free plan, but only 10 AI credits and 1 hour of media allowance, granted once — not monthly | 30-minute free trial, no card required | No free plan — 7-day free trial (up to 2 hours of processing), 30-day money-back guarantee |
| Paid plans from | Pro $29/mo billed annually ($35 monthly) | Essentials $11.99/mo billed annually ($19.99 monthly) | $11/mo for 10 processing hours, or pay-as-you-go $11 for 5 hours | $38/mo monthly; $380/year (2 months free) |
| What the meter counts | Separate-track downloads: 15 hrs/month on Pro (recording itself is unlimited) | Transcription hours (10 hrs/month on Essentials) plus a separate AI-credit balance | Processing hours per file you submit | No processing meter; hosting capped at 1,000 downloads/month, then +$10/mo up to 10,000 |
| Japanese support (as published) | Transcription language list (100+ languages) includes Japanese | Dubbing/subtitles published as 15 languages; we could not find Japanese transcription explicitly listed | Transcription list includes Japanese; filler-word removal for Japanese fillers is not explicitly confirmed on the pricing page | Pricing page says transcripts in 17 languages; the transcript feature page lists Japanese among its high-accuracy languages |
| Trade-off to know | The free plan is gone and the trial converts automatically; the download cap surprises people who edit in a DAW | Rebranded to Async in January 2026, so older Podcastle reviews describe retired plans and prices | It will not record anything, and per-track processing can multiply your hours used (see below) | One simple plan, but a higher monthly price than the entry tiers here, and no advanced editing depth |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026 (prices checked November 2026). Riverside's figures follow the vendor's September 2026 pricing announcement; some third-party pages still show its older prices ($24–$29 range) and its discontinued free plan, so confirm the plan card at signup. Alitu's pricing page has also displayed a $20.58/month billed-annually figure in some regions — if you see it, that regional price is the one that applies to you. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy.
These four tools charge against four different units, so the monthly price alone misleads. Here is the same workload — four episodes a month, 60 minutes of raw recording each, host plus one guest — run through each vendor's published meter. This is arithmetic on published prices and caps, not a usage test.
| Tool | What gets counted | What the workload consumes | Plan that covers it | Effective cost per episode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverside | Separate-track downloads (recording is unlimited) | 4 hrs of timeline; up to 8 hrs if counted per participant track | Pro, 15 hrs/month — $29/mo billed annually | $29 ÷ 4 = $7.25 |
| Podcastle (Async) | Transcription hours, plus AI credits for clips/dubbing | 4 hrs of transcription (cap: 10 hrs/month) | Essentials — $11.99/mo billed annually | $11.99 ÷ 4 = about $3.00 |
| Cleanvoice | Processing hours per submitted file | 4 hrs if you clean the mixed file once; 8 hrs if you clean each speaker's track separately | 10 hrs/month subscription — $11/mo | $11 ÷ 4 = $2.75 |
| Alitu | No processing meter; hosting downloads instead | No processing consumption; downloads capped at 1,000/month | Single plan — $38/mo monthly billing | $38 ÷ 4 = $9.50 (about $7.92 on annual billing) |
Two double-counting traps to notice. First, Riverside advertises unlimited recording, but the cap sits on downloading separate tracks — invisible if you edit inside Riverside, very visible if your workflow ends in a DAW. Second, Cleanvoice charges per file processed: the same 60-minute conversation costs one hour as a mixed file and two hours as separate speaker tracks, so where you place it in your pipeline changes its price. Podcastle (Async) runs two meters at once — transcription hours and AI credits — and exhausting either one limits a different set of features.
Riverside's core design is local recording: every participant is captured on their own device in up to 4K video and 48 kHz audio, then uploaded, so a weak connection does not set the ceiling for the finished file the way a plain call recording does. Around that it layers a text-based editor, unlimited transcription on paid plans (100+ languages, with Japanese in the published language list), filler and silence removal, Magic Audio cleanup, Magic Clips and hosting for one show on Pro. Pricing changed in 2026: the permanent free plan was discontinued and replaced by a 14-day trial that needs a card and converts automatically. Pro is $35/mo monthly or $29/mo billed annually, with 15 hours/month of separate-track downloads; Grow ($45 / $39) raises that to 20 hours, Webinar ($99 / $79) to 25.
First, the name: Podcastle rebranded to Async in January 2026. The podcastle.ai site now presents Async, and older reviews describing "Storyteller" plans are out of date. What remains is a browser studio that records local multitrack sessions (up to 4K, 48 kHz WAV, up to 10 guests), cleans audio with Magic Dust, and edits either by transcript or by chatting with its AI editor. Essentials is $19.99/mo monthly or $11.99/mo billed annually, with 10 hours/month of transcription and 450 AI credits a month; Pro ($39.99 / $23.99) raises those to 25 hours and 1,200 credits and unlocks 4K export. The free plan is real but thin: 10 AI credits and one hour of media allowance, granted once rather than refreshed monthly.
Cleanvoice is the odd one out: it has no studio and records nothing. You upload a recording made anywhere else, and it detects and removes filler words, mouth sounds, stutters, dead air and background noise, applies audio enhancement, and hands the file — or an editable timeline for your DAW — back to you. That narrowness is the point: it slots in front of an existing editing workflow instead of replacing it. Pricing is by processing time: a 30-minute free trial, pay-as-you-go packs from $11 for 5 hours (credits valid two years), or subscriptions from $11/mo for 10 hours up to $90/mo for 100 hours, with unused subscription hours rolling over up to three times the plan limit. One caution for non-English shows: its published transcription languages include Japanese, but we could not find filler-word removal for Japanese fillers explicitly confirmed on its pricing page, and third-party sources cite widely different language counts — test your own language on the trial first.
Alitu, run by The Podcast Host, takes the opposite approach to Cleanvoice: one app that records through a private studio link (with local backups, lossless audio and 1080p video), then automatically removes background noise, levels and masters the audio, strips fillers and silences with its Magic Filters, and assembles the episode in a drag-and-drop builder with intro music, show notes and transcripts. Hosting is bundled — free up to 1,000 downloads a month, then $10/mo up to 10,000. There is a single plan: $38/mo monthly, or $380/year with two months free, a 7-day free trial covering up to 2 hours of processing, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its published transcript support is 17 languages on the pricing page — though a feature page claims far broader coverage and lists Japanese among its high-accuracy languages, so check your language during the trial.
Recording, cleanup, editing, publishing. Riverside and Podcastle (Async) sell the whole chain, Alitu sells the whole chain minus editing depth, and Cleanvoice sells exactly one link of it. Buying a full studio to fix a cleanup problem — or a cleanup tool and still having no way to record guests — is the common mistake.
If guests join remotely, ask whether each person is recorded locally on their own device (Riverside, Podcastle) or whether the call itself is the recording. Local recording is the published-spec safeguard against a guest's bad Wi-Fi ending up in your episode. Alitu publishes local backups; Cleanvoice doesn't record at all.
Count your raw minutes, your speakers, and whether you export separate tracks. Then check them against the right unit: download hours (Riverside), transcription hours plus credits (Podcastle), processing hours per file (Cleanvoice), or downloads (Alitu). The worked example above shows how different the answer can be.
Every tool here has a free route in: a 14-day trial (Riverside), a free plan (Podcastle), 30 free minutes (Cleanvoice), a 7-day trial (Alitu). Use a real episode, and if your show is not in English, test transcription and filler removal on your own language first — published language support is the least consistent spec in this category.
On published annual pricing, Podcastle (Async) Essentials at $11.99/mo billed annually is the closest like-for-like alternative — local multitrack recording, cleanup and transcript editing in one studio. Cleanvoice is cheaper still ($11/mo) but is not a Riverside alternative in scope: it records nothing and only cleans files. Alitu ($38/mo) replaces the whole pipeline for solo shows rather than the interview-recording job specifically.
Because the limit is on a different action. Recording and editing inside Riverside are unlimited on paid plans; downloading the separate per-guest tracks — what you need to edit in an external DAW — is capped at 15 hours a month on Pro, 20 on Grow and 25 on Webinar, per the vendor's published plan details.
Going by published language lists only: Riverside's transcription list (100+ languages) includes Japanese. Alitu's transcript feature page lists Japanese among its high-accuracy languages, though its pricing page states 17 languages overall. Cleanvoice lists Japanese for transcription, but filler-word removal for Japanese is not explicitly confirmed on its pricing page. For Podcastle (Async), we could not find Japanese transcription explicitly listed. In all four cases, run a short real sample through the free trial before committing — this guide does not test language accuracy.
Not necessarily. Riverside includes hosting for one show on Pro, Podcastle (Async) includes hosting and publishing tools, and Alitu includes hosting up to 1,000 downloads a month. Cleanvoice is the exception — it returns cleaned files and hosts nothing, so you keep your existing host. This guide compares production tools; dedicated hosting is a separate decision.
Because this guide is based on publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. Claims like "best sound" would require controlled recordings we have not made. What can be compared honestly from published specs is structure: whether recording is local or over the connection, what the pricing meter counts, and which languages and limits the vendor puts in writing — which is what this page sticks to.