Podcastle Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Async Creator is the current name of Podcastle Inc., doing business as Async. Founded in 2020, the company began as a Chrome extension that converted articles into podcasts before developing into a creative platform used by millions. Async reports $23.5 million in total funding, including a $13.5 million Series A completed in 2024. The Podcastle rebrand was announced on January 28, 2026. Existing accounts, projects, pricing tiers, and billing remain unchanged, so current users can continue existing workflows. The service is available on the web and iOS, including remote interviews from an iPhone. Its identity now spans creator, enterprise, and developer offerings under one infrastructure, while the creator product remains focused on producing audio and video content in a browser or mobile app.

A project can start with remote recording, including separate local tracks for participants. Users can edit audio or video, transcribe recordings, remove silence, reduce noise, apply echo cancellation, and export finished files. Text based editing connects transcript changes with the underlying media, while subtitles, dubbing, social clips, and publishing tools support reuse across formats. AI voices and voice cloning extend the workflow when narration or alternate delivery is needed. Async says its library includes more than 7,000 professional music tracks and unlimited sound effects. Integrated AI models can generate footage, images, avatars, music, and sound effects. Recording quality, collaboration, storage, export allowances, and particular AI functions depend on the selected plan, so the same workflow may require upgrading as production volume increases.

A March 2026 release added more than 100 models for video, images, avatars, music, and sound effects. Named models include Kling, Sora-2, Veo 3.1, FLUX.2, Nano Banana, and Gemini. These additions let users move from an idea to several media assets within the same workspace, while monthly AI credits determine how much processing is available. Users can purchase additional top-up credits when allowances are insufficient. Async also offers a Voice API with TTS Flash priced at $0.50 per hour and TTS Pro at $1 per hour. The API includes instant voice cloning, and enterprise customers can request custom rate limits and concurrency. Async describes the voice technology as low latency, but publishes no numerical latency figure. Credit use varies by feature and processing complexity.

The free Creator plan costs $0 per month and includes 150 lifetime AI credits, one lifetime hour of remote recording, basic editing, and limited exports and storage. Essentials costs $19.99 monthly, or $11.99 monthly with annual billing, and provides 450 monthly AI credits, two recording hours, two text to speech hours, and 20 GB of storage. Pro costs $39.99 monthly, or $23.99 with annual billing, and provides 1,200 credits, 20 recording hours, 10 text to speech hours, and 120 GB of storage. Teams costs $84.99 monthly, or $49.99 with annual billing, and provides 3,000 credits, 50 recording hours, 40 text to speech hours, and 1 TB of storage. Business pricing is custom. Free users must download content retained beyond 30 days.

Async Creator combines recording, editing, transcription, voice generation, and publishing, but its shared credit system can make heavy generative use difficult to forecast. Free users also carry responsibility for downloading content they need after the 30 day retention period. Descript is a relevant alternative when transcript first editing is central. Riverside is a direct alternative for remote recording and publishing workflows. ElevenLabs is a more focused alternative for developer oriented voice generation. Product descriptions do not provide complete feature parity among these services, so comparisons should remain task specific. Choose Async Creator if you want browser based recording and editing alongside voice cloning, transcription, and generative media tools in one account, rather than a narrower specialist workflow.