Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, a free account is required to use the service. Sign up takes under 30 seconds with just your email, username, and password. Your free account includes 10 minutes of processing per month, SRT downloads, and access to the full dashboard, no payment information required.

The Solo and Pro plans (video plans) and the Audio Lite and Audio Plus plans (audio-only plans) all include the full suite of text customisation options (fonts, colours, outlines, shadows, alignment) plus all text display modes (Default, Single Word, Single Line, and Karaoke). The key difference is video burning: Solo and Pro include burn-in video processing (subtitles permanently embedded into your video file), while Audio Lite and Audio Plus do not. All plans support SRT and ASS subtitle formats and include translation to English. Audio Lite and Audio Plus are ideal if you only need subtitle files for editing or platform upload, while Solo and Pro are for exporting finished videos with subtitles baked in.

Yes. You can cancel your subscription at any time through the Stripe customer portal or directly through your account settings. When you cancel, you'll retain access to your current plan's features until the end of your billing period. Your subscription will not renew, and you'll be downgraded to the Free tier at the end of the period.

Yes. All paid plans (Solo, Audio Lite, Pro, Audio Plus, and Enterprise) offer a 20% discount when billed annually. Annual plans are charged once per year and provide the same features as monthly plans, just prepaid for 12 months.

No. There are no setup fees, no installation costs, and no hidden charges. The price shown on our pricing page is exactly what you'll pay per month. That's it, no surprises at checkout.

All major credit and debit cards accepted by Stripe, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Contactless payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay) are also supported through Stripe's checkout, depending on your device and browser.

Your account tracks minutes used in real-time. If you reach your monthly limit, you'll be unable to submit new subtitle jobs until your next billing cycle resets your minutes. You'll receive a warning notification via the dashboard when you've reached 80% of your allowance. To continue processing immediately, you can upgrade to a higher-tier plan at any time.

You can upgrade your plan at any time. When upgrading, your new tier's minute allowance takes effect immediately, and the prorated difference will be charged. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing cycle. You'll keep access to your current plan's features until the cycle ends.

We support MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM, MP3, WAV, and M4A files. All major video and audio formats are covered.

• SRT: Simple, universally compatible subtitle format (.srt). Supported by YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, and most media players. Free tier supports SRT only.
• ASS: Advanced SubStation Alpha format (.ass). Supports extensive styling, including custom fonts, colours, outlines, shadows, backgrounds, karaoke effects, alignment, and more. Available on all paid plans.

Burn-in subtitles (also called "hard subtitles") are permanently embedded into the video frames themselves, they become part of the picture and cannot be turned off. This is different from soft subtitles (SRT/ASS files), which are separate files that viewers can toggle on or off. Burn-in is available on the Solo, Pro, and Enterprise plans and lets you export a single video file with subtitles already visible. You can choose from 5 quality levels when burning subtitles into video.

Yes. There is a "Translate to English" option available alongside the standard "Generate Subtitles" button on the dashboard. When you select translation, the service transcribes the audio in any spoken language and produces English subtitles. If you simply hit "Generate Subtitles" without the translate option, the subtitles will be created in whatever language the speaker is using. Translation is included on all paid plans (Solo, Audio Lite, Pro, Audio Plus, Enterprise). The Free tier does not include translation.

Yes. All paid plans provide both options:

• Soft subtitles: Download a separate SRT or ASS file. You or your audience can toggle the subtitles on or off in any compatible player.
• Burned-in subtitles: Export a single video file with subtitles permanently embedded.

Additionally, when you burn subtitles into a video, the Recent Transcriptions box on your dashboard still provides the standalone SRT/ASS file alongside the burned-in video, so you get both formats from a single generation, without using extra minutes. The Free tier supports SRT downloads only (no burn-in).

When using the ASS format, our karaoke display mode shows subtitles word-by-word in real-time, with a colour highlight that tracks along as each word is spoken. This is one of four display modes available, see Q16 for all the display mode options. You can customise the highlight colour, background box, outline, and underline for each karaoke subtitle. This feature is popular for music videos, language learning content, and anime-style fansubs.

Yes. ASS subtitles offer extensive customisation: you can choose from over 150 fonts, adjust font size, set primary and outline colours (with hex colour picker), add background boxes with adjustable opacity, position subtitles using 9 alignment options, adjust shadow distance and thickness, and toggle bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough styles. All changes are visible in a live preview before you download. Karaoke styling can be applied on top of any styling you set in the main ASS styling panel, so your custom fonts, colours, and backgrounds will all be preserved.

• Default: Full subtitle lines display as spoken (standard behaviour).
• Single Line: Text is wrapped to fit within one line per subtitle, ideal for social media videos.
• Single Word: Displays one word at a time with precise timing.
• Karaoke: Word-by-word highlighting with a colour track that follows the audio. See Q14 for more details on karaoke effects.

You can also constrain line length with a custom character limit when using Single Line mode.

When burning subtitles into your video, you can choose a quality level from 1 (Fast, 20% bitrate, lowest quality, fastest processing) to 5 (Original, 100% bitrate, highest quality, slowest). We recommend level 4 (High, 80% bitrate) for a good balance of quality and processing speed. Level 5 preserves the original video quality but may significantly increase processing time for large files.

After generation, your subtitles are delivered as downloadable SRT or ASS files. You can open ASS files in any ASS-compatible subtitle editor to make further manual edits to timing, styling, or text. Subify does not currently offer an in-browser subtitle editor, but all ASS styling options are fully customisable at generation time.

Currently, Subify processes your uploaded file from scratch and generates fresh subtitles, it does not read, extract, or merge with any existing subtitle tracks. If you have existing subtitles you want to keep, download the current version before uploading.

Our subtitling service uses a state-of-the-art AI model optimised for speech recognition, with word-level timestamp precision for perfect subtitle timing. Accuracy depends on audio quality, clear spoken language with minimal background noise yields the best results. We can't guarantee 100% accuracy, especially with heavy accents, very quiet audio, or specialised terminology. For best results, use a quality microphone or clean audio source.

Processing time depends on your file's duration and current system load. As a general rule, processing is significantly faster than real-time, a 10-minute video typically finishes in 1 to 3 minutes. Longer files (60+ minutes) may take 5 to 15 minutes. When you burn subtitles into a video, processing time increases as the service re-encodes the video with the subtitles embedded.

Each plan includes a monthly minute allowance (Free: 10 min, Solo/Audio Lite: 120 min, Pro/Audio Plus: 600 min, Enterprise: unlimited). There is no hard limit on individual file duration, any file will process as long as you have sufficient minutes remaining in your monthly allowance. If you're close to your limit, you'll see a warning before you upload.

Uploaded files are stored temporarily on our servers solely for processing. After processing, generated subtitle files are available for download from your dashboard for 48 hours. Original uploads are retained for 24 hours before automatic deletion. All temporary files are permanently deleted after their retention period. Files are never used for training or shared with third parties.

You can reach our support team at support@subify.co.uk for technical issues, billing questions, or feature requests. We also have a dedicated Contact page where you can submit a support ticket. We aim to respond within 24 hours on business days.