Five uploads a month: the limit that changed how we think about privacy

The number came from a very real constraint

When we started building Scribr, we had to make a choice early on. The Free tier would offer on-device transcription, which happens entirely on your phone using Whisper or Apple Speech. No audio leaves your device. No servers involved. No privacy negotiation. It's genuinely private.

But we knew some people would want more: longer audio files, cloud transcription for files that are too big for a phone to process cleanly, AI summaries that pull out action items automatically. Those features live in the cloud. They require infrastructure. They cost us money per transaction.

Five uploads per month wasn't arbitrary. We looked at how our beta testers actually used the app. Most people recorded between one and three meetings or calls a day. Five uploads meant a dedicated user could capture their Monday through Friday standups without hitting a wall. It wasn't restrictive; it was honest. If you needed more, you needed a different tier.

On-device means you own the moment

Here's what five uploads actually buys you: the freedom to record anything without asking permission from infrastructure. A client call. A therapy session. A personal voice note about an idea at 2am. Scribr transcribes it right there on your phone. The words stay with you. Not on a server. Not in a backup somewhere. Not federated across devices you don't control.

We've watched people realise this matters more than they expected. A therapist told us she could finally record sessions knowing the audio never leaves her practice. A freelancer said she could capture client feedback during calls without worrying about compliance. A researcher mentioned that sensitive interview recordings felt safer.

That's the Five. It's not five uploads to a cloud service. It's five moments where you can hit record, and only you get to decide what happens next.

What changes when you need more

Once you move to Pro, the world opens up differently. You get cloud transcription through Deepgram, which means you can upload audio that's longer or more complex than your phone can handle alone. You get 500 AI calls per month, which includes summaries and action item extraction. You get Vault Mode, which encrypts your notes with AES-GCM. You get Scribr Cloud sync, so your notes exist across your devices but still under your control.

The jump from Free to Pro isn't about more uploads. It's about a shift in how you work. You move from 'I want to keep this private and transcribed' to 'I want to keep this private, transcribed, summarised, and searchable across devices.' Team tier goes further still, adding contact intelligence and note sharing with compliance auditing built in for organisations that need it.

But the five upload limit on Free does something important: it separates the people who want private capture from the people who want to build entire knowledge systems. Both are legitimate. The limit just makes sure you're in the right tier for what you actually need.

The widget and Siri shortcut are the real daily tools

Something we noticed after the first month: people don't think about uploads. They think about access. A user on Free tier can use the Quick Record widget, which lives on their home screen. They can ask Siri to start recording. Those feel instant. Frictionless. A customer mentioned she uses the Siri shortcut during calls because she doesn't have to open the app. Her hands stay free. Her attention stays on the conversation.

Five uploads is the monthly gate. But Quick Record and Siri are the daily interface. They're what makes the private transcription actually usable, not just technically possible. You're not managing uploads. You're just recording.

Why we don't apologise for the limit

Some app makers would hide a restriction like this. Make it sound like a bug in the Free tier rather than a choice. We've tried to do the opposite. The five-upload limit exists because we believe in something specific: that your notes belong to you, that privacy isn't a premium feature, and that if you want cloud-scale features, you should pay for the infrastructure that makes them possible.

Plenty of people use Scribr on Free forever and they're happy. They record their standups, their one-on-ones, their voice memos. Transcription happens on their phone. Their data stays local. That works. And plenty of people outgrow it and move to Pro because they need summaries or they're dealing with longer audio or they want encryption and sync. That's fine too.

The five uploads aren't a teaser. They're a genuine, useful tier. We designed it for people who wanted one thing from Scribr: the ability to record a conversation and get a transcript without sending the audio anywhere.