Riverside vs Zencastr (2026): Free Unlimited Recording vs Paid Plans with Limits

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Checked Oct 31, 2026. US dollars.

Riverside’s prices

Riverside’s plan cards show $35, $45, and $99 a month on monthly billing for Pro, Grow, and Webinar. On yearly billing, page loads on Oct 31, 2026 showed two versions. Pro was $24/mo ($288 a year) or $29/mo ($348), and Grow was $34/mo ($408) or $36/mo ($432). Webinar was $79/mo ($948) in both. The FAQ quotes yet another monthly set ($29 and $39). Treat the checkout price as final. The full breakdown is in Riverside pricing.

Where Riverside earns its price

• Bigger sessions: 10 people per session vs Zencastr’s 6.
• Production tools: a host teleprompter, in-person multi-cam recording, an AI editing and repurposing agent, AI B-roll, and Magic Clips on Pro.
• Audience and webinar features: Grow adds a newsletter, creator website, social scheduling, and video publishing to Apple Podcasts. Webinar adds registration, Q&A, polls, and HubSpot sync.
• Business controls: producer mode, control of guest inputs and outputs, SSO, SOC2 and ISO27001 compliance, API access, and private podcast hosting.

What Zencastr’s free plan lists

• Recording: up to 6 participants, unlimited separate audio and video recording and download, up to 4K on desktop and mobile, 48 kHz WAV and 44 kHz MP3, progressive uploading, local recording, automatic cloud backups, unlimited track storage, custom soundboards, and Google Drive and Dropbox storage.
• Editing: unlimited postproduction credits and transcription hours, text-based and multi-track editing, chapter, title, and description generation, eye contact and face centering correction, AI layouts, long-pause and filler-word removal, animated captions, audio normalization, and background-noise removal.
• Hosting and publishing: unlimited audio and video uploads and hosting, up to 5 podcast shows, an embeddable player, a secure RSS feed, advanced analytics, distribution to major podcast platforms, social publishing and scheduling, and a custom link in the post-roll. The table also lists “Unlimited Video RSS: 6,000” and “Unlimited Video Views: 60,000” without explaining those numbers.
• Live streaming and monetization: 1080p live streaming to major platforms and ad campaign analytics.
• Not included: prioritized processing (marked with an X on the free plan).

Zencastr’s homepage describes editing “just by chatting” with an AI Producer, and the pricing table lists support as “Producer.”

Which to choose

• Solo or two-person show on a tight budget: start with Zencastr’s free plan. It has no download-hour cap and includes hosting.
• Up to 10 people in a session, a teleprompter, or in-person multi-cam: Riverside Pro.
• Two shows, live streaming, and video on Apple Podcasts in one bill: Riverside Grow.
• Registration-based webinars: Riverside Webinar.
• Prefer a dedicated podcast host: record on either and host elsewhere. See Transistor alternatives.
• Editing-first workflow? Compare Riverside vs Descript.