Light A few thoughts a day
$2.69/ month
Two short voice memos a day and a question now and then.
- 60 voice memos, 1 min each
- $1.44
- Writing and filing
- $0.30
- Chat, 30 questions
- $0.45
- Overhead
- $0.50
About $32 a year.
Pricing
Pay for what you use. Nothing else.
No plans, no seats, no tiers. Each month you pay for exactly what your memos used, at the rates below. For most people that's well under what a single note-taking subscription costs.
Regular Most people
$7.75/ month
Four voice memos and two typed notes a day, a few questions, the odd photo.
- 120 voice memos, 1½ min each
- $4.32
- Writing and filing, 180
- $0.90
- Summaries, 60
- $0.12
- Chat, 120 questions
- $1.80
- Photo reads, 10
- $0.10
- Storage
- $0.01
- Overhead
- $0.50
About $93 a year.
Heavy Talks it all through
$18/ month
Eight voice memos and three typed notes a day, and lots of questions.
- 240 voice memos, 2 min each
- $11.52
- Writing and filing, 330
- $1.65
- Summaries, 200
- $0.40
- Chat, 240 questions
- $3.60
- Photo and page reads, 30
- $0.30
- Storage
- $0.03
- Overhead
- $0.50
About $216 a year.
Estimates at today's list prices for the services Cordial runs on. Billing isn't switched on yet.
The rates
What each thing costs.
Every charge comes from one of these lines. Your account shows each one as it happens.
| What | Rate | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Voice transcription | 2.4¢ a minute | Turning a recording into text. Silent recordings cost nothing. |
| Writing and filing | ~0.5¢ a memo | One AI call that cleans up the text and gives it a title, a one-line gist, a project and the people and places it mentions. |
| Summary | ~0.2¢ a memo | Only for memos longer than about 150 words. |
| Chat question | ~1.5¢ | Asking Cordial's chat. Varies with how much it reads to answer. |
| Reading a photo | ~1¢ each | Only when you ask. Large photos are shrunk first. |
| Reading scanned pages | ~0.5¢ a page | Only when you ask, up to 20 pages a file. |
| Reading a PDF or text file | Free | PDFs with real text, and .txt, .md and .csv files, are read as they arrive. |
| Search | Free in practice | Word search is free. Search by meaning costs about a cent per 300 searches. |
| Agent requests | Free in practice | A tiny amount of computing per request. Your agent's own AI is billed by its provider. |
| Storage | ~2.3¢ a GB a month | Drops to under half a cent after 30 days. A minute of audio is about half a megabyte. |
| Overhead | 50¢ a month | Your even share of the fixed costs of running Cordial, like monitoring and the domain. Always its own line. |
Questions
Fair questions.
Is there a free tier?
Not as such, but a quiet month is a dollar or two. Reading PDFs and text files, searching by words, and storing a typical year of memos cost next to nothing.
Why does voice cost the most?
Turning speech into text is the most expensive step for any service like this. At 2.4¢ a minute it's most of a heavy talker's bill. We're evaluating cheaper speech engines; when one meets our quality bar, this rate drops for everyone.
What is Overhead?
Some costs don't depend on how much anyone uses Cordial: monitoring and alerts, the domain, and similar fixed costs. They're split evenly across active accounts and shown as their own line, called Overhead, so they're never hidden inside the per-use rates.
How will I pay?
With prepaid credits. You add some, and charges come out as you go. You'll be able to top up automatically, and nothing that costs money runs when your balance is empty, so there are no surprise bills.
Billing isn't switched on yet.
Do I also pay for my AI agent?
Your agent's own AI is billed by whoever provides it, like your Claude plan. Cordial charges only for the work it does: searching and reading for the agent, and the rare request that needs Cordial's own AI, such as reading a photo.
Can I see what I've spent?
Yes. The Account screen shows your usage for the last 7, 30 or 90 days: by day, by task, by kind of memo and by project, plus what each connected agent has used.
Will the rates change?
They follow what the underlying services charge. If a rate changes, this page changes first, and you'll hear about it before it applies to you.
Start with a quiet month.
Cordial is open to invited users for now. If you have an invite, sign in.