Castmagic: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Castmagic?

Castmagic is an AI tool that takes a recording and turns it into written and visual content. Upload a podcast episode, a Zoom meeting, a YouTube video or a coaching call and it transcribes it with speaker labels, then generates show notes, titles, summaries, social posts, newsletters, blog drafts and short clips from the transcript. You edit the results in the browser and copy or share them.

It is made by Castmagic, a company that started with podcasters and now sells to marketing teams, agencies, coaches, sales teams and media companies. The product runs at app.castmagic.io, with an iOS app for recording and uploading on the go, a REST API, Zapier support and a Claude MCP connector that lets you query your media library from Claude.

The problem it solves is the post-production slog. Recording an hour of audio takes an hour; writing the notes, the posts, the newsletter and finding the clips takes the rest of the day. Castmagic does the first draft of all of it in a few minutes, so the human work becomes editing and choosing.

Who it is for

• Podcasters who publish weekly and need show notes, timestamps, episode titles and promotional posts every time.
• Content and marketing teams repurposing webinars, interviews and long-form video into blog articles, LinkedIn posts and newsletters.
• Coaches, consultants and trainers who record client sessions and want recaps, action items and follow-up emails.
• Sales and customer-discovery teams who want call summaries, objections and quotes pulled out of recorded calls.
• Agencies and podcast networks managing several shows or clients, each with its own voice and workflow.

Castmagic is not the right choice if you need a general-purpose meeting assistant that joins calls and manages calendars, or if you record a few times a year. In those cases a dedicated meeting notetaker or a transcription service plus ChatGPT or Claude will be cheaper. It is also not an audio editor; it does not clean up or mix your recording.

Key features

• Import from almost anywhere. Upload MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC or MP4 files (up to 10 GB each, 50 at a time), paste a public YouTube link, connect a podcast RSS feed and pick episodes, import Instagram Reels, pull recordings from Zoom or Google Drive, or automate uploads with Zapier.
• Transcription with speaker labels. Transcripts in more than 60 languages, with timestamps and a built-in audio and video player. You name speakers once and the names flow into every generated asset.
• AI Content tab. A set of content items generated automatically for each recording, following the preset for your Space. Stock items include Titles, Keywords, Speaker Bio, Introduction, Timestamped Overview, Discussion Questions, Key Topics and Bullets, Clip Finder, Reel Script, LinkedIn Post, Newsletter and Twitter Thread.
• Magic Chat. A chat box on each recording that answers questions and writes anything about that file. When a prompt works, Save as prompt turns it into a recurring content item for every past and future recording.
• Custom prompts and Content Sample. Define your own content items, order them, disable the ones you do not use, and paste an example piece of writing into the Content Sample box so the output copies your tone and format.
• Spaces and presets. Each Space is a separate workspace with its own preset (Podcast, YouTube, Meetings, Coaching, Customer Discovery, Sales Call), prompts and speakers, so a podcast and a sales team never share settings.
• Pages. Long-form drafts such as blog posts or playbooks written from up to 10 recordings at once.
• Studio. Unlimited captioned vertical clips, carousels and audiograms from any recording, with AI image generation and public sharing.
• Team and workflow. Invite members as Member or Admin, share recordings and content blocks, move items through Draft, Review and Publish stages, and leave comments and tasks.
• Audience Chat, API and MCP. A chatbot trained on your episodes for your website, a REST API from the Starter plan, and a Claude connector for your library.

Pricing

Castmagic has no free plan. At the time of writing it sells three self-serve plans plus a custom tier. Yearly billing is about 30% cheaper than monthly; both are shown below. Hours are described on the pricing page as a library total, and extra hours can be bought at any time.

Plan	Billed yearly	Billed monthly	Transcribed hours	Seats	Spaces	Storage
Hobby	$19/month ($239/year)	$29/month	30 hours	3	Up to 3	50 GB
Starter	$48/month ($579/year)	$69/month	100 hours	5	Up to 10	250 GB
Team	$139/month ($1,669/year)	$199/month	400 hours	5 included, then $19/month or $159/year per seat	Up to 25	1 TB
Business & Scale	From $699/month	From $999/month	Custom	Custom	Custom	Custom

Every plan includes unlimited uploads, unlimited re-generations, unlimited clipping and audiograms, custom and community prompts, 2,000-plus word outputs, Magic Chat, and the Zoom, Google Drive, Zapier, RSS and YouTube, TikTok and Instagram imports. Starter adds API access and an onboarding call; Team adds priority support. Business & Scale is for studios and publishers and comes with an SLA and dedicated support. Castmagic’s help centre mentions a seven-day trial with a card on file; the pricing page does not, so check what is offered at sign-up.

How to use Castmagic: step-by-step

1. Sign up and create a Space

1. Go to castmagic.io, click Try Castmagic, and pick a plan.
2. Castmagic creates a first Space. Click the Space name in the upper left (the click to change space button) and choose New Space if you want separate workspaces for, say, your podcast and your client calls.
3. Choose a preset for the Space: Podcast, YouTube, Meetings, Coaching, Customer Discovery or Sales Call. The preset decides which content items are generated by default.

2. Import your first recording

1. Click Upload files and choose an audio or video file, or pick an import option: YouTube (paste a public link), RSS (paste your feed URL, click Submit, then tick the episodes you want; only selected episodes use hours), Reels, Zoom or Google Drive.
2. Fill in the recording form: a title, the language, Expected speakers if you know the count, Magic words for names, brands and jargon the transcriber should spell correctly, and a Context Prompt describing what the recording is about.
3. Click Save recording. Language, expected speakers and magic words cannot be changed afterwards, so get them right here.

Transcription and the first content pass take a few minutes for an hour of audio.

3. Label the speakers

Open the recording and go to the Transcript tab. Click the Speaker A, Speaker B labels at the top, click add new speaker, enter each person’s name and set their role as host or guest. If Castmagic split one person into two, give both the same name and merge them. If it missed a speaker, re-upload with the expected speakers field set. Accurate names improve every output, especially bios, quotes and summaries.

4. Review the AI Content tab

Open the AI Content tab. Each item (Titles, Timestamped Overview, Key Topics and Bullets, LinkedIn Post, Newsletter and so on) is a draft you can edit in place. Click Modify on any item and choose longer, shorter, more casual, more serious or a new variation, or type a specific instruction in the text bar. Use the three-button toggle on an item to Edit prompt (applies to all recordings), Move Up or Move Down, or Disable items you never use.

5. Build your own prompts with Magic Chat

1. Open the Magic Chat tab on the recording.
2. Type a prompt such as “Write a 150-word episode description in the second person, ending with a question” and click Generate.
3. If the result is close, click Modify and refine it rather than starting a new chat.
4. When the output is right, click Save as prompt. It becomes a content item on the AI Content tab for every recording in the Space, past and future.
5. On the prompt, paste one of your own best posts into the Content Sample box so future outputs copy its tone and layout.

Keep saved prompts generic. A prompt that mentions a specific guest will produce nonsense on next week’s episode.

6. Make clips

Check the Clip Finder item on the AI Content tab for suggested moments with timestamps. Open the Studio, choose Make clips, pick a moment, adjust the in and out points, choose a caption style and aspect ratio, and render. Make carousel builds an image carousel from quotes. Clips can be downloaded or shared with a public link.

7. Write long-form with Pages

In the left menu, click Pages, then New Page. Select up to 10 recordings as context, write a prompt that states the format and length (“an 800-word blog post with H2 headings and a conclusion”), generate, edit, and publish or copy out.

8. Share and hand off

Copy the shareable link on a recording to let a client or editor view the transcript and AI content without a login. For ongoing collaboration, open Settings, scroll to Team, click Manage your team, then Invite User, enter an email, choose Member or Admin, and tick whether they get all Spaces or only the current one.

Tips to get better results

• Fill in Magic words and the Context Prompt every time. They cost nothing and fix the two most common transcript problems: misspelt names and misread jargon.
• Label speakers before you read any output. Items generated before labelling can be re-generated for free, and the difference in bios and quotes is large.
• Give every prompt a Content Sample. It is the single biggest lever for making output sound like you.
• Use one Space per workflow. A podcast preset applied to sales calls produces show notes for a sales call, which nobody wants.
• Save prompts from Magic Chat, not from memory. Test in chat until the result is right, then save; it avoids a half-working prompt running on every recording.
• Do not trust Magic Chat for timestamps or exact quotes. Use the Clip Finder and Timestamped Overview items, which are built for that.
• Import by RSS for back catalogue. Pick only the episodes you need; hours are consumed per selected episode.
• Build a review stage. Move generated items to Review and have a human check facts, names and claims before anything is published.

Limitations and common problems

• Hours are finite. The included hours are described as a library total, so a back catalogue of 50 episodes will exhaust Hobby quickly. Buy hours or start on Starter if you have an archive to process.
• Drafts, not finals. Summaries occasionally attribute a point to the wrong speaker or flatten nuance. Edit before publishing.
• Locked recording settings. Language, speaker count and magic words cannot be changed after saving; a mistake means re-uploading.
• Magic Chat is one-shot. Each prompt is a fresh request rather than a conversation; use Modify to refine.
• Clip quality follows transcript quality. Noisy recordings with cross-talk produce rough captions and poor clip suggestions. Fix the audio first.
• No free plan. Evaluate with the free tools on castmagic.io/tools or budget one month of Hobby as a trial.
• Team seats are limited on lower plans. Hobby’s three seats and Starter’s five cover small teams; agencies will land on Team or Business & Scale.

Alternatives

• Descript - edit audio and video by editing the transcript, with clips and AI writing; better if you also need to edit the recording itself.
• Riverside and Zencastr - podcast recording tools with built-in transcription, show notes and clips; a simpler all-in-one if you record remotely.
• Otter.ai and Fireflies - meeting notetakers that join calls and summarise them; better for internal meetings, weaker for publishing.
• Opus Clip and Vizard - focused on short-form video clips from long videos, with less written output.
• ChatGPT or Claude plus a transcript - the manual route: transcribe with any tool, then prompt an assistant. Cheaper for occasional use; see our Claude review.

Find more in our AI content and media tools directory, and if you write your own prompts for Castmagic or an assistant, read our guide on how to write better prompts.

Verdict

Castmagic earns its subscription when recordings are the raw material for your content and you publish from them every week. Podcasters, content teams and coaches will get a usable draft of everything in the time it takes to make coffee, and the Spaces, custom prompts and Content Sample features mean the output improves the longer you use it. If you record rarely, do not need clips, or only want meeting notes, pick a cheaper or more specialised tool. Start on Hobby with one real episode and your own prompts, and you will know within a week whether it pays for itself.