Riverside pricing (2026): every plan and what a year costs

You want to start an interview show, or record conversations with clients and guests, and you want the real number before you sign up. Riverside Pro costs $35 a month. Billed yearly, the same page showed us two prices on the same day: $288 and $348. Here's every plan from Riverside's own pages, the costs the plan cards leave out, and a year priced for a coach with a weekly 30-minute show. One note up front: we make CreateSocial, a competing tool that turns a recorded episode into clips, a thumbnail and a week of posts.

Riverside plans and prices in November 2026

Riverside sells five plans on its website and one more inside its phone app. Every paid plan records for as long as you like. What changes is how many hours of separate tracks you can download, how many shows you can run and which extras come with it.

Checked against Riverside's pricing page, its help center and its App Store listing on November 9, 2026. Prices are in US dollars.

A studio is Riverside's word for one show, with its own recordings, hosting and analytics. Riverside's pricing FAQ says that if you "work with two clients," you'd want two studios. So a consultant who records a show for each of two clients needs Grow, even if the hours would fit on Pro.

Riverside showed us two yearly prices, so check the total at checkout

The monthly prices held still. The yearly ones didn't. We loaded Riverside's pricing page 15 times on November 9, 2026, each time as a new visitor. Every load showed Pro at $35, Grow at $45 and Webinar at $99 billed monthly.

Billed yearly, each load showed one of two versions. Nine had Pro at $24 a month, "Billed $288 annually," and Grow at $34, or $408 a year. Six had Pro at $29, or $348 a year, and Grow at $36, or $432. Webinar showed $79 a month, $948 a year, every time. The page doesn't say why. The yearly price you see may differ from both.

Riverside's other pages add more numbers. The pricing page's own FAQ says "Pro drops from $29 to $24/month" when you pay yearly. Riverside's free-trial article, updated September 10, 2026, puts annual billing at $29 for Pro and $39 for Grow. The App Store lists Pro as an in-app purchase at $29.00 and $289.00.

That's why the pages ranking for this search disagree. Most still quote Pro at $29 billed monthly, a price the plan cards didn't show on any of our loads. The number that counts is the yearly total on the checkout page, before you enter a card. Buy through the phone app instead, and Apple or Google handles the subscription, refunds included.

Is Riverside free? Its pricing page says yes, its blog says no

It depends on which Riverside page you read, so check the pricing page on the day you sign up. When we checked on November 9, 2026, it still showed a Free plan at $0 with a Get Started button. Riverside's own article on whether Riverside is free, updated September 10, 2026, says the opposite: "Riverside no longer offers a free plan, substituting it with a 14-day free trial."

The trial is the free option you can count on. It runs 14 days on Pro, Grow or Webinar and needs a credit card. You aren't charged when it starts. On day 15 the card is billed for the plan you picked, unless you cancel first. During the trial you get the whole plan, with no watermark.

If you do land on the Free plan, here's what it holds:

• Unlimited recording as a single track: one merged file of everyone, with no separate audio or video.
• 2 hours of separate audio and video tracks, once, not each month.
• Video up to 720p, and a "Created with Riverside" watermark at the top of every exported video. Audio-only exports start with a short "Powered by Riverside" clip.
• The full editor, including transcript editing and silence removal, plus Magic Clips.

The separate tracks carry no watermark. The 2 hours are the catch. A weekly 30-minute show uses them up in four episodes, and they never come back.

The phone app has a free tier too. It records in 720p, and Mobile Plus at $9.99 a month removes the watermark.

What each Riverside plan limits

The limits sit on separate tracks, shows and extras, never on recording time. Separate tracks are the meter that matters, so start there.

A separate track is the high-quality file of one person. Riverside records it on each person's own device and uploads it during the session. You download these to edit in other software. Riverside's download-hours guide explains how the cap counts:

• It counts hours recorded in the month. Once you've recorded past your plan's hours, the option to download separate tracks disappears until the next month.
• Guests don't multiply it. Three people in a one-hour session use one hour.
• Live streams count toward it.
• Deleting old recordings doesn't give hours back, and unused hours don't roll over.
• Exports of your edits and clips are unlimited. Only the separate tracks are capped.

Then each plan adds its own fences. Pro gives you 15 hours, one studio and a teleprompter for the host only. Its mobile apps record up to 1080p. It can publish to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Instagram and LinkedIn from inside Riverside, but social scheduling and AI thumbnails start at Grow.

Grow adds a second studio, 20 hours, a newsletter and 1080p live streaming to as many destinations as you like. Webinar adds a third studio, 25 hours, registration forms and HubSpot sync. Business lifts the caps, adds producer controls and a teleprompter for guests, and has no trial.

Every paid plan records up to 10 people in one session and includes in-person multi-cam recording.

Five costs Riverside's plan cards don't show

The card price covers the recording studio and the editor. Five things can add to it.

The trial bills on day 15, and refund windows are short. A monthly plan is refunded in full only if you cancel within 24 hours of purchase and ask. A yearly plan gets 14 days.

Credits pay for the AI extras. Pro, Grow and Webinar start with 2,000 credits. Magic Clips, Magic Audio and Riverside's Co-Creator agent don't use them. AI B-roll does, at 100 credits per 5 seconds, so 2,000 credits buy 100 seconds of it. Translation costs 100 credits a minute. More are bought separately, they don't renew each month, and none are refundable.

An editor costs extra. If an assistant edits your episodes, Pro, Grow and Webinar let you add one external editor as a paid add-on. Riverside shows the price when you invite them, and you can't invite one during a trial. Team editing is a Business feature.

Canceling can delete your recordings. Riverside's pages disagree here too. Its inactive account policy, updated November 3, 2026, says an account that stays canceled for 120 days in a row is deleted, content included. Its free-trial article, updated September 10, 2026, says that if you cancel the trial, your recordings "remain saved in your account and are not deleted." Read the policy before you cancel. Riverside's own advice is to download your content first, especially the separate tracks.

Live shows eat download hours. On Grow, going live counts against the same separate-track hours as your recorded episodes. A weekly hour-long livestream plus a weekly 30-minute episode uses 6 to 7.5 hours a month. That's inside Grow's 20, but worth counting.

Monthly or annual: yearly saves $72 to $132 on Pro

Billed monthly, Pro costs $420 a year. Billed yearly it's $288 or $348, so you save $132 or $72, depending on the price you're shown. Grow saves $132 or $108 on its $540. Webinar saves $240 on $1,188. The page promises "Up to 20% off Yearly plans," though Pro's $288 version works out to 31% off.

You can switch billing cycles from your Plan & Billing settings. Going from yearly back to monthly turns the unused part of the year into account credit, not a refund.

A show takes months to pay off, so pay yearly only if you're sure of a full year of episodes. If you're still finding out whether you like hosting, pay monthly for two or three months first.

Which Riverside plan fits a coach, consultant or founder

Riverside wins at recording interviews. Each person is recorded on their own device, so a shaky connection doesn't ruin the file, and you get up to 4K video and 48 kHz audio for each person. If your show has guests, that is what you're paying for. Pick the plan by what you'll do around the recording:

• A weekly interview show with one guest: Pro. Its 15 hours cover even long sessions.
• Two shows, or shows for two clients: Grow, for the second studio. It's also the plan if you want Riverside to schedule social posts, make thumbnails, run a newsletter or go live.
• Webinars that collect leads: Webinar, for registration, reminders, Q&A and HubSpot sync. Grow can stream but has none of the registration tools.
• A team with producers or single sign-on: Business, quoted by sales.
• Recording only on your phone: Mobile Plus at $9.99 a month removes the watermark and exports up to 4K.

Worked example: a year of Riverside for a weekly 30-minute interview show

A coach who records one 30-minute interview a week pays $288 to $420 for a year of Riverside Pro. Here's that year for a hypothetical leadership coach who interviews one guest a week and posts each episode to YouTube and podcast apps.

Why bother with a show? In my video on getting paid speaking gigs I put it this way: "This is a relationship business. Someone watching you think and talk for 10 minutes on YouTube is about as close as you get to grabbing a coffee with them." A weekly show gives buyers 30 of those minutes, every week.

First, the hours. Fifty-two episodes of 30 minutes is 26 hours a year. A month holds four or five episodes, so 2 to 2.5 hours. Pro's 15 hours a month cover that six times over. The Free plan's 2 hours would cover the first four episodes, once.

On Pro alone, that's $5.54 to $8.08 an episode.

The recording is the cheap part of an interview show

Riverside Pro costs about a dollar a day. What the table doesn't price is your time after each episode: the clips that stand alone, the subtitles, a YouTube thumbnail, the LinkedIn post, the email to your list and the schedule. Do all of that by hand every week and the hours pile up fast. As I say in my video on creating content without becoming a full-time creator, "new content isn't marketing anymore. It's another job."

That's where CreateSocial picks up. Upload the episode, and Find Clips suggests the moments that stand on their own. From the same upload, we write the LinkedIn post and the email from what you said and make the thumbnail. Then we post the videos and the LinkedIn post for you once your accounts are connected.

A clip earns its place when the moment stands alone, like a full question and its answer. One that needs the ten minutes before it won't land in a feed. Our guide to posting clips on YouTube as Shorts has seven checks for picking them.

Guesting on other people's shows feeds the same week. Podcast guesting is one of the six formats in my video on how executive coaches get clients from social media, and our guide on how to get on podcasts has the pitch template. Still choosing a recorder? Our Descript vs Riverside comparison weighs Riverside against Descript's editor, and our Loom pricing breakdown covers screen recording.

Where CreateSocial fits once the episode is recorded

CreateSocial helps you build a personal brand that brings in clients, speaking gigs and customers, without content taking over your week. It learns what you know and runs the whole content week, video and written: ideas, scripts, posts, recording, editing, thumbnails and scheduling. Riverside records the conversation. CreateSocial turns it, and the rest of your week, into posts your buyers see.

Here's the weekly show inside it:

• Plan the episode from what you know. Add your website, past videos and posts, and client stories to your knowledge base. You get 80 personalized ideas a month, each with a hook and talking points. Trending Now adds what your niche is talking about every Monday, and "Ask me first" asks you a few questions so your intro tells a real story.
• Upload the episode and edit it by deleting words. Delete words from the transcript and they're cut from the video. Remove Silences takes out the pauses in one click. Subtitles go on in 11 styles, drawn into the video, and you can download a .srt file from the Preview & Publish screen for closed captions on YouTube.
• Let Find Clips pick the moments that stand alone. It suggests clips with a strength score and never pads the list with weak ones. A suggestion can join a setup from minute 4 to its payoff from minute 22. Each clip becomes its own 9:16 video with subtitles, and anything you cut stays out.
• Turn the episode into a written week. The same conversation becomes a LinkedIn post, an email to your list, a blog post and a LinkedIn carousel you export as a PDF or PNG, in your voice. YouTube thumbnails arrive three at a time, made from your video and photos of you in your brand style.
• Schedule it once. Schedule to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and X with a caption written for each platform, and we post it for you once your accounts are connected.
• Fill the weeks between episodes. Record short videos with the teleprompter near your camera, one section at a time, at your desk or in the iPhone app.

Also in the one plan: competitor tracking, X threads, Dual mode for 16:9 and 9:16 in one take, screen recording with your camera as a bubble, reaction videos in Layout or Stitch mode, virtual backgrounds with or without a real green screen, eye contact correction, B-roll from a free stock video search, platform safe-zone guides for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and an Analytics page for your connected TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.

Riverside raised a $35 million Series B in 2022. I'm Ben Moore, and I built CreateSocial on my own, bootstrapped, here in Cincinnati, Ohio, so you talk to me directly. Feature requests come to me, and a lot of what customers ask for gets built. Before CreateSocial, my agency generated millions of followers and millions of dollars in revenue for its clients, and I've generated hundreds of millions of views.

CreateSocial costs $129 a month, or $99 a month billed annually, and the pricing page promises "No add-ons, no per-feature charges." Start your free trial and upload your last episode. Want to plan the show's first month of posts together? Book a free strategy call with me.

Before you pay Riverside anything

1. Count your recording hours for a month. Guests don't add hours, but livestreams do. Under 15 hours fits Pro.
2. Decide whether you need a second show, social scheduling, thumbnails or live streaming inside Riverside. If not, skip Grow.
3. Start the 14-day trial and put day 14 in your calendar. Cancel before day 15 if it isn't for you.
4. Record two real episodes in the trial and download the separate tracks, so you know the files work in your editor.
5. Before you pay yearly, check the total on the checkout page. When we checked, Riverside's page showed Pro's yearly price two ways.
6. Upload one of those episodes to a free CreateSocial trial and see the week of posts it turns into.

Then pay for the hours your show records, at the price you're shown.