This is not a product review. Cleanvoice did not pay anyone to create this piece. What follows is a sincere evaluation of Cleanvoice AI from the perspective of a group who are responsible for professionally editing podcast and course audio files every single week. This article discusses the strengths of Cleanvoice, areas where it has significant shortcomings, how Cleanvoice’s credit-based pricing model compares to the cost of hiring humans to edit your audio based on the number of hours of audio you have edited at each tier, and when to utilize the AI tool independently, through the API in conjunction with other tools in your production pipeline, or give up on trying to automate the process entirely and just find a good human editor. Let’s start with the CleanVoice review.
What Cleanvoice actually does (and what it doesn’t)
Cleanvoice is simply a cleaning application. The speed of processing is very fast; our 1-hour episodes take less than 10 minutes to process. Fast enough to incorporate it into a same-day production workflow versus queuing the project overnight.
Every plan offers identical features; the only difference between plans is how much audio you can clean. Every plan comes with:
- Removal of filler words (“um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know”) in over 20 languages.
- Removing silence/dead air.
- Removing mouth sounds (lip smack/tongue click).
- Removing breaths.
- Reducing background noise.
- Improving studio sound/audio quality.
- Automatically transcribing the episode with generating an episode summary.
- Exporting the timeline for a DAW handoff.
- Support for video podcasts (.mp4).
However, what Cleanvoice cannot do: content editing (cutting out a tangent section of an interview, re-structuring the conversation between host and guest, removing the five-minute segment where the guest strayed from topic). Level matching between multiple speakers, separately recorded on individual tracks. Adding a music bed. Creating chapter markers. Creating show notes outside of the AI-generated episode summary. All these tasks need to be done by a human.
Cleanvoice pricing: the actual numbers
Cleanvoice uses a credit-based system in which all pricing is based on the number of hours of audio you have Cleanvoice process. All billing is based upon the length of time your files take to be processed, where there is no charge until the first minute. After that time, each additional minute will be rounded up to the next minute. Therefore, an 8-minute and 25-second file would bill as 9 minutes. Below is the complete pricing structure for Cleanvoice as of 2026 (listed prices do NOT include VAT; any applicable taxes must be added locally), per their pricing page:
|
Plan type |
Price per month |
Number of hours |
Hourly rate |
|
Free trial |
– |
30 minutes |
– |
|
Pay-as-you-go |
$11 |
5 hours |
$2.20/hr |
|
Pay-as-you-go |
$20 |
10 hours |
$2.00/hr |
|
Pay-as-you-go |
$45 |
30 hours |
$1.50/hr |
|
Subscription |
$11/month |
10 hours |
$1.10/hr |
|
Subscription |
$30/month |
30 hours |
$1.00/hr |
|
Subscription |
$90/month |
100 hours |
$0.90/hr |
|
Custom/API |
Custom |
200+ hours |
Pricing negotiable directly |
For one-time projects or teams wishing to test the waters prior to committing to a regular schedule, the pay-as-you-go option provides a viable solution. Additionally, credits expire after two years.
Lastly, the Custom and/or API plans target volumes greater than 200 hours per month for media producers and platforms desiring some level of programmatic access. Below this volume, users can achieve similar results via the web app with little to no setup overhead.
The cost comparison: Cleanvoice vs. human editing vs. the API
The main reason people don’t bother to run the numbers for this part of the process is that the math is messy. So here is how they stack up for a “typical” weekly podcast team. Weekly podcast scenario: 60-minute long podcasts; four new episodes released every month; 2-speaker remote interviews.
Cleanvoice subscription route. Since four hours of audio per month is well within the 10-hour limit provided by the $11 monthly subscription for Cleanvoice, we can simply ignore the fact that there is a 10-hour limit. Cleanvoice handles the filler words, mouth sounds, silences, and noise reduction with a turnaround of less than 10 minutes, making the cost per episode less than $3. However, once Cleanvoice has done its thing, what is left for you to do? Content editing to eliminate tangents and make sure that the conversation flows smoothly, level matching between the two tracks, add music, create chapter markers and write show notes based on the summary created by Cleanvoice’s AI. Creator Economy Tools reviewed Cleanvoice in their 4.1/5 rating review stating “the results require review – sometimes auto-cleaned audio has abrupt edits in spots where the cut was made too aggressively.” A quality control (QC) pass is definitely necessary if you want to post something of high quality.
Human editor route. A professional podcast audio editor will charge $150–$400 per episode for a complete edit of your podcast including all mechanical aspects such as cleaning up your audio, eliminating extraneous material, balancing levels between both speakers, and writing and delivering show notes. Per our podcast editing services overview, most production-ready 60-minute episodes take approximately 2–4 hours of an editor’s time. Therefore, four new episodes per month would result in a total cost of $600–$1,600 per month for human-only editing.
Hybrid option. First, Cleanvoice performs the mechanical cleanup tasks (filler word removal, breath sounds removal, silence removal etc.) and delivers a pre-cleaned file to a human editor. The human editor then only needs to concern themselves with pacing, structure, and overall presentation. Cleanvoice typically eliminates 30–45 minutes of mechanical work per episode, thus reducing total editing time and cost by 30–40%. If you want professional-sounding output from your podcast without having to pay for two hours of manual cleanup time per episode, this is probably going to be the configuration that most production teams end up with. See our guide to hiring a podcast editor for tips on structuring your brief and making the handoff easy for your editor to begin working from a pre-processed Cleanvoice file without additional rework.
API option. The Cleanvoice API is essentially just a programmatic access point to the exact same cleaning pipeline used by the web interface. This means that you’ll be able to automate the first-pass cleaning step across a massive catalogue with minimal overhead – perfect for podcast networks or production platforms processing 200+ hours of media per month. It’s not ideal however for solo creators, small shows, or production agencies handling anywhere from 10–20 episodes per month. Below this volume threshold, the development and maintenance time spent creating an API integration will exceed the operational savings you achieve from automating those first-pass cleaning steps. Just use the web app.
|
Option |
Monthly cost* |
What you get |
What’s still your job |
|
Cleanvoice only |
$11–$90 |
Mechanical cleanup, fast turnaround |
Content editing, QC pass, show notes |
|
Human editor only |
$600–$1,600 |
Full production, editorial judgment |
Nothing, if the editor is good |
|
Cleanvoice + human |
$200–$900 |
Efficient split: machine cleans, human edits |
Coordination, brief, QC sign-off |
|
Cleanvoice API |
Custom |
Programmatic at scale, 200hr+ volume |
Developer setup, integration maintenance |
*Based on estimates for four 60-minute episodes processed monthly.
What Cleanvoice does well
From The Podcast Host’s testing experience, the Castmagic feature breakdown, and the Comparateur-IA analysis, Cleanvoice has received positive feedback about the following across all three analyses:
Speed. Processing a sixty-minute podcast episode takes less than ten minutes and can be done so quickly that an editor can fit it into their schedule during the day (between a morning recording session and an afternoon edit) without having to wait through an entire night.
Accuracy of filler word identification on clean audio. Cleanvoice identifies most “um” and “uh” occurrences accurately when the speaker speaks at a constant rate and when there is little ambient noise. The Creator Economy Tools review states that for interview-style podcasts where guests tend to create many filler words, using Cleanvoice automatically removes them and saves thirty to sixty minutes of manual editing per episode. That is a significant amount of time and the primary reason editors will utilize this service.
Removal of mouth sounds. Most people have never used a feature like this and are surprised it exists. It is difficult to find lip smacking, tongue clicking, and breathing noises manually because you are usually just listening for them until you hear them in the final cut and then have to go back and look for them. Cleanvoice finds these categories systematically, which is a big time-saver for both experienced editors who know how to do it themselves and for new editors who don’t have much experience.
Detection of filler words in multiple languages. Cleanvoice detects filler words in over twenty languages. This is rare for an automated tool in its class and very practical for international podcasting teams or for podcasters with non-English-speaking guests.
Works entirely online. No need to install software. Simply upload your file, run it through the program, and download it once completed. There is no DAW plugin, no desktop app, and therefore no compatibility issues. It works on any computer with internet access.
Thirty minutes of free trial clean audio. Cleanvoice offers a free trial, and you do not have to enter your credit card information. The low barrier to entry allows you to test the service on a real episode of your podcast with a real guest rather than testing it on a generic clean demo file.
Where Cleanvoice falls short
Any review of Cleanvoice would not be complete without also discussing the areas where it fell short. These are the common complaints expressed by users of the service on Trustpilot and G2, and were expressed in each of the independent editorial reviews:
Aggressive cuts on conversational audio. According to The Podcast Host’s 2021 hands-on test – still the most thorough test available – when there is variation in speaker speed in conversational audio, Cleanvoice makes editing harder than it needs to be. The test found that after removing a filler word, “the next word that came after a filler word was almost always moved right up to the word preceding the filler,” resulting in “unnatural and choppy sentences.” Since that 2021 review, Cleanvoice has improved somewhat, however the basic problem remains. When there is variability in speaker speed, or if the input audio is otherwise poor quality, the rules-based nature of Cleanvoice results in artefacts that must be corrected in the original DAW session.
No editable timeline. Once you have uploaded your file and processed it through Cleanvoice, if there is an error (a word was trimmed too close, an intended pause was removed, etc.), you must return to your original DAW session to correct it. While Cleanvoice provides a file that includes cut markers based on your timeline, there is no editing capability within Cleanvoice itself. This is by design, and should not be considered a criticism of Cleanvoice specifically; however it means that quality control will always rest with the user and correcting errors will always require returning to upstream sessions.
Billing structure compounds at higher volumes. Based on the price points ($0.90–$2.20/hour) on the standard plans offered by Cleanvoice, the pricing is reasonable for a single show or small group of shows. However when running at high output levels (i.e., fifty or more episodes per month), the per-minute pricing becomes disadvantageous relative to hiring humans to perform editing services for a flat fee. The Custom API tier exists for large-scale operators such as this; however it requires setup and integration work that will likely not be feasible for smaller operations.
Doesn’t fix the recording environment. Cleanvoice may reduce ambient noise; however it doesn’t eliminate issues caused by acoustics (i.e., a poorly treated room).
No content judgment. Cleanvoice has no idea how long the guest took to tell a story that didn’t add anything or that the host had already made the exact same point during the last segment.
Who should use Cleanvoice and for what
|
User type |
Best use case |
Caveats |
|
Solo podcaster, weekly show |
First-pass cleanup before a light human review pass |
Always QC the output before publishing |
|
Interview show with multiple guests |
Filler word and mouth sound removal across variable speakers |
Guest audio quality varies; Cleanvoice results vary with it |
|
Course creator |
Lecture and talking-head audio cleanup before LMS upload |
Check cuts around technical terminology and proper nouns |
|
Podcast network (high volume) |
API integration for programmatic first-pass cleaning across catalogue |
Requires developer setup; negotiate custom pricing directly |
|
High-ticket coaching show |
Hybrid: Cleanvoice first pass + human editor for content and delivery |
Cleanvoice is not the final pass on premium content |
|
Video podcaster |
Audio cleanup layer before the video editing stage begins |
Multi-cam editing, clips, captions require a separate workflow |
As mentioned above, podcast networks can utilize API integration into their systems to perform first-pass cleaning on large volumes of episodes. However, this would require developers to set up the integration and to negotiate custom pricing directly. Coaching shows that are high-ticket should have two passes of editing – the first pass being Cleanvoice followed by a second pass performed by a human editor reviewing both the content and delivery of the episode.
Video podcasters do not just need audio cleaned up; they also need to edit their multi-camera shoots, create vertical clips, add captions and correct the color. Therefore, Cleanvoice will only provide one layer of cleaning for your video podcast. A video podcast editing service will take care of all other elements of post-production. Cleanvoice and a video editor are not interchangeable.
For a workflow that covers the full course video production pipeline, our course video editing guide covers the decisions at each stage.
The practical setup: how to integrate Cleanvoice into a real production workflow
A lot of the teams that are able to get the best results from Cleanvoice don’t use Cleanvoice as their only edit. Instead they use it as the first step in a process:
- Record. Record multiple sessions back-to-back if you are able – this will help reduce the amount of variability caused by different environments, which will help the Cleanvoice edits avoid misfiring.
- Upload the recordings right after recording them. Check off the options for removing filler words, mouth noises, silence removal, and noise reduction. If you’re working with clean audio you may want to uncheck the option for noise reduction as it can alter the pitch/tone of the speaker’s voice.
- Listen to your QC pass at 1.5 times speed. Note the timestamp of everything that was bad.
- Give your editor what Cleanvoice has done and tell them to focus on content, pace and leveling – don’t let them spend their time finding filler words.
The honest verdict
As an automated first-pass in the production stack, Cleanvoice is well worth its cost. As a final pass, or as a replacement for an editor’s judgment, not quite. A simple machine that does your tedious cleaning work for you so you can save 30–60 minutes of cleaning time per episode and give that time to your editor (or yourself) to focus on improving the episode.
The price-point is competitive for the majority of podcasts being produced. At $11 per month Cleanvoice gives you enough bandwidth for a basic weekly podcast. The hybrid approach – Cleanvoice for all mechanical cleanup, human editor for content and delivery – is the most common configuration that teams end up using because it allows both the tool and human to perform their respective jobs.
There is one thing Cleanvoice can never do: it can’t listen. It uses pattern-based algorithms applied to audio files. A human editor listens to the finished product as someone else might, finds out what sounds wrong although the transcript looks good, decides on a structural level whether those four minutes of that section should just get cut completely, and is responsible and accountable for the finished product in ways that an algorithm simply isn’t. There’s nothing unique about Cleanvoice here – there is simply a fundamental limit in what automated audio processing is capable of doing.
Do use Cleanvoice for what it is – a fast, inexpensive layer to mechanically remove the surface-level issues from your episodes so your editor doesn’t waste their time on areas of editing that are clearly outside their scope. Try the free trial on one actual episode. If the cleaned version sounds like your podcast with many of its “rough edges” smoothed over, put it in your workflow. If it sounds like something went wrong, that also tells you something.
