Our first year, and the year-end sale: start your project for as little as possible

Cheap Recorder launched this year. Until 31 December 2026 the first yearly bill is 30% off and any plan bought for life is half price.

By Cheap Recorder · 17 September 2026 · 7 min read

Cheap Recorder went live this year, so this is our first year-end. To mark it, the first yearly bill is 30% off and every lifetime price is half off, until 31 December 2026. This post explains what we built, what the offer is worth in real numbers, and how to start a podcast, a channel or a course for as little as possible.

What we set out to build

Most screen recorders charge you for hosting. They keep your videos on their servers, and the bill grows with your library. Cheap Recorder does the opposite. Every recording is written straight to a folder on your own computer, one MP4 per recording, saved every second while you record. We host nothing, so there is nothing to charge you for keeping.

Press record in Google Chrome and it captures your screen, your microphone, your webcam and the other side of a Google Meet or Microsoft Teams call, all into one file, with a live transcript running beside it. You can cut the ums by deleting them in the transcript, drop a marker with one key while you record, burn in captions, use a green screen, and export up to 4K. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux wherever Chrome runs, and there is an Android app for phones.

That is the whole product. One flat price, every feature on the plan you pay for, and nothing held back for an upsell.

The year-end offer, in plain numbers

Paying every month, or every year with 30% off the first bill:

Plan	A month	Yearly, a month	First year
Free	$0	$0	$0
Explorer	$12	$7.13	$59.89
Creator	$20	$14.27	$119.87
Business	$40	$28.56	$239.90

Or buying it once and keeping it for good, at half price:

Plan	Normally	Until 31 December
Explorer	$199	$99.50
Creator	$299	$149.50
Business	$999	$499.50

The 30% comes off your first yearly bill, and the plan renews at the list price after that. A lifetime plan is paid once and never renews at all.

The figure worth staring at is Creator. A year of Creator on the yearly bill costs $171.24 at the list price. Creator bought for life during this offer costs $149.50. The plan you keep for good is cheaper than a single year of the plan you rent, and then it never charges you again.

What it actually costs to start

Starting is cheaper than most people think, and the recorder is the small part of it.

Castos, writing in July 2026, puts a realistic starter setup at $200 to $400 once, plus $15 to $30 a month, and sums it up as roughly $300 up front and $20 a month. The Podcast Host's breakdown lands in the same place: about $190 up front and $15 a month for a hobby show, rising to $785 up front and $360 a month for a business one, where most of the monthly cost is editing help rather than software.

Set our prices against that.

What a first year costs	Typical
Microphone, headphones and a stand	$200 to $400, paid once
Podcast hosting, if you publish a podcast	$180 to $360 a year
Cheap Recorder Explorer, first year with the offer	$59.89
Cheap Recorder Creator, first year with the offer	$119.87
Cheap Recorder Creator, bought for life at half price	$149.50, once, and never again

The microphone costs more than the recorder. That is the right way round, and the year-end offer widens the gap.

Why the first year is where projects die

There is a popular claim that 90% of podcasts stop after three episodes. We went looking for the study behind it and could not find one, so we are not going to repeat it.

What we did find is an audited index. WhichPodcast tracks 36,905 shows that appear on the major platforms, and as of 16 September 2026 it found that 73.7% had published something in the last 30 days, 97% reached ten episodes, 61% reached a hundred, and only 19% reached five hundred. The median publishing span is about two and a half years.

That is the opposite of the usual scare story, and it is more useful. Getting to episode ten is normal. Staying is the hard part, and the drop happens over years, not in the first month.

Two other numbers say why staying matters. Ahrefs studied 1.3 million keywords and found that the average page in first place on Google is five years old, and that 72.9% of pages in the top ten are more than three years old. On YouTube, vidIQ's study of more than 10 million channels found that channels posting 12 or more times a month grew their views about four times faster than channels posting less than once a month.

Your work earns most of its attention in its second, third and fifth years.

If you are going to keep going for years, the thing that stops you should not be a monthly bill in a quiet month.

That is the honest case for buying a plan for life while it is half price. It takes the monthly decision off the table for good.

Which plan suits which person

Free, 2 hours a month. For trying it out. Exports carry a watermark and cap at 720p, and everything else works: screen, microphone, webcam, live transcript, files on your disk.
Explorer, 20 hours a month. One person starting out. No watermark, up to 1080p. $7.13 a month on a yearly bill, $4.99 a month ($59.89) for the first year with the offer, or $99.50 for life.
Creator, 60 hours a month. Publishing every week, or building a course out of dozens of short recordings. Adds 4K exports, green screen and layout packs. $9.99 a month ($119.87) for the first year with the offer, or $149.50 for life.
Business, 120 hours a month, 3 team members. A small studio or an agency recording for clients. $19.99 a month ($239.90) for the first year with the offer, or $499.50 for life.

The sums, if you like them

Explorer for life at $99.50 is a little over eight months of paying monthly. Creator for life at $149.50 is seven and a half months of paying monthly, and less than one year of the yearly plan. Business for life at $499.50 is about twelve and a half months of paying monthly, for three people.

After that the recorder costs nothing for as long as you use it, and nothing to keep your videos either, because they were never on our servers. There is no storage bill waiting to grow.

What to do with the rest of the year

If you are starting, the routine that works is dull and effective. Record one thing a week. Keep the recordings short. Publish them even when they are not perfect, because the ranking numbers above only start counting once something is published.

Pick the plan by the hours you will actually record, not the one with the longest feature list. Most people starting out need Explorer. People publishing weekly or building a course usually want Creator's 60 hours and 4K.

For what the recordings can earn, read how to earn from what you record. For the full price comparison against Loom, Camtasia, Descript and Riverside, read what you get for the money. For the five-year arithmetic, read what Cheap Recorder costs over five years.

The honest part

Both offers end on 31 December 2026, and the prices above are the ones showing on the pricing page today.
The 30% is taken off the first yearly bill only. After that the plan renews at the list price.
A lifetime plan gives you that plan's features for good. It is not a promise that every future plan is included.
The free plan puts a watermark on exports and caps them at 720p. The paid plans do neither.
Cheap Recorder runs in Chrome on macOS, Windows and Linux, and on Android through its app. It does not run on iPhone or iPad yet.
We are new. Cheap Recorder launched in 2026, and this is the first year-end sale we have ever run.