Castmagic or Dalm: posts from an upload, or transcripts made on your Mac

Castmagic and Dalm both start from a recording, but they do different jobs with it. Castmagic is built for publishing: you upload a file or bring one in from a link or a feed, and it writes show notes, posts, newsletters and blog drafts and cuts clips, with transcribed hours counted as a library total. Dalm is a Mac app for keeping what was said: a call, a meeting in the room or a file you open is transcribed on your Mac, and the audio is never sent anywhere; the transcript syncs to our servers automatically, and a third-party language model reads it to write a summary. For show notes, you describe your own format once.

Castmagic and Dalm, side by side

	Castmagic	Dalm
What it is for	Turning one recording into material to publish	Keeping what was said in calls, meetings and files, as text
How a recording gets in	Upload a file, paste a link from YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Drive and other sites, follow an RSS feed so each new episode comes in, connect Zoom, Loom or Google Drive, record in its iOS app, or bring Google Meet recordings in through Zapier	Record a call or a meeting in the room on the Mac, or open a file there, which is read where it lies
Where speech becomes text	After you upload or import the recording; where it is processed is not stated in its privacy policy	On your Mac; no audio is sent anywhere
The transcript	Speaker labels and timestamps, 60+ languages	A time and a voice on every line; European languages (25) or More languages (over a hundred), detected on their own
The words afterwards	In your Castmagic library	Synced to our servers automatically; no setting keeps them on the Mac only
What gets written	Show notes, blog articles, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, quote cards and carousels	A summary after each meeting; other documents, show notes among them, from a format you describe yourself
Clips and audio	Captioned vertical clips cut in its Studio, and audiograms	None: the audio is deleted once the text exists, with the one exception below; no player and no audio export
Questions about recordings	Its content strategist has heard every episode and suggests what to publish next; a chatbot on your site answers from your episodes	About one meeting at a time, and you can search your meetings; questions across all your recordings are in development
Calls	A meeting bot is not described on the pages we read	Your microphone and the sound your Mac plays, as two streams, in any app, with nothing joining the call
Where it runs	Records from its iOS app; the rest works on what you upload or connect	Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later; iPhone app in development

The audio is deleted once the text exists. What Castmagic does is taken from its site, pricing page and privacy policy, checked on 8 October 2026.

Where Castmagic is better than Dalm

• Posts, clips and newsletters from one upload. Castmagic turns one recording into show notes, blog articles, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, quote cards, carousels and audiograms, and cuts captioned vertical clips in its Studio. Dalm makes nothing to watch or hear: the audio is deleted once the text exists, with the one exception under the first table, so there is nothing to cut a clip from.
• Any link or feed, brought in for you. Castmagic takes a link from YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Drive, and can follow your RSS feed so each new episode arrives on its own. Dalm works from a file on your Mac: any audio or video file macOS can read, up to four hours long.
• Ready-made formats. Castmagic writes show notes and posts without you setting anything up. Dalm has no ready-made show notes: after a meeting you get a transcript and a summary, and for show notes you write down once what yours should contain. Show notes in your own format, for a podcast.
• One assistant for the whole show. Castmagic’s content strategist has heard every episode and suggests what to publish next, a chatbot on your site answers visitors from your episodes, and from Starter there is API access. In Dalm you ask about one meeting at a time, questions across all your recordings are in development, and Google Calendar is the one connection described. How asking about a meeting works.
• Several people for less. Castmagic Hobby includes 3 seats for $239 a year, and Castmagic Team includes 5 for $1,669 a year; Dalm Team is $32 a month for each member, billed annually (paid plans are not open yet).

Where Dalm is better than Castmagic

• The recording is not uploaded to be transcribed. Castmagic works on a recording once you upload or import it. In Dalm a call, a meeting in the room or an episode file you open is transcribed on your Mac, and no audio is sent anywhere. The text is another matter: transcripts sync to our servers automatically, and a third-party language model reads each one to write its summary. Which parts leave your Mac.
• No library to fill up. Castmagic counts transcribed hours as a library total — 30 on Hobby, 100 on Starter, 400 on Castmagic Team — and sells more when you need them. No plan puts a limit on recording minutes, on the length of a recording, or on how long anything is kept.
• Calls and rooms, recorded from the Mac. Castmagic records in its own app or takes recordings you bring in, and a meeting bot is not described on the pages we read. Dalm records your microphone and the sound your Mac plays as two streams, in whatever app the call runs, with nothing joining the call; when Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime takes the microphone, a prompt asks “Record this meeting?”. A meeting in the room is recorded through the Mac’s microphone. Before your first recording the app shows a note about consent; it tells no one on the call, so that is yours to do.
• A quote you can check before it goes out. Each point of a Dalm summary comes with the words that were actually said. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place.
• One person pays less. Dalm Pro is $16 a month, or $12 a month billed annually; Castmagic Hobby is $29 a month, or $19 a month billed annually, $239 for the year.

Hours that fill a library, and plans with no hours

	Castmagic	Dalm
Free	No free plan or free trial on its pricing page	A plan, not a trial
Billed annually, a month	Hobby $19, Starter $48, Castmagic Team $139	Pro $12; Team $32 for each member
For the year	$239, $579, $1,669	—
Billed monthly, a month	Hobby $29, Starter $69, Castmagic Team $199	Pro $16; Team $40 for each member
People included	3 on Hobby, 5 on Starter and Castmagic Team; each extra user on Castmagic Team is $159 a year, or $19 a month	Team, for each member; terms and templates shared
Transcribed hours	A library total of 30, 100 or 400 hours; more can be bought	See below
Larger organisations	Business & Scale, from $699 a month	—

On the Dalm side the Free plan has no end date, and files you open in the app are part of it. No plan puts a limit on recording minutes, on the length of a recording, or on how long anything is kept. What Pro and Team add is on the pricing page, and how a team shares terms and templates has a page of its own. Until Dalm is released, the waitlist is the way in. Castmagic’s prices are its regular ones, from its own pricing page, checked on 8 October 2026.

One episode, followed through each app

Step	Castmagic	Dalm
Getting it in	A file, a link or a feed you give it, or a recording made in Castmagic	A file you open on your Mac, which stays where it was, or a call or room you record there
Turning speech into text	After upload, with speaker labels and timestamps; where this happens is not stated in its privacy policy	A model on your Mac; no audio is sent anywhere
The sound afterwards	Plans come with 50 GB to 1 TB of storage	Deleted once the text exists (the exception is under the first table)
The words afterwards	In your Castmagic library	Synced to our servers automatically
What gets written	Show notes, posts, newsletters and articles, from its own formats	A summary written by a third-party language model; show notes or anything else from a format you describe
Where it goes next	Material meant for your site, feed and social accounts	Copied, or saved as Markdown, Word or PDF
Models and training	Which AI providers do the work, and whether uploads are used for training, is not stated in its privacy policy	Dalm does not train models of its own; what the model provider does with the text is not set out on this site

Castmagic is built around the episode’s next life: everything it makes is meant to be published. Dalm is built around keeping the words: the recognition runs on the Mac in front of you, so the audio has no trip to make — and the transcript syncs to our servers, so the words do.

When to pick Castmagic, Dalm, or both

• Castmagic, if each episode has to become clips, posts, a newsletter and an article, if new episodes should come in from your feed on their own, or if a few people share one plan.
• Dalm, if your recordings are conversations — interviews, calls, meetings in the room — that you want as text you can check, on a Mac, with the recording itself not uploaded; the text still syncs to our servers. You can also dictate into any app by holding a key, and that text syncs too.
• Both, if you record and keep everything in Dalm and send only the episodes you publish to Castmagic — knowing that those files then live in its library.

Working from an episode file? Turning it into a transcript split by voice. Editing the episode by its words is a different job: an editor that works through the transcript, compared. In general terms, recognition on the device and in the cloud.