AssemblyAI pricing
AssemblyAI is a speech-to-text specialist, with separate models for recorded audio and for live streaming, and a voice agent API that bundles speech recognition, a language model and speech output.
Transcription is billed per hour of audio. Speaker labels are an add-on that is charged per hour on top of the base rate, which is why the speaker labels option in the calculator changes the total for this provider.
AssemblyAI does not sell text to speech on its own, so it does not appear in the text-to-speech ranking. Language model calls made by its voice agent are billed separately and are not included in the per-minute figure.
Some “Sign up” links are affiliate links and may earn a commission. Rankings are computed from price only and never take affiliate status into account.
Every month I transcribe of audio.
AssemblyAI and Mistral Voxtral tie for cheapest, at $3.50 a month. Azure would cost 4.8 times as much.
Estimated monthly bill for 1,000 minutes, lowest first. 7 of 7 providers fit.
- 1AssemblyAIThis pageUniversal-3.5 Pro (pre-recorded), $0.21/hr$3.50 per monthLowest priceVisit AssemblyAI
Usage $3.50 Monthly total $3.50 Works out to $0.0035 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- 1Mistral VoxtralVoxtral Mini Transcribe 3, $0.0035/min$3.50 per monthLowest priceVisit Voxtral
Usage $3.50 Monthly total $3.50 Works out to $0.0035 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- 3ElevenLabsScribe v2 (and v2 Medical), $0.22/hr$3.67 per month+$0.17, 4.8% moreVisit ElevenLabs
Usage $3.67 Monthly total $3.67 Works out to $0.00367 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- 4DeepgramNova-3 (pre-recorded), $0.0043/min$4.30 per month+$0.80, 22.9% moreVisit Deepgram
Usage $4.30 Monthly total $4.30 Works out to $0.0043 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- 5OpenAIGPT Transcribe, $0.0045/min$4.50 per month+$1.00, 28.6% moreVisit OpenAI
Usage $4.50 Monthly total $4.50 Works out to $0.0045 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- 6Google CloudSpeech-to-Text V2 Standard (incl. Chirp), $0.016/min$16.00 per month+$12.50, 357.1% moreVisit Google Cloud
Usage $16.00 Monthly total $16.00 Works out to $0.016 per minute.
Tiers are graduated: each band of usage is billed at its own rate (reached: Up to 500000).
- 7AzureStandard real-time transcription, $1/hr$16.67 per month+$13.17, 376.2% moreVisit Azure
Usage $16.67 Monthly total $16.67 Works out to $0.0167 per minute.
Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- Prices updated 2026-10-23.
- Priced in the "Above 0" tier; every unit is billed at that tier's rate.
- Free-tier credits are not subtracted.
- How we calculate this
Some “Visit” links are affiliate links: the provider may pay us if you sign up. That never changes the order, which is set by price alone.
Pricing by model
Universal-3.5 Pro (pre-recorded) pricing
Speech to text. Flagship pre-recorded speech-to-text model covering 18 languages, with Universal-2 as the 99-language fallback.
| Monthly usage | Price per hour |
|---|---|
| Any volume | $0.21 |
Pre-recorded, billed per audio hour submitted; multichannel audio is billed per channel. Rates read from the official pricing reference (pricing.md, last updated 2026-09-28) because the pricing page is JS-rendered. Add-ons such as keyterms, Medical Mode and translation are not modelled.
Source: www.assemblyai.com
Universal-2 (pre-recorded) pricing
Speech to text. Previous-generation pre-recorded model with broad 99-language coverage at a lower price.
| Monthly usage | Price per hour |
|---|---|
| Any volume | $0.15 |
Pre-recorded, billed per audio hour submitted. Rates read from the official pricing reference (pricing.md, last updated 2026-09-28).
Source: www.assemblyai.com
Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime (streaming) pricing
Speech to text. Premium low-latency streaming transcription model, billed on session duration.
| Monthly usage | Price per hour |
|---|---|
| Any volume | $0.45 |
Streaming, billed on WebSocket session duration (including idle time), not audio sent. $0.45/hr is the base rate; add-ons such as keyterms are not modelled.
Source: www.assemblyai.com
Universal-Streaming (English and Multilingual) pricing
Speech to text. Standard streaming transcription with English and multilingual variants, billed on session duration.
| Monthly usage | Price per hour |
|---|---|
| Any volume | $0.15 |
Streaming, billed on WebSocket session duration (including idle time), not audio sent. English and Multilingual variants are both $0.15/hr.
Source: www.assemblyai.com
Voice Agent API pricing
Realtime voice. Managed speech-to-speech agent stack that bundles STT, LLM reasoning, TTS, turn detection and tool calling in one per-minute rate.
| Audio in | $0.075 per minute |
|---|---|
| Audio out | $0 per minute |
Flat $4.50/hr ($0.075/min) of open session time, covering STT, LLM reasoning, TTS, turn detection, interruption handling and tool calling. Modelled as a combined per-minute rate in audio_in with audio_out 0. LLM Gateway calls made by the agent are billed separately and are not included. Higher concurrency is via enterprise contract; no public limit is modelled.
Source: www.assemblyai.com
Features
| Feature | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|
| Speaker labels | Extra cost |
| Languages | 99 |
| Self-hosting | No |
| EU data residency | Yes |
| Realtime voice | Yes |
Frequently asked questions
- How much does AssemblyAI speech-to-text cost per month for 1,000 minutes?
- About $3.50 a month using $0.21/hr (prices updated 2026-10-23). Free-tier credits are not subtracted.
- How much does AssemblyAI voice agent cost per month for 1,000 minutes?
- About $75.00 a month using $0.075/min audio in + out (prices updated 2026-10-23). Free-tier credits are not subtracted.
- Where does the AssemblyAI pricing on this page come from?
- From the provider’s own public pricing page, last checked on 2026-10-23. The methodology page lists every source and rule.