Meeting notes transcription
20 meetings a week at 30 minutes each is about 2,400 minutes of audio a month.
Every month I transcribe of audio.
AssemblyAI and Mistral Voxtral tie for cheapest, at $8.40 a month. Azure would cost 4.8 times as much.
Estimated monthly bill for 2,400 minutes, lowest first. 7 of 7 providers fit.
- 1AssemblyAIUniversal-3.5 Pro (pre-recorded), $0.21/hr$8.40 per monthLowest priceVisit AssemblyAI
Usage $8.40 Monthly total $8.40 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$8.40 per monthLowest priceVisit Voxtral
Usage $8.40 Monthly total $8.40 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$8.80 per month+$0.40, 4.8% moreVisit ElevenLabs
Usage $8.80 Monthly total $8.80 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$10.32 per month+$1.92, 22.9% moreVisit Deepgram
Usage $10.32 Monthly total $10.32 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$10.80 per month+$2.40, 28.6% moreVisit OpenAI
Usage $10.80 Monthly total $10.80 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$38.40 per month+$30.00, 357.1% moreVisit Google Cloud
Usage $38.40 Monthly total $38.40 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$40.00 per month+$31.60, 376.2% moreVisit Azure
Usage $40.00 Monthly total $40.00 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.
What to look at
- Speaker labels are close to a requirement for useful meeting notes.
- Multiple speakers and accents make accuracy a bigger factor than a small price gap.
- Per-hour billing and per-minute billing round differently on short meetings.
Frequently asked questions
- What does meeting transcription cost with an API?
- The calculator is preset to about 2,400 minutes a month, or 40 hours. Turn on speaker labels to see which providers charge extra for them.
- Why do prices differ between per-minute and per-hour providers?
- The calculator converts every provider to the same monthly volume, so per-hour and per-minute prices are compared on equal terms.