AI Transcription Cost Comparison Calculator

Choose pre-recorded or real-time transcription, then enter the total billable audio hours expected each month. The calculator adds any retry or repeat-processing allowance and ranks all applicable provider options.

Results include cost per audio hour, monthly cost, yearly cost, and the saving between the lowest and highest options. You can also add a custom provider rate to compare a private quote or another service.

Enter the total audio duration that the provider will bill. If 1,000 one-hour files are processed each month, enter 1,000 hours.

Multi-channel billing requires care. Google Cloud bills each channel separately. A 100-hour stereo workload can therefore represent 200 billable channel-hours.

Add a retry percentage when files may be submitted again because of failures, workflow retries, user requests, or quality checks.

For real-time AssemblyAI models, billing follows the open WebSocket session duration rather than only the spoken audio. Use the session-overhead field for connection time, silence, reconnects, or sessions that remain open after speech ends.

• Choose a transcription API before development.
• Compare pre-recorded and real-time speech workloads.
• Estimate monthly and annual transcription spend.
• See how retries affect the final bill.
• Compare a public rate with a private provider quote.
• Identify the saving between available options.

OpenAI GPT-Realtime-Whisper is included for real-time transcription at its official per-minute price.

Deepgram Nova-3 and Flux rates are included for the applicable processing modes. AssemblyAI Universal models use their official rates, with streaming models calculated from open session duration. Google Speech-to-Text V2 standard recognition uses its official volume tiers, while Dynamic Batch uses its separate per-minute rate.

Prices were checked on June 19, 2026. Provider pricing, promotions, model availability, and billing rules can change.

The result does not automatically add speaker diarization, redaction, medical mode, keyterm prompting, storage, network transfer, support plans, compliance fees, taxes, or enterprise discounts.

Use the custom provider option when you have a negotiated all-in hourly rate. Always confirm the final price on the provider's official page before purchasing.