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AssemblyAI pricing

AssemblyAI sells speech-to-text, speech understanding, text-to-speech and LLM APIs for developers building voice products.

AI transcription softwareFree planPriced per minuteSelf-serve + sales
Visit AssemblyAIPrices checked Oct 29, 2026

How much does AssemblyAI cost?

Usage price from $0.21/minute
Free plan
Yes
Usage price
$0.21/minute
Enterprise
Contact sales
Read from assemblyai.com/pricing on Oct 29, 2026. Price changed? Tell usSee the line each price came from

In your favor

  • No long-term contract. no contract on pay-as-you-go
  • Free plan. Free tier with no credit card: up to 185 hours of pre-recorded and 333 hours of streaming transcription
  • No setup fee. Setup is included in the price.

Watch out for

  • Extra usage is billed. Billed monthly on actual usage
  • Their pages disagree: pre-recorded language count. "works across 18 languages, with native code switching" vs "Languages : 32 with code-switching"

How you buy and get started

Self-serve + salesButtons on their site: Get started, Try our API for free, Contact sales
Sign up
Create an account and start transcribing immediately, no credit card required
"You can create an account and start transcribing immediately with no credit card required."
Setup
Not stated
When sales steps in
Custom rate limits and volume pricing via sales
"Get custom rate limits, enhanced concurrency, and enterprise-grade flexibility tailored to your AI workloads."
Support
Support page and status page
"[Support](/contact/support)"

What AssemblyAI does

AssemblyAI offers pay-as-you-go APIs for pre-recorded, realtime and sync speech-to-text, plus add-ons such as speaker diarization, speaker identification and summarization. It also sells text-to-speech, dictation, guardrails and an LLM gateway, with custom pricing via sales.

Good for
Developers and companies building voice agents, AI notetakers, call analytics, medical transcription and captioning products on an API.
Channels
API, Playground, Self-hosted, Voice AI Cloud, AWS Marketplace
Main product
Speech-to-Text API (Universal-3.5 Pro pre-recorded, Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime streaming)
Also includes
Pre-recorded speech-to-text, Realtime speech-to-text, Sync speech-to-text, Dictation API, Text-to-speech API, Speech Understanding (speaker identification, summarization, sentiment, entity detection, translation)
Connects to
AWS Marketplace
Public API
Yes
MCP server
Not stated
  • Speaker identificationIdentify speakers by their actual names or roles.
  • Multiple languages supportedAssemblyAI supports transcription in over 99 languages across our models.
  • Live meeting transcriptionTranscribe live audio and video files in real time at ultra-low latency and high-quality accuracy.
  • AI summaries and action itemsGenerate timestamped, chapter-based summaries of audio files at scale.
  • Human proofreading optionNot stated
  • API access[API Reference](https://www.assemblyai.com/docs/api-reference/overview)
  • Zoom, Teams, Meet integrationsNot stated
  • SOC 2 / HIPAA complianceNot stated
  • Export and subtitle formatsNot stated
  • Custom vocabularyProvide up to 1000 words or phrases (maximum 6 words per phrase) to improve transcription accuracy.

The same 10 checks appear on every tool in AI transcription software. Each tick quotes the vendor's own site.

Security and your data

QuestionTheir answerWhere it says so
Trains AI on your data?yes, with opt-out (to the extent applicable to pricing plan)"(iii) to train AssemblyAI’s artificial intelligence and machine learning models. For information on how to opt-out of AssemblyAI’s use of Customer Data for purposes of training its"terms
HIPAA (signs a BAA)available"[Business Associate Agreement](/legal/business-associate-agreement)"terms
SOC 2Not stated
GDPRNot stated
CCPACalifornia Resident Rights (CCPA) section in privacy policy"[**California Resident Rights (“CCPA”)**](https://assemblyai.com/legal/privacy-policy#california-resident-rights)"privacy
PCINot stated
ISO 27001Not stated
Single sign-onNot stated
Trust centeryes"[Trust Center](https://app.vanta.com/assemblyai/trust/7n80syl8zln1bn1qm3x8eg)"terms

Security answers are the vendor's own claims, quoted. We don't audit them.

Every plan

PlanMonthlyBilled yearlyIncludedOver the allowanceWhere it says so
Pre-recorded: Universal-3.5 Pro/hr $0.21per minute – – – "$0.21** /hr"
Pre-recorded: Universal-2/hr $0.15per minute – – – "$0.15** /hr"
Realtime: Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime/hr $0.45per minute – – – "$0.45** /hr"
Realtime: Universal-Streaming/hr $0.15per minute – – – "High-quality realtime model for English only transcription. Purpose-built for production v"
Realtime: Universal-Streaming Multilingual/hr $0.15per minute – – – "Supports English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian. | **$0.15** /hr"
Sync API/hr $0.30per minute – – – "**$0.30** /hr"
Dictation API/hr $0.62per minute – – – "**$0.62** /hr"
Text-to-Speech: AssemblyAI-TTS-1/1M chars $15per minute – – – "**$15** /1M chars"
Custom Quote – – – "Get custom rate limits, enhanced concurrency, and enterprise-grade flexibility tailored to"
Their pages disagree: pre-recorded language count"works across 18 languages, with native code switching" vs "Languages : 32 with code-switching"

Free plan: Free tier with no credit card: up to 185 hours of pre-recorded and 333 hours of streaming transcription

Fine print

Billing increment
Not stated
Billed beyond usage
Billed monthly on actual usage
"We bill monthly based on your actual usage."
Contract
no contract on pay-as-you-go
"There are no minimum commitments, upfront fees, or contracts on the pay-as-you-go plan."
Refunds
paid fees not refundable unless otherwise provided
"Unless otherwise provided herein or in an applicable Order Form, paid Fees are not refundable"
Auto renew
Not stated
Price change notice
Not stated

"Not stated" means we read their pricing page and terms and they don't say.

About the company

Legal name
AssemblyAI Inc.
Online since
Dec 24, 2016
Domain registration date
Ships updates
104 in the last 12 months
Last on Oct 23, 2026, from their changelog
Customers
"Millions build on AssemblyAI; 120 million+ conversations per week"
their claim

AssemblyAI alternatives

Deepgram$333 /moFree plan · checked Oct 29, 2026TurboScribe$10 /moFree plan · checked Oct 29, 2026OpenAI Whisper API$20 /moFree plan · checked Oct 29, 2026GoTranscript$35 /mochecked Oct 29, 2026Trint$69 /mochecked Oct 29, 2026Speechmatics$0.24 /minuteFree plan · checked Oct 29, 2026Sonix$22.92 /mochecked Oct 29, 2026Descript$16 /moFree plan · checked Oct 29, 2026

Reviews elsewhere

G2 ↗Trustpilot ↗Reddit ↗Product Hunt ↗

We link to reviews instead of copying ratings: those sites don't allow reuse, and we don't test products ourselves.

Questions

Is AssemblyAI free?

Yes. Free tier with no credit card: up to 185 hours of pre-recorded and 333 hours of streaming transcription

Does AssemblyAI train AI on your data?

Yes, with opt-out (to the extent applicable to pricing plan), according to AssemblyAI: "(iii) to train AssemblyAI’s artificial intelligence and machine learning models. For information on how to opt-out of AssemblyAI’s use of Cu"

Is AssemblyAI HIPAA compliant?

AssemblyAI says a HIPAA BAA is available.