Stay free if you only need ~235 hours of async transcription included and full access to universal-3 pro model. Upgrade if you need volume-based committed-use discounts and hipaa compliance with signed baa. Most solo builders can start free.
Why it matters: Per-hour pricing compounds at high volume — 1,000 calls/day averaging 10 minutes costs ~$35/day base plus add-ons, making it expensive beyond a few thousand hours/month
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Why it matters: Audio intelligence features (sentiment, entity detection, summarization) each add incremental per-hour charges on top of the base $0.21 rate
Available from: Pay As You Go
Why it matters: Non-English language quality varies significantly — performance on less common languages and heavy accents lags English materially
Available from: Pay As You Go
Why it matters: Real-time streaming at $0.45/hour is more than 2x the async rate, which adds up quickly for voice agents handling high call volumes
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Why it matters: Enterprise features like custom data retention and dedicated support require sales-led pricing rather than transparent self-serve tiers
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Why it matters: Get help when stuck. Can save hours of troubleshooting on critical projects.
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AssemblyAI's Universal-3 Pro model typically achieves 5-8% word error rates on conversational English audio, benchmarking competitively with Google's latest models and Deepgram Nova-3. On phone-call audio with background noise, AssemblyAI often edges ahead due to training emphasis on real-world conversational data. Accuracy on non-English languages is more variable and should be tested for your specific use case.
A typical 10-minute customer service call costs $0.035 in base transcription ($0.21/hour prorated). Adding sentiment analysis, entity detection, and PII redaction pushes that to roughly $0.05 per call. A voice agent handling 500 calls per day would cost approximately $25/day in base transcription plus add-on fees, with volume discounts available through enterprise agreements.
Universal-3 Pro supports 99+ languages with automatic language detection, but quality varies significantly by language. English, Spanish, French, and German perform at production-grade accuracy with full audio intelligence support. Less common languages may have higher word error rates and should be tested with representative audio samples before committing to production use.
LeMUR (Leveraging Large Language Models to Understand Recognized Speech) is AssemblyAI's framework for querying transcripts with natural language directly through the same API. Instead of transcribing, then separately sending output to an LLM, LeMUR handles both steps in a single API call with optimized context handling for audio-derived text, reducing latency and simplifying your architecture.
Yes. AssemblyAI offers HIPAA-compliant processing with signed BAAs for healthcare customers, SOC 2 Type II certification, and EU data residency for GDPR-regulated workflows. Built-in PII redaction automatically removes social security numbers, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data from transcripts. Zero-retention processing is available for maximum data privacy.
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Last verified March 2026