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← Back to AssemblyAI Overview

AssemblyAI Pricing & Plans 2026

Complete pricing guide for AssemblyAI. Compare all plans, analyze costs, and find the perfect tier for your needs.

Try AssemblyAI Free →Compare Plans ↓

Not sure if free is enough? See our Free vs Paid comparison →
Still deciding? Read our full verdict on whether AssemblyAI is worth it →

🆓Free Tier Available
💎2 Paid Plans
⚡No Setup Fees

Choose Your Plan

Free

$50 in free credits

mo

  • ✓~235 hours of async transcription included
  • ✓Full access to Universal-3 Pro model
  • ✓Audio intelligence features available
  • ✓Real-time streaming API access
  • ✓Community support
Start Free →

Pay As You Go

$0.21/hour async, $0.45/hour streaming

mo

  • ✓Universal-3 Pro speech model
  • ✓Real-time streaming via WebSocket
  • ✓Speaker diarization, sentiment, PII redaction
  • ✓LeMUR LLM framework access
  • ✓99+ language support
  • ✓Standard support
Start Free Trial →
Most Popular

Enterprise

Custom pricing

mo

  • ✓Volume-based committed-use discounts
  • ✓HIPAA compliance with signed BAA
  • ✓EU data residency options
  • ✓Zero-retention processing available
  • ✓Dedicated support and SLAs
  • ✓Custom model fine-tuning
Start Free Trial →

Pricing sourced from AssemblyAI · Last verified March 2026

Feature Comparison

FeaturesFreePay As You GoEnterprise
~235 hours of async transcription included✓✓✓
Full access to Universal-3 Pro model✓✓✓
Audio intelligence features available✓✓✓
Real-time streaming API access✓✓✓
Community support✓✓✓
Universal-3 Pro speech model—✓✓
Real-time streaming via WebSocket—✓✓
Speaker diarization, sentiment, PII redaction—✓✓
LeMUR LLM framework access—✓✓
99+ language support—✓✓
Standard support—✓✓
Volume-based committed-use discounts——✓
HIPAA compliance with signed BAA——✓
EU data residency options——✓
Zero-retention processing available——✓
Dedicated support and SLAs——✓
Custom model fine-tuning——✓

Is AssemblyAI Worth It?

✅ Why Choose AssemblyAI

  • • Universal-3 Pro model delivers competitive pricing at $0.21/hour for async transcription with comparable or better accuracy on conversational audio versus major cloud providers
  • • Free tier includes $50 in credits (roughly 235 hours of async transcription), substantially more generous than Google's 60-minute free allowance
  • • Real-time streaming API hits sub-300ms latency over WebSocket, suitable for conversational voice agents where response speed is critical
  • • LeMUR framework is the only speech API in our directory that natively supports LLM-powered querying of transcripts, eliminating custom NLP pipelines
  • • Audio intelligence suite bundles speaker diarization, sentiment analysis, PII redaction, and entity detection in a single API call
  • • SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA compliance, and EU data residency available — enterprise-grade controls matching Google and AWS offerings

⚠️ Consider This

  • • 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
  • • Audio intelligence features (sentiment, entity detection, summarization) each add incremental per-hour charges on top of the base $0.21 rate
  • • Non-English language quality varies significantly — performance on less common languages and heavy accents lags English materially
  • • 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
  • • Enterprise features like custom data retention and dedicated support require sales-led pricing rather than transparent self-serve tiers

What Users Say About AssemblyAI

👍 What Users Love

  • ✓Universal-3 Pro model delivers competitive pricing at $0.21/hour for async transcription with comparable or better accuracy on conversational audio versus major cloud providers
  • ✓Free tier includes $50 in credits (roughly 235 hours of async transcription), substantially more generous than Google's 60-minute free allowance
  • ✓Real-time streaming API hits sub-300ms latency over WebSocket, suitable for conversational voice agents where response speed is critical
  • ✓LeMUR framework is the only speech API in our directory that natively supports LLM-powered querying of transcripts, eliminating custom NLP pipelines
  • ✓Audio intelligence suite bundles speaker diarization, sentiment analysis, PII redaction, and entity detection in a single API call
  • ✓SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA compliance, and EU data residency available — enterprise-grade controls matching Google and AWS offerings

👎 Common Concerns

  • ⚠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
  • ⚠Audio intelligence features (sentiment, entity detection, summarization) each add incremental per-hour charges on top of the base $0.21 rate
  • ⚠Non-English language quality varies significantly — performance on less common languages and heavy accents lags English materially
  • ⚠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
  • ⚠Enterprise features like custom data retention and dedicated support require sales-led pricing rather than transparent self-serve tiers

Pricing FAQ

How accurate is AssemblyAI compared to Google Speech-to-Text and Deepgram?

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.

What's the real cost for a voice AI application at scale?

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.

Does AssemblyAI work for non-English languages?

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.

What is LeMUR and how does it differ from just using ChatGPT on a transcript?

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.

Is AssemblyAI HIPAA compliant and suitable for healthcare or finance?

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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More about AssemblyAI

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Deepgram Pricing

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