AssemblyAI
Verified Oct 16, 2026 ActiveSpeech-to-text API priced by the hour of audio
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Paid
Pay-as-you-go per hour of audio with no monthly plan: $0.15/hr Universal-2, $0.21/hr Universal-3.5 Pro, $0.15/hr Universal-Streaming, $0.45/hr Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime. Add-ons stack additively — speaker diarisation +$0.02/hr async or +$0.12/hr streaming, PII text redaction +$0.08/hr, medical mode +$0.15/hr, translation +$0.06/hr. Signup carries $50 of credits with no card; no volume tiers are published.
Use tool ↗About AssemblyAI
AssemblyAI is an API and nothing else: audio goes in, and text returns with word timings, speaker labels, entities, sentiment and content-safety classifications attached. Charging is per hour of audio rather than per seat — $0.15/hr on Universal-2, $0.21/hr on Universal-3.5 Pro, $0.15/hr for Universal-Streaming and $0.45/hr for the Universal-3.6 Pro realtime model — with diarisation, PII redaction, translation and medical vocabulary billed as surcharges that stack on top. A separate Voice Agent API bundles recognition, model reasoning and speech output into one $0.075 per minute rate, and an LLM Gateway resells OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models per token.
- Platforms
- API
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 16, 2026
Verified sources
- Universal-2 $0.15/hr, Universal-3.5 Pro $0.21/hr, Universal-Streaming English and Multilingual $0.15/hr, Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime $0.45/hr; Voice Agent API $4.50/hr or $0.075/min all-inclusive; $50 free credits with no card; no volume discounts or monthly plans listed (15 October 2026)assemblyai.com ↗
- Add-ons stack on the base rate: speaker diarisation +$0.02/hr async, +$0.12/hr streaming; medical mode +$0.15/hr on every model; PII text redaction +$0.08/hr, PII audio redaction +$0.05/hr; translation +$0.06/hr; entity detection +$0.08/hr; LLM Gateway priced per million tokens (15 October 2026)assemblyai.com ↗
Is AssemblyAI legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Dec 24, 2016 (9 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar NameCheap, Inc., looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Let's Encrypt, valid until Dec 30, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 16, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 16, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2017The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- AssemblyAI, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of AssemblyAI
The transcription API to reach for when accuracy and per-hour pricing matter more than a user interface, but the headline rate is a base rate and every label you actually want adds to it.
Pros
- $50 of credits at signup with no card required
- Per-hour rates are published plainly and undercut most incumbents
- Add-ons cover diarisation, redaction, summarisation and medical vocabulary
- Voice Agent API is one flat $0.075/min covering model and speech too
Cons
- No product surface at all — everything is code
- Add-ons stack, so the real rate usually lands well above $0.15/hr
- Streaming diarisation costs six times the async equivalent
- No volume discounts published on the pricing page
Best for
- Developers embedding transcription into call, meeting or media products
- Teams needing speaker labels, redaction and summaries from one vendor
- Voice-agent builders who want recognition, reasoning and speech on a single bill
Not for
- Anyone wanting to upload a file and read a transcript — there is no app
- Occasional users, for whom a hosted tool with a free tier is cheaper
Watch out: The advertised $0.15/hr buys plain transcription only; diarisation, redaction and medical mode each add their own per-hour charge on top of it.
Alternatives to AssemblyAI
AssemblyAI head-to-head
Side-by-side fact sheets against the competitors our research or their makers name — pricing, platforms, API and both verdicts on one page.
Also used for
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