Deepgram vs AssemblyAI: speech-to-text API pricing compared
Updated 2026-11-06 · listed A to Z, not ranked
Deepgram and AssemblyAI are the two speech-to-text APIs developers compare most. Both offer batch and real-time transcription, add-ons such as diarization, and now text to speech. Deepgram quotes per minute; AssemblyAI quotes per hour.
Listed A to Z, quoted from assemblyai.com/pricing and deepgram.com/pricing on Nov 6, 2026. Not a ranking.
- Pre-recorded
- Universal-2 $0.15/hr; Universal-3.5 Pro $0.21/hr
- Streaming
- Universal-Streaming $0.15/hr; Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime $0.45/hr
- Speaker diarization
- $0.02/hr pre-recorded; $0.12/hr realtime
- Text to speech
- AssemblyAI-TTS-1 $15 per 1M characters
- Free start
- Free tier, no card: up to 185 hrs pre-recorded, 333 hrs streaming
- Pre-recorded
- Pre-recorded priced lower than streaming (per the page)
- Streaming
- Nova-3 monolingual $0.0077/min ($0.46/hr); multilingual $0.0092/min
- Speaker diarization
- $0.0020/min ($0.12/hr)
- Text to speech
- Aura-2 $0.030 per 1k characters; Flux TTS $0.0450
- Free start
- $200 free credit, no card, does not expire
How we checked: Pay-as-you-go list rates from each official pricing page on Nov 6, 2026. Deepgram lists lower Growth rates for prepaid annual plans; AssemblyAI lists custom rates on contract. Accuracy is not compared here.
Reading the units
- Deepgram’s $0.0077 per minute is $0.46 per hour, which is how its own FAQ states streaming; Growth (from $4,000 a year prepaid) lists $0.0065 per minute.
- AssemblyAI prices add-ons per hour on top of the model: keyterms prompting is $0.05/hr on Universal-3.5 Pro and included on Universal-2.
- Deepgram bills per second with no block rounding; multichannel audio bills total duration across channels.
Full breakdowns: Deepgram pricing, AssemblyAI pricing, best speech-to-text APIs.
FAQ
Is Deepgram or AssemblyAI cheaper?
We do not pick a winner. On Nov 6, 2026 AssemblyAI listed Universal-2 at $0.15/hr and Universal-Streaming at $0.15/hr; Deepgram listed Nova-3 streaming at $0.0077/min ($0.46/hr) pay as you go.
Which has more free usage, Deepgram or AssemblyAI?
Deepgram gives $200 in credit (about 43,000 Nova-3 minutes, by its FAQ). AssemblyAI’s free tier includes up to 185 hours pre-recorded and 333 hours streaming.
Sources (official pages, read 2026-11-06)
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