Deepgram vs OpenAI Whisper: speech-to-text pricing compared
Updated 2026-11-09 · listed A to Z, not ranked
Deepgram and OpenAI both sell speech-to-text billed per minute of audio. OpenAI’s pricing page lists gpt-realtime-whisper for live transcription alongside its GPT transcription models; the original whisper-1 model was not on the pricing page we checked.
Listed A to Z from each vendor’s official pricing page on Nov 9, 2026. We do not pick a winner: the right choice depends on your usage.
- Live / streaming
- Nova-3 Monolingual $0.0077/min; Nova-3 Multilingual $0.0092/min; Flux STT English $0.0077/min
- Pre-recorded / file
- Nova-3 Monolingual $0.0043/min; Nova-3 Multilingual $0.0052/min
- Volume pricing
- Growth (prepaid from $4,000/yr, up to 20% off): e.g. Nova-3 Monolingual $0.0065 streaming, $0.0036 pre-recorded
- Getting started
- $200 free credit, no card; billed per second
- Live / streaming
- gpt-realtime-whisper $0.017/min; gpt-live-transcribe $0.017/min
- Pre-recorded / file
- gpt-transcribe $0.0045/min; gpt-4o-transcribe ~$0.006/min; gpt-4o-mini-transcribe ~$0.003/min (estimated cost)
- Volume pricing
- Batch and other discounts per OpenAI’s page
- Getting started
- Pay-as-you-go API
How we checked: Prices in USD as shown on each official page on Nov 9, 2026. Listed A to Z, not ranked. Confirm with each provider before you buy.
Notes
- OpenAI lists some transcription prices as an estimated cost per minute derived from token prices.
- Deepgram bills per second with no block rounding for normal requests.
- Open-source Whisper models can also be self-hosted; that cost depends on your hardware.
More: Deepgram pricing, OpenAI API pricing, Deepgram vs AssemblyAI, speech-to-text APIs.
FAQ
How do Deepgram and Whisper prices compare?
On Nov 9, 2026 Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual was $0.0077 a minute streaming and $0.0043 pre-recorded (pay as you go); OpenAI listed gpt-realtime-whisper at $0.017 a minute and gpt-transcribe at $0.0045 a minute.
Is whisper-1 still on OpenAI’s pricing page?
The pricing page we checked on Nov 9, 2026 listed gpt-realtime-whisper and GPT transcription models, not whisper-1.
Sources (official pages, read 2026-11-09)
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