AssemblyAI vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
Ai Transcription Apis pricing comparison · 2026
AssemblyAI pricing ranges from $0–$0.21/hour, while Google Cloud Speech-to-Text ranges from $0–$0/minute. These products use different pricing models (Usage-based (pay per token/image/minute) vs Per-seat subscription), so a direct price comparison isn't meaningful — costs depend on usage volume and mix.
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AssemblyAI and Google Cloud Speech-to-Text both operate in the ai transcription apis category. This page compares their published pricing.
Plan-by-Plan Pricing
| Plan | AssemblyAI | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Free /hour | Free /minute |
| Pay-As-You-Go | Custom | Free /minute |
| Enterprise | Custom | Free |
Cost at Scale
Total cost of ownership — licenses, implementation, and hidden costs included.
AssemblyAI
3 scenarios$10/month ($120/year)
Podcast Transcription Startup (50 hours/month)
$7.50 for transcription (50 hrs × $0.15/hr), $1.00 for speaker diarization (50 hrs × $0.02/hr), $1.50 for summarization (50 hrs × $0.03/hr). Total per-hour cost: $0.20/hr.
$210/month ($2,520/year)
Customer Call Analytics Platform (500 hours/month)
$75 for transcription (500 hrs × $0.15/hr), $10 for speaker diarization, $40 for entity detection, $10 for sentiment analysis, $75 for topic detection. Total per-hour cost: $0.42/hr. Enterprise pricing with 30-50% volume discount would reduce this to ~$1,500-$1,800/year.
$1,250
Enterprise Meeting Intelligence (5,000 hours/month)
$1,750/month ($15,000-$21,000/year estimate) -- Enterprise volume discounts of 40-50% applied to list pricing (~$0.25-$0.35/hr vs $0.42/hr list). Includes dedicated support, custom SLA, and prepaid annual commitment. Typical Enterprise contracts start at $12,000-$24,000 minimum.
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
3 scenarios$120/month ($1,440/year)
Media Company Archive Processing (500 hours/month, batch)
30,000 minutes at $0.004/min via Dynamic Batch. Add $50-$100/month for Cloud Storage and egress fees. Total: $170-$220/month. This is 92% cheaper than AWS Transcribe standard ($720/month) and 67% cheaper than OpenAI Whisper ($180/month) for the same volume.
$192/month ($2,304/year)
Real-Time Captioning Service (200 hours/month)
12,000 minutes at $0.016/min for standard real-time processing. Add $30-$80/month for GCP infrastructure (Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, Storage). Total: $222-$272/month. First 60 minutes/month free reduces to 11,940 billable minutes ($191/month).
$4,800/month ($57,600/year)
Enterprise Analytics Platform (5,000 hours/month)
300,000 minutes at $0.016/min standard rate. Enterprise volume pricing (contact sales) may reduce to $0.008-$0.012/min ($2,400-$3,600/month). Add $300-$500/month for BigQuery, Storage, and Cloud Functions. Using Dynamic Batch where real-time is not needed reduces to $1,200/month base.