Deepgram vs Whisper (OpenAI)
Ai Transcription Apis pricing comparison · 2026
Deepgram pricing ranges from $0–$4000/minute, while Whisper (OpenAI) ranges from $0.003–$0.006/minute. Whisper (OpenAI) is typically 100% more affordable, though your actual cost depends on tier and team size.
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Deepgram and Whisper (OpenAI) both operate in the ai transcription apis category. This page compares their published pricing.
Plan-by-Plan Pricing
| Plan | Deepgram | Whisper (OpenAI) |
|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | Custom | Free /minute |
| Growth | Custom | Free /minute |
| Enterprise | Custom | Free |
Cost at Scale
Total cost of ownership — licenses, implementation, and hidden costs included.
Deepgram
6 scenarios$46.20/month ($554.40/year)
Live Captioning for Webinars (100 hours/month)
100 hours × 60 min/hr × $0.0077/min. Real-time streaming costs the same per-minute rate as batch processing. Total annual cost: $554.40 for 1,200 hours.
$231/month ($2,772/year)
Customer Call Analytics (500 hours/month)
500 hours × 60 min/hr × $0.0077/min. Switching to Growth plan with $4,000 prepayment reduces Nova-3 to $0.0065/min, saving $216/year (7.8% savings). Growth plan cost: $195/month ($2,340/year + $4,000 prepayment = $6,340 total for first year).
$4,800/month ($57,600/year estimate)
Enterprise Voice Agent Platform (10,000 hours/month)
10,000 hours × 60 min/hr × $0.08/min for Voice Agent API (10x more than transcription alone). Enterprise plan with 30-40% volume discount reduces this to ~$3,360-$4,032/month ($40,320-$48,384/year). Minimum Enterprise commitment typically $15,000-$30,000 annually.
Whisper (OpenAI)
3 scenarios$36/month ($432/year)
Startup Podcast Transcription (100 hours/month)
6,000 minutes at $0.006/min. With GPT-4o Mini Transcribe at $0.003/min, cost drops to $18/month ($216/year). No add-on fees for diarization. First month partially offset by $5 free credit.
$180/month ($2,160/year)
SaaS Meeting Recorder (500 hours/month)
30,000 minutes at $0.006/min with diarization included. Using GPT-4o Mini Transcribe reduces to $90/month ($1,080/year). At this volume, self-hosting open-source Whisper on GPU infrastructure ($276/month fixed) becomes cost-comparable and may be cheaper with dedicated hardware.
$1,800/month ($21,600/year)
Enterprise Call Center (5,000 hours/month)
300,000 minutes at $0.006/min. At this volume, self-hosting Whisper on dedicated GPU clusters ($500-$800/month) offers 55-70% savings but requires DevOps investment. Enterprise API pricing with volume discounts may be available through OpenAI sales.
Market Intelligence
Deepgram
- Median annual cost
- $200
- Based on
- 9 deals
Whisper (OpenAI)
- Median annual cost
- $169
- Based on
- 8 deals