Price checkPer minute
Free TierFreeStandard Transcription (pay-as-you-go)Usage-basedCall Analytics (pay-as-you-go)Usage-based
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All AWS Transcribe Plans & Pricing

Prices unverified — last checked Aug 26, 2026

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
View all features by plan (compare side-by-side)

Free Tier

  • 60 minutes per month, free for the first 12 months
  • Free tier starts from the date of the first transcription request
  • Usage calculated each month across all AWS Regions
  • Unused monthly minutes do not roll over
  • After free usage expires or is exceeded, standard pay-as-you-go rates apply

Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go)

  • Standard batch transcription: $0.006/min in US East (N. Virginia)
  • Standard streaming transcription: $0.010/min in US East (N. Virginia)
  • Batch and streaming transcription are no longer priced identically
  • Usage is billed in one-second increments with no minimum applied
  • Includes custom vocabularies, vocabulary filtering, speaker diarization, and language identification
  • Pricing includes up to two channels per audio stream or audio file; charged on total audio duration, not separately per channel
  • Additional charges apply for automatic content redaction and custom language models
  • Rates vary by region

Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go)

  • Rich call transcripts with redaction and conversation insights
  • Tier 1 (0-250K min/mo): $0.030/min
  • Tier 2 (250K-1M min/mo): $0.0186/min
  • Tier 3 (1M-5M min/mo): $0.0138/min
  • Post-call and real-time analytics priced the same
  • Usage is billed in one-second increments with no minimum applied
  • Includes custom vocabularies, vocabulary filtering, speaker diarization, and language identification
  • Additional charges apply for generative call summarization and custom language models
  • Rates vary by region
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AWS Transcribe uses usage-based pricing from $0.006 per minute, with a free tier. Plans: Free Tier (free), Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based), and Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based). The median contract is $196/year based on 13 community cost mentions.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: Yes

AWS Transcribe offers 3 pricing tiers: Free Tier, Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go), Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go). A free plan is available. Paid plans include Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based), Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based). The Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go) plan is teams running standard batch or streaming speech-to-text, with lower pricing for batch workloads and separate real-time streaming pricing.

Compared to other ai transcription apis software, AWS Transcribe is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.

  • Median contract: $196/yr from 13 purchases Thin data
  • 6 documented hidden costs beyond list price
  • G2 rating: 3.9 out of 5 from 16 reviews (as of Sep 2026)
Last verified: | Sources: 3 pricing pages and reviews

How much does AWS Transcribe cost?

AWS Transcribe uses usage-based pricing from $0.006 per minute, with a free tier. Plans include Free Tier (free), Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based), Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go) (usage-based).

AWS Transcribe Pricing Overview

AWS Transcribe offers usage-based pricing from $0.006–$0.030 per minute. The Free Tier plan is free and is best for new aws accounts evaluating amazon transcribe with low-volume test workloads in the first year. The Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go) plan is usage-based and is designed for teams running standard batch or streaming speech-to-text, with lower pricing for batch workloads and separate real-time streaming pricing. The Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go) plan is usage-based and is designed for contact centers needing transcription plus call insights, redaction, and optional summarization in a single api.

The median AWS Transcribe customer pays $196/year based on 13 community cost mentions.

There are at least 6 documented hidden costs beyond AWS Transcribe's list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in August 26, 2026 from 3 independent sources.

Try AWS Transcribe Free

Amazon Transcribe is AWS's fully managed automatic speech recognition (ASR) service that converts audio to text at scale. It supports 100+ languages, both real-time streaming and batch processing, and integrates deeply with the broader AWS ecosystem including S3, Lambda, CloudWatch, and Comprehend. Specialized variants include Transcribe Medical for HIPAA-compliant healthcare transcription and Transcribe Call Analytics for contact center intelligence.

Standard Transcription starts at $0.006 per minute for batch and $0.01 per minute for streaming, on a pay-as-you-go basis. Call Analytics is priced higher, at $0.03 per minute on transcribe-call-analytics-t1, $0.0186 on t2, and $0.0138 on t3. A Free Tier is also available.

The primary consideration with AWS Transcribe is its position within the AWS ecosystem. While the base rate of $0.024/min is 4x more expensive than OpenAI Whisper ($0.006/min) and 50% more than Google Cloud Speech-to-Text ($0.016/min), AWS Transcribe offers unique advantages: volume discounts that can bring costs to $0.0078/min at scale, HIPAA-compliant medical transcription, custom vocabularies for domain-specific accuracy, and native integration with AWS services most enterprises already use. The hidden costs, however, include supporting AWS services (S3 storage, Lambda orchestration, CloudWatch monitoring) that add $50-$300/month to a production pipeline.

In this 2026 pricing guide, we break down AWS Transcribe's tiered pricing structure, calculate real-world costs across volume tiers, expose hidden costs from add-on features, regional pricing variations, and ecosystem dependencies, and compare AWS Transcribe to alternatives like OpenAI Whisper, Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, Deepgram, and AssemblyAI.

How AWS Transcribe Pricing Compares

AWS Transcribe is usage-based from $0.006 per minute. Compare: AssemblyAI ($0.15–$0.37/minute), Deepgram ($0.00–$0.02/minute), Rev AI ($0.00–$0.02/minute).

AssemblyAI $0.15–$0.37/minute Compare → Deepgram $0.00–$0.02/minute Compare → Rev AI $0.00–$0.02/minute Compare →

Usage-Based Rates

Per-unit pricing for AWS Transcribe API usage.

Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go)

Item Dimension Unit Rate
transcribe-standard-batch minute minute $0.006
transcribe-standard-streaming minute minute $0.010
  • Rates for US East (N. Virginia); vary by region
  • Standard batch and standard streaming now have separate flat per-minute rates
  • Usage is billed in one-second increments with no minimum applied
  • Automatic content redaction and custom language models are add-ons billed separately

Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go)

Item Dimension Unit Rate
transcribe-call-analytics-t1 minute minute $0.030
transcribe-call-analytics-t2 minute minute $0.019
transcribe-call-analytics-t3 minute minute $0.014
  • Tier 1: first 250K min/mo; Tier 2: next 750K min; Tier 3: next 4M min
  • Post-call and real-time analytics billed at the same rate
  • Rates for US East (N. Virginia); vary by region
  • Usage is billed in one-second increments with no minimum applied

Compare AWS Transcribe vs Alternatives

Before committing to AWS Transcribe, compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.

VSAssemblyAI
From $0.15

Teams needing rich audio intelligence features like entity detection, topic classification, and summarization in a single API

Full comparison
VSDeepgram
From $0.0043

Real-time streaming applications needing ultra-low latency and the most cost-effective per-minute rates

Full comparison
VSRev AI
From $0.003

Budget-conscious teams needing reliable batch transcription with optional human transcription fallback

Full comparison

All AWS Transcribe alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for AWS Transcribe

The median AWS Transcribe buyer pays $196/year based on 13 community cost mentions.

What companies actually pay $196/yr Median across 13 community cost mentions Thin data
Review scores
TrustRadius 7.9out of 10 (14)
G2 3.9out of 5 (16)
Third-party review aggregates, as of Sep 2026
Top pricing complaints
Struggles with dialect recognition and occasionally misinterprets specific words.Does not consistently recognize numeric digits as spoken, converting them as words (e.g., "one" instead of "1").Custom vocabulary tasks can be tedious.Perceived as expensive for large volumes of data.
Source: Community cost mentions (Reddit, Hacker News) — aggregated from 13 distinct user reports. Indicative only — not contract-grade data.

AWS Transcribe Cost by Company Size

Example costs for teams of different sizes. Each figure is labelled with the period it covers.

Small SaaS Voice Feature (1,000 hours/month) $360 per month

$360/month ($4,320/year) -- 60,000 minutes at the Standard Transcription batch rate of $0.006/min. With streaming at $0.01/min, the same volume is $600/month ($7,200/year). Supporting AWS services (S3, Lambda, CloudWatch) and any feature add-ons are billed separately.

A SaaS product adding voice transcription processing 1,000 hours (60,000 minutes) monthly on AWS infrastructure with speaker diarization and custom vocabularies.

Contact Center Analytics (10,000 hours/month) $8,280-$18,000 per month

$8,280-$18,000/month ($99,360-$216,000/year) depending on the Call Analytics tier rate that applies -- 600,000 minutes at $0.0138/min (t3) is $8,280, at $0.0186/min (t2) is $11,160, and at $0.03/min (t1) is $18,000. PII redaction and supporting AWS service costs are billed separately.

A contact center transcribing 10,000 hours (600,000 minutes) of customer calls monthly using Transcribe Call Analytics with speaker diarization, sentiment detection, and PII redaction.

How AWS Transcribe Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
AWS Transcribe Free $0.03/minute
AssemblyAI Free $0.21/hour
Deepgram Free $4000/minute
ElevenLabs Scribe Free $990 per month
Gladia $0.61/hr $0.61/hr
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text Free $0.078/minute

Detailed pricing comparisons:

Browse all AI Transcription APIs pricing →

6 AWS Transcribe Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, AWS Transcribe has at least 6 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 6 hidden costs
  • Speaker diarization and custom vocabulary add-ons increase costs 20-40% above the base $0.024/min rate: These features are priced as add-ons but AWS does not clearly disclose the exact per-minute surcharge on its pricing page -- budget an additional $0.005-$0.010/min when using speaker identification or custom language models
  • PII content redaction is billed as an add-on on top of base transcription costs: it raises the effective per-minute price, and because the add-on does not shrink with volume, it makes up a larger share of the total as base rates fall at higher usage tiers
  • Regional pricing variations can inflate costs by 68-69%: Deploying in South America (Sao Paulo) or US West (Northern California) regions costs significantly more than optimal regions (us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2) -- always check region-specific pricing before architecting your pipeline
  • 15-second minimum charge per request penalizes short audio clips: Every API call is billed for at least 15 seconds regardless of actual audio length -- processing thousands of 2-5 second audio snippets (like voice commands) can result in 3-5x higher effective per-second costs
  • Concurrency throttling at 100 simultaneous sessions forces architectural workarounds: Exceeding 100 concurrent transcription jobs requires AWS support tickets for limit increases or distributing workloads across multiple accounts/regions, adding operational complexity and potentially multiplying costs
  • AWS ecosystem lock-in adds costs beyond transcription: AWS Transcribe typically relies on S3 for audio storage, CloudWatch for monitoring, and Lambda for orchestration -- a production pipeline incurs separate supporting AWS service charges on top of the transcription fees
Tip

Ask your AWS Transcribe sales rep about these costs upfront. Getting them in writing before signing can save you from surprise charges later.

Full hidden costs breakdown →

Intelligence sourced from 3 independent sources
grounded summary TrustRadius Enterprise reviews G2 B2B reviews
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 3 source citations total.

AWS Transcribe Contract Terms

AWS Transcribe contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require For pay-as-you-go subscriptions, buyers can cancel directly from the AWS Marketplace console at any time; for public offers with contract pricing, cancellation within 48 hours of purchase can be done through AWS Customer Service for a full refund.. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Cancellation Notice For pay-as-you-go subscriptions, buyers can cancel directly from the AWS Marketplace console at any time; for public offers with contract pricing, cancellation within 48 hours of purchase can be done through AWS Customer Service for a full refund.
Minimum Commitment There is no upfront commitment or minimum spend required for standard AWS Transcribe usage.
Based on 2 verified sources

AWS Transcribe Price History

Pricing changes CostBench has tracked for AWS Transcribe, verified across 4 snapshots going back to 2026Q2.

  1. AWS Transcribe price decrease

    Highest tier decreased from $7 to $0/month

    -99.56%

  2. AWS Transcribe tier renamed

    "Standard (Tier 1: 0-250K min/month)" renamed to "Free Tier"

  3. AWS Transcribe tier renamed

    "Volume Discounted (Tier 2-4: 250K+ min/month)" renamed to "Standard Transcription (pay-as-you-go)"

  4. AWS Transcribe tier renamed

    "Transcribe Medical" renamed to "Call Analytics (pay-as-you-go)"

View AWS Transcribe's full price history →

AWS Transcribe Pricing FAQ

01 How much does AWS Transcribe cost?

AWS Transcribe is pay-as-you-go and billed per minute. Standard Transcription costs $0.006 per minute for batch and $0.01 per minute for streaming. Call Analytics costs $0.03 per minute on transcribe-call-analytics-t1, $0.0186 on t2, and $0.0138 on t3. A Free Tier is also available.

02 Is AWS Transcribe free?

AWS Transcribe offers a 12-month free tier for new AWS accounts with 60 minutes of standard transcription per month. This applies to batch and streaming transcription only and does not cover Transcribe Medical or add-on features. After 12 months or exceeding 60 minutes, you pay standard rates starting at $0.024/min. For ongoing free usage, consider alternatives like Speechmatics (480 min/month free ongoing) or Deepgram ($200 free credits with no expiration).

03 What is AWS Transcribe?

Amazon Transcribe is a fully managed automatic speech recognition (ASR) service from AWS that converts audio to text. It supports 100+ languages, real-time streaming and batch processing, speaker diarization, custom vocabularies, channel identification, and PII redaction. Transcribe integrates deeply with the AWS ecosystem including S3, Lambda, and Comprehend. Specialized variants include Transcribe Medical for HIPAA-compliant healthcare transcription and Transcribe Call Analytics for contact center intelligence.

04 AWS Transcribe vs OpenAI Whisper: which is cheaper?

OpenAI Whisper at $0.006/min is 75% cheaper than AWS Transcribe's base rate of $0.024/min. Even at AWS's highest volume discount tier ($0.0078/min for 5M+ minutes), Whisper remains 23% cheaper. However, AWS Transcribe includes built-in features like custom vocabularies, PII redaction, and HIPAA-compliant medical transcription that Whisper lacks. Choose Whisper for straightforward, cost-effective transcription; choose AWS Transcribe if you need deep AWS integration, custom vocabularies, or medical-grade compliance.

05 AWS Transcribe vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text: which should I choose?

AWS Transcribe costs $0.024/min at base tier vs Google Cloud Speech-to-Text at $0.016/min for standard and $0.004/min for batch processing. Google is 33% cheaper at standard rates and 83% cheaper in batch mode. However, AWS Transcribe offers better volume discounts at scale (dropping to $0.0078/min at 5M+ minutes vs Google's less transparent volume pricing). Choose AWS if your infrastructure is on AWS; choose Google if you are on GCP or need the lowest batch processing rate.

06 Does AWS Transcribe support real-time streaming?

Yes, AWS Transcribe supports real-time streaming transcription via WebSocket connections with results delivered in near real-time. Streaming is billed at the same per-minute rates as batch processing ($0.024/min at Tier 1). Streaming supports automatic language detection, speaker diarization, and partial result stabilization. However, streaming has a default concurrency limit of 100 simultaneous sessions, which may require limit increase requests for large-scale real-time applications.

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