Whisper (OpenAI) Pricing 2026

OpenAI Whisper API costs $0.006 per minute ($0.36/hour) for both the legacy Whisper model and the newer GPT-4o Transcribe model. GPT-4o Mini Transcribe is available at $0.003/min ($0.18/hour) for cost-sensitive workloads. GPT-4o Transcribe with speaker diarization is also $0.006/min. New accounts receive $5 in free credits covering approximately 833 minutes of Whisper transcription.

OpenAI Whisper is available as both a free open-source model and a paid API. The open-source model can be self-hosted for free (but requires GPU infrastructure costing $276+/month). The API gives new accounts $5 in free credits covering approximately 833 minutes of transcription. After credits are exhausted, you pay $0.006/min for Whisper or $0.003/min for GPT-4o Mini Transcribe with no free monthly refresh.

OpenAI Whisper is a general-purpose speech recognition model trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual audio data. It is available both as an open-source model (for self-hosting) and as a hosted API through OpenAI's platform. Whisper supports 99+ languages for transcription and translation, handles various audio formats, and processes audio at 5-10x real-time speed. OpenAI has also released GPT-4o Transcribe and GPT-4o Mini Transcribe as successor models offering improved accuracy and features like built-in speaker diarization.

OpenAI Whisper costs $0.006/min vs Deepgram Nova-3 at $0.0043-$0.0077/min depending on plan. Deepgram is cheaper at scale with its Growth plan ($0.0043/min) and offers real-time streaming with sub-300ms latency, while Whisper processes at 5-10x real-time but is not designed for live streaming. Deepgram also provides $200 in free credits vs Whisper's $5. Choose Whisper for simple integration within the OpenAI ecosystem and batch transcription; choose Deepgram for real-time applications, lower per-minute costs at volume, and richer audio intelligence features.

OpenAI Whisper at $0.006/min is 75% cheaper than AWS Transcribe's base rate of $0.024/min. However, AWS Transcribe offers volume-based tiered discounts dropping to $0.0078/min at 5M+ minutes, narrowing the gap for very high-volume users. AWS also includes built-in features like speaker diarization, custom vocabularies, and PII redaction that Whisper lacks natively. Choose Whisper for straightforward, affordable transcription; choose AWS Transcribe if you need deep AWS ecosystem integration, custom vocabularies, or HIPAA-compliant medical transcription.

Yes, Whisper is open-source under the MIT license and can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure at no software cost. However, self-hosting requires GPU infrastructure costing approximately $276/month minimum for a dedicated GPU instance, plus DevOps overhead of $50-$200/month. The break-even point vs the API is roughly 500 hours of transcription per month. Self-hosting makes sense for organizations needing data sovereignty, HIPAA compliance, or processing extremely high volumes where the $0.006/min API rate exceeds fixed infrastructure costs.

The Whisper API supports mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpga, m4a, wav, and webm audio formats with a maximum file size of 25 MB per request. Files larger than 25 MB must be split into smaller chunks before upload. The API processes audio at 5-10x real-time speed, meaning a 60-minute file typically completes in 6-12 minutes. Billing is calculated per second of audio processed with no minimum charge per request.

Yes, OpenAI Whisper charges for the full duration of submitted audio including silence, music, and non-speech segments. A 60-minute file with 30 minutes of silence costs the same $0.36 as a 60-minute file of continuous speech. To reduce costs, preprocess audio with tools like FFmpeg to strip silence or use voice activity detection (VAD) before sending to the API. This can reduce costs by 20-40% for recordings with significant dead air, such as meeting recordings or surveillance audio.