AssemblyAI pricing
AssemblyAI bills speech to text by the hour of audio, on pay as you go. Universal-3.5 Pro costs $0.21 an hour for pre-recorded audio. Universal-2 costs $0.15 an hour. Realtime Universal-Streaming costs $0.15 an hour. The Voice Agent API costs $4.50 an hour, or $0.075 a minute. You can start free. Custom rates go through sales. Figures come from the AssemblyAI pricing page on October 26, 2026. We do not track AssemblyAI on SaaS Price Watch yet.
Speech to text rates
| API | Model | Per hour | Per minute (our math) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-recorded | Universal-3.5 Pro | $0.21 | $0.0035 |
| Pre-recorded | Universal-2 | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| Realtime | Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime | $0.45 | $0.0075 |
| Realtime | Universal-Streaming | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| Realtime | Universal-Streaming Multilingual | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| Sync | Sync API | $0.30 | $0.005 |
| Dictation | Dictation API | $0.62 | about $0.0103 |
Universal-3.5 Pro covers 18 languages. Universal-2 covers 99. The Sync API takes clips of up to 2 minutes per request.
Add-ons
| Add-on | Pre-recorded | Realtime |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker diarization | $0.02 an hour | $0.12 an hour |
| Keyterms prompting | $0.05 an hour on Universal-3.5 Pro, included on Universal-2 | Included on Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime, $0.04 an hour on Universal-Streaming |
| Prompting | $0.05 an hour on Universal-3.5 Pro | $0.05 an hour on Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime |
| Medical Mode | $0.15 an hour | $0.15 an hour |
| PII text redaction | $0.08 an hour | $0.12 an hour |
| Voice Focus | Not listed | $0.10 an hour on Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime |
Speech Understanding features bill by the hour. Sentiment analysis costs $0.02 an hour, entity detection $0.08, topic detection $0.15, and translation $0.06.
Voice Agent API
The Voice Agent API costs $4.50 an hour, or $0.075 a minute. It includes Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime, the AssemblyAI voice agent LLM, and its TTS. It bills per second on connected conversation time.
Sample bills
Our math: 1,000 hours of pre-recorded audio on Universal-3.5 Pro cost $210. With speaker diarization the rate is $0.23 an hour, so the same 1,000 hours cost $230.
What we withhold
The page does not state the size of the free start, so we do not publish one. We do not list LLM Gateway token prices. They change with each model. We do not cover custom plan rates.
Compare and track
See the Deepgram pricing guide, OpenAI Whisper and TTS pricing, ElevenLabs pricing per minute, and the AI category.
FAQ
How much does AssemblyAI cost per hour? Universal-3.5 Pro costs $0.21 an hour of pre-recorded audio. Universal-2 costs $0.15 an hour.
How much does AssemblyAI cost per minute? Our math: $0.0035 a minute on Universal-3.5 Pro and $0.0025 on Universal-2.
How much is AssemblyAI streaming? Universal-Streaming costs $0.15 an hour. Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime costs $0.45 an hour.
Is speaker diarization extra on AssemblyAI? Yes. It costs $0.02 an hour on pre-recorded audio and $0.12 an hour on realtime.
How much is the AssemblyAI Voice Agent API? $4.50 an hour, or $0.075 a minute, billed per second.
How we check
We read the AssemblyAI pricing page on October 26, 2026. Get an alert when an AI API price changes.
Checked 2026-10-26. Prices and policies change. Confirm on the source before you buy.
Sources
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