AssemblyAI vs Whisper
A side-by-side look at AssemblyAI vs Whisper: pricing, free plans and features, taken from each official website. Prices change often, so check the linked sources.
| Feature | AssemblyAI | Whisper |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Tool · Transcription | Tool · Transcription |
| Made by | unknown | unknown |
| What it does | Speech AI API | Open-source speech recognition |
| Pricing model | Paid | Free |
| Free tier | unknown | unknown |
| Current prices | unknown | unknown |
| Modalities | unknown | unknown |
| Key features | unknown | unknown |
| Context window | unknown | unknown |
| API | unknown | unknown |
| License | Proprietary service | Proprietary service |
| Web app | unknown | unknown |
| Mobile apps | unknown | unknown |
| Desktop app | unknown | unknown |
| Links | Website ↗Deekoya listing | Website ↗Deekoya listing |
AssemblyAI vs Whisper: pricing and features
AssemblyAI
AssemblyAI provides a Speech AI API for transcription and speech understanding. It offers pre-recorded, real-time, and sync transcription endpoints along with voice agent and guardrail capabilities.
Pricing
Pricing is listed per hour of audio processed. Examples from the official site include $0.15 /hr for the Universal-3 model, $0.21 /hr for Universal-2, $0.05 /hr for Included Prompting, $0.02 /hr for certain Universal-2 tiers, $0.04 /hr for Speaker Diarization, $0.10 /hr for PII Text Redaction, and $0.45 /hr for custom rate limits with enhanced concurrency. These rates were read directly from AssemblyAI’s pricing page.
Key features
- Understand context, intent, and meaning
- Power agentic workflows in real time
- Scale securely from MVP to production
- Pre-recorded Speech-to-Text API
- Realtime Speech-to-Text API
- Speaker Diarization (available on select tiers)
Source: official homepage, official pricing page · checked 2026-10-27
Whisper
Whisper is an open-source neural network for speech recognition released by OpenAI. It aims to achieve human-level robustness and accuracy on English speech transcription.
Pricing
Pricing is listed as Free on the official site; this information was read from the official site.
Key features
- Open-source speech recognition model
- Neural net trained for English speech recognition
- Approaches human-level robustness and accuracy
- Research paper references included on the site
- Available through OpenAI's documentation and developer resources
Source: official homepage · checked 2026-10-27
FAQ
Which is free, AssemblyAI vs Whisper?
AssemblyAI: has a free plan or trial per its official site; Whisper: has a free plan or trial per its official site.
What is the difference between AssemblyAI vs Whisper?
AssemblyAI: AssemblyAI provides a Speech AI API for transcription and speech understanding. Whisper: Whisper is an open-source neural network for speech recognition released by OpenAI.