AWS Transcribe pricing per hour and per minute
Amazon Transcribe charges $0.36 an hour for recorded audio ($0.006 a minute), and $0.60 an hour for live audio ($0.01 a minute). New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only. Billed per second with no minimum.
Ranked by each vendor's cheapest option at 100 hours a month, Amazon Transcribe comes 11th of 12 for recorded audio and 6th of 10 for live audio.
Prices for the US East (N. Virginia) region.
Prices by model
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| Standard | streaming | $0.01 | $0.60 |
What 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 hours a month cost
| Model | 10 hours | 100 hours | 1,000 hours | 10,000 hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard batch | $3.60 $0.36/h | $36 $0.36/h | $360 $0.36/h | $3,600 $0.36/h |
| Standard streaming | $6 $0.60/h | $60 $0.60/h | $600 $0.60/h | $6,000 $0.60/h |
Regular prices. One-off credits and promotions aren't counted.
Free tier and credits
- New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only.
Every vendor's free tier, in hours of audio: free speech-to-text APIs.
Billing
- Billed per second with no minimum.
- Prices are for US East (N. Virginia); AWS says rates vary by region.
- Up to two audio channels are included in the price.
Add-ons
| Feature | Audio | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker diarization | batch, streaming | Included Along with custom vocabularies and language identification. |
| PII redaction | batch, streaming | +$0.0024 a minute ($0.144 an hour) For the first 250,000 minutes a month; less after that. |
| Custom language models | batch | +$0.006 a minute ($0.36 an hour) For the first 250,000 minutes, on jobs that use a custom model. |
Volume discounts and commitments
- AWS says larger workloads may get further volume discounts from its pricing specialists.
Also priced, not ranked
Specialist products and promotion-only prices, kept out of the comparisons:
- Medical (batch): $0.075 a minute ($4.50 an hour). For medical audio.
- Medical (streaming): $0.075 a minute ($4.50 an hour). For medical audio.
Quick answers
How much does AWS Transcribe cost per hour?
$0.36 an hour for recorded audio, and $0.60 an hour for live audio, at regular pay-as-you-go prices.
What do 100 hours of audio a month cost on Amazon Transcribe?
$36 for recorded audio on Standard, or $60 for live audio on Standard.
Does Amazon Transcribe have a free tier?
New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only.
Does Amazon Transcribe bill per second?
Billed per second with no minimum.
Is anything cheaper than Amazon Transcribe for recorded audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 10 of the 11 other vendors we price cost less: Groq Whisper Large V3 Turbo at $0.04 an hour, Speechmatics Melia 1 at $0.12 an hour, AssemblyAI Universal-2 at $0.15 an hour and 7 more.
Is anything cheaper than Amazon Transcribe for live audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 5 of the 9 other vendors we price cost less: AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming at $0.15 an hour, Speechmatics Linden 1 (voice agents) at $0.20 an hour, ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime at $0.38 an hour and 2 more.
Amazon Transcribe against the market: recorded audio
| # | Vendor and option | Per month | Per hour | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Groq Whisper Large V3 Turbo | $4 | $0.04 | $0.0007 |
| 2 | Speechmatics Melia 1 | $12 | $0.12 | $0.002 |
| 3 | AssemblyAI Universal-2 | $15 | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| 4 | OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 4 | Google Cloud V2 dynamic batch | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 4 | Azure AI Speech Batch transcription | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 7 | Rev AI Reverb (English) | $20 | $0.20 | $0.0033 |
| 8 | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | $21.01 | $0.21 | $0.0035 |
| 9 | Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual | $25.80 | $0.258 | $0.0043 |
| 10 | Gemini API Gemini 3.5 Transcribe | $30.60 | $0.306 | $0.0051 |
| 11 | Amazon Transcribe Standard | $36 | $0.36 | $0.006 |
| 12 | Gladia Starter (async) | $61 | $0.61 | $0.0102 |
Amazon Transcribe against the market: live audio
| # | Vendor and option | Per month | Per hour | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming | $15 | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| 2 | Speechmatics Linden 1 (voice agents) | $20 | $0.20 | $0.0033 |
| 3 | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime | $38.03 | $0.38 | $0.0063 |
| 4 | Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual | $46.20 | $0.462 | $0.0077 |
| 5 | Gemini API Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live | $53.55 | $0.536 | $0.0089 |
| 6 | Amazon Transcribe Standard | $60 | $0.60 | $0.01 |
| 7 | Gladia Starter (real-time) | $75 | $0.75 | $0.0125 |
| 8 | Google Cloud V1 with data logging | $95.04 | $0.95 | $0.0158 |
| 9 | Azure AI Speech Real-time transcription | $100 | $1 | $0.0167 |
| 10 | OpenAI gpt-live-transcribe | $102 | $1.02 | $0.017 |
Price your own monthly hours with the speech-to-text cost calculator, a single recording on what it costs to transcribe an hour of audio, or see the cheapest speech-to-text API.
Head to head: AWS Transcribe vs Whisper API, AWS Transcribe vs Google Speech-to-Text, AWS Transcribe vs Deepgram.
Generating speech instead? See Amazon Polly pricing.
Sources
Read on 6 October 2026:
- aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/ (plain HTTP and headless Chromium; the rate tables render client-side and did not render headless, so rates come from the page's US East worked examples and the price file the page loads)
- b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json (plain HTTP; the price file named in the page's data-pricing-endpoint)
Show the quoted text
Upon signup, start analyzing up to 60 audio minutes monthly, free for the first 12 months.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
Amazon Transcribe API for both streaming and batch transcriptions is billed monthly based on the tiered pricing shown below. Tiered pricing rates and discounts vary by region and you can see the applicable rates by selecting your region in the drop down below. You can apply the specific discount rate for your region based on the following examples for the US East (N. Virginia) region. Usage is billed in one-second increments, with no minimum applied. This pricing includes features such as custom vocabularies, vocabulary filtering, speaker diarization, and language identification. Additional charges apply for features such as automatic content redaction and custom language models.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
The rates below includes pricing for up to two channels per audio stream or audio file.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
This equals 2 million minutes of audio per month in the US East (N. Virginia) region. Streaming transcription is priced at $0.01 per minute.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
Let's assume that you want to use Amazon Transcribe to process 2 million minutes of recorded audio files per month (batch transcription) in the US East (N. Virginia) region. Batch transcription is priced at $0.006 per minute.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
In US East (N. Virginia), Tier 1 (T1) content redaction pricing of $0.0024 applies to the first 250,000 minutes of transcriptions.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
For larger workloads, additional volume discounts may be available.
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
Pre-patient visit conversation between physicians, clinic managers, nurses, and others 15 minutes $1.125
aws.amazon.com/transcribe/pricing/
"Transcription Job Audio to Text per second from 0 to Inf":{"rateCode":"XG5JYDUXJ2JRGBD9.JRTCKXETXF.6YS6EN2CT7","price":"0.0001000000"
b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json. US East (N. Virginia) entry: $0.0001 per second, $0.006 per minute, with no volume tiers.
"Streaming Stream to Text per second from 0 to Inf":{"rateCode":"PPN4FWMUFC5Z4KFX.JRTCKXETXF.6YS6EN2CT7","price":"0.0001667000"
b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json. US East (N. Virginia) entry: $0.0001667 per second, which the page shows as $0.01 per minute.
"Transcription Job Medical per seconds":{"rateCode":"T83665ZJGS3A9D2A.JRTCKXETXF.6YS6EN2CT7","price":"0.0012500000"
b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json. US East (N. Virginia): $0.00125 per second, $0.075 per minute.
"Transcription Job Redaction Audio to Text per Second from 0 to 15000000":{"rateCode":"GMYWXFUGQ5WUNKAC.JRTCKXETXF.XEPN5HMENM","price":"0.0000400000"
b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json. US East (N. Virginia): $0.00004 per second, $0.0024 per minute, for the first 15,000,000 seconds (250,000 minutes).
"Transcription Job TranscribeClmAudio Transcribe Custom Language Model per seconds from 0 to 15000000":{"rateCode":"4FYZJJEFPGCX363E.JRTCKXETXF.XEPN5HMENM","price":"0.0001000000"
b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/transcribe/USD/current/transcribe.json. US East (N. Virginia): $0.0001 per second, $0.006 per minute, for the first 250,000 minutes.
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .