AWS Transcribe vs Whisper API on price
AWS Transcribe and Whisper API cost the same for recorded audio at every volume from 10 to 10,000 hours a month. AWS Transcribe is cheaper for live audio at every volume from 10 to 10,000 hours a month. At 100 hours a month, for recorded audio, Amazon Transcribe's Standard and OpenAI's Whisper (whisper-1) both cost $0.36 an hour; for live audio, Amazon Transcribe's Standard costs $0.60 an hour against $1.02 for OpenAI's gpt-realtime-whisper, 41% less.
Each side's cheapest option at each volume, at regular pay-as-you-go prices; bold marks the cheaper. Price only: accuracy, languages and latency differ.
Recorded audio (batch)
| Audio a month | AWS Transcribe | Whisper API |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours | $3.60 ($0.36/h) Standard | $3.60 ($0.36/h) Whisper (whisper-1) |
| 100 hours | $36 ($0.36/h) Standard | $36 ($0.36/h) Whisper (whisper-1) |
| 1,000 hours | $360 ($0.36/h) Standard | $360 ($0.36/h) Whisper (whisper-1) |
| 10,000 hours | $3,600 ($0.36/h) Standard | $3,600 ($0.36/h) Whisper (whisper-1) |
Live audio (streaming)
| Audio a month | AWS Transcribe | Whisper API |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours | $6 ($0.60/h) Standard | $10.20 ($1.02/h) gpt-realtime-whisper |
| 100 hours | $60 ($0.60/h) Standard | $102 ($1.02/h) gpt-realtime-whisper |
| 1,000 hours | $600 ($0.60/h) Standard | $1,020 ($1.02/h) gpt-realtime-whisper |
| 10,000 hours | $6,000 ($0.60/h) Standard | $10,200 ($1.02/h) gpt-realtime-whisper |
What else changes the bill
| On the bill | AWS Transcribe | Whisper API |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier or credit | New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only. | No free allowance or credit is listed on OpenAI's pricing page. |
| Billing | Billed per second with no minimum. | OpenAI's pricing page doesn't say how partial minutes are counted. |
| Speaker labels, recorded audio | Included. | Through the separate gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize model, at the same estimated $0.006 a minute as gpt-4o-transcribe. |
| Speaker labels, live audio | Included. | Not listed on the pricing page. |
Not counted here: OpenAI's gpt-transcribe (batch, $0.27 an hour), OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (batch, $0.18 an hour, an estimate), OpenAI's gpt-4o-transcribe (batch, $0.36 an hour, an estimate), OpenAI's gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize (batch, $0.36 an hour, an estimate) and OpenAI's gpt-live-transcribe (streaming, $1.02 an hour).
Every model on each side
AWS Transcribe
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| Standard | streaming | $0.01 | $0.60 |
Whisper API
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whisper (whisper-1) | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| gpt-realtime-whisper | streaming | $0.017 | $1.02 |
Full details: AWS Transcribe pricing and Whisper API pricing. Compare every vendor in the speech-to-text cost calculator, or see the cheapest speech-to-text API.
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .