Deepgram vs Azure Speech to Text on price
Azure Speech to Text is cheaper for recorded audio at every volume from 10 to 10,000 hours a month. Deepgram is cheaper for live audio at every volume from 10 to 10,000 hours a month. At 100 hours a month, for recorded audio, Azure AI Speech's Batch transcription costs $0.18 an hour against $0.258 for Deepgram's Nova-3 Monolingual, 30% less; for live audio, Deepgram's Nova-3 Monolingual costs $0.462 an hour against $1 for Azure AI Speech's Real-time transcription, 54% 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 | Deepgram | Azure Speech to Text |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours | $2.58 ($0.258/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $1.80 ($0.18/h) Batch transcription |
| 100 hours | $25.80 ($0.258/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $18 ($0.18/h) Batch transcription |
| 1,000 hours | $258 ($0.258/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $180 ($0.18/h) Batch transcription |
| 10,000 hours | $2,580 ($0.258/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $1,800 ($0.18/h) Batch transcription |
Live audio (streaming)
| Audio a month | Deepgram | Azure Speech to Text |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours | $4.62 ($0.462/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $10 ($1/h) Real-time transcription |
| 100 hours | $46.20 ($0.462/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $100 ($1/h) Real-time transcription |
| 1,000 hours | $462 ($0.462/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $1,000 ($1/h) Real-time transcription |
| 10,000 hours | $4,620 ($0.462/h) Nova-3 Monolingual | $10,000 ($1/h) Real-time transcription |
What else changes the bill
| On the bill | Deepgram | Azure Speech to Text |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier or credit | Every new account gets $200 of free credit, which doesn't expire until used. | A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it. |
| Billing | Billed per second, with no rounding up. | Billed per second of audio sent. |
| Speaker labels, recorded audio | Included. | Included. |
| Speaker labels, live audio | +$0.12 an hour. | +$0.30 an hour. |
Promotions running now: Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual (streaming) at $0.0048 a minute instead of $0.0077, no end date given; Deepgram Flux English (streaming) at $0.0065 a minute instead of $0.0077, no end date given; Deepgram Nova-3 Multilingual (streaming) at $0.0058 a minute instead of $0.0092, no end date given. The tables use regular prices.
Every model on each side
Deepgram
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nova-3 Monolingual | batch | $0.0043 | $0.258 |
| Whisper Large | batch | $0.0048 | $0.288 |
| Nova-3 Multilingual | batch | $0.0052 | $0.312 |
| Nova-3 Monolingual | streaming | $0.0077 | $0.462 |
| Flux English | streaming | $0.0077 | $0.462 |
| Flux Multilingual | streaming | $0.0078 | $0.468 |
| Nova-3 Multilingual | streaming | $0.0092 | $0.552 |
Azure Speech to Text
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batch transcription | batch | $0.003 | $0.18 |
| Fast transcription | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| MAI Transcribe-1.5 | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| LLM Speech | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| Real-time transcription | streaming | $0.0167 | $1 |
Full details: Deepgram pricing and Azure speech to text 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 .