Free speech-to-text APIs
11 of the 12 speech-to-text APIs we price give something away free. The largest sign-up credits cover hundreds of hours of recorded audio: Google Cloud's $300 (for any Google Cloud product) covers about 1,667 hours on V2 dynamic batch, Speechmatics' $100 about 833 hours on Melia 1 and Deepgram's $200 about 775 hours on Nova-3 Monolingual. Free hours that come back every month are smaller: ElevenLabs 4 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2, Google Cloud 60 minutes of V1 and Azure AI Speech 5 hours of live audio on a separate free tier. OpenAI's Whisper API has no free tier.
Free credit when you sign up
A one-off credit, used up once and not renewed. How much audio it covers:
| Vendor | Credit | About this much audio |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud New Google Cloud customers get $300 of free credit to try any Google Cloud product. | $300 | 1,667 hours on V2 dynamic batch |
| Speechmatics New accounts get $100 of free credit, no card required. | $100 | 833 hours on Melia 1 |
| Deepgram Every new account gets $200 of free credit, which doesn't expire until used. | $200 | 775 hours on Nova-3 Monolingual |
| AssemblyAI Sign-up comes with $50 of free credit and no card required; AssemblyAI says that covers up to 185 hours of pre-recorded or 333 hours of streaming transcription. | $50 | 185 hours vendor's figure |
| Gladia New accounts get 50€ of free credit once, with no monthly reset; Gladia puts it at roughly 80+ hours of pre-recorded or 60+ hours of real-time transcription. | €50 | 80 hours vendor's figure |
| Rev AI New accounts get free credits worth 5 hours of Reverb transcription, usable on any product. | 5 hours | 5 hours vendor's figure |
Hours we work out divide the credit by the vendor's cheapest price for recorded audio; live (streaming) audio uses a credit faster on most APIs.
Free hours every month
| Vendor | What's free | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | The V1 API's first 60 minutes a month are free; the V2 table lists no free minutes. | Every month |
| Gemini API | The free tier charges nothing for input or output, but Google may use free-tier content to improve its products, which it doesn't on the paid tier. | Free plan |
| Amazon Transcribe | New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only. | Every month, first 12 months only |
| Azure AI Speech | A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it. | Every month, on a separate free tier |
| ElevenLabs | The Free / pay-as-you-go column of the API price table includes 4 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 and 2 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 Realtime. | Every month |
| Groq | The free plan transcribes up to 7,200 audio seconds an hour and 28,800 a day (8 hours) per Whisper model at no charge, within its rate limits. | Free plan |
Nothing free: No free allowance or credit is listed on OpenAI's pricing page.
What you pay after the free part
Each vendor's cheapest general-purpose model at list price, recorded or live:
| Vendor | Model | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Groq | Whisper Large V3 Turbo | $0.04 |
| Speechmatics | Melia 1 | $0.12 |
| AssemblyAI | Universal-2 | $0.15 |
| OpenAI | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimate) | $0.18 |
| Google Cloud | V2 dynamic batch | $0.18 |
| Azure AI Speech | Batch transcription | $0.18 |
| Rev AI | Reverb (English) | $0.20 |
| ElevenLabs | Scribe v2 | $0.22 |
| Deepgram | Nova-3 Monolingual | $0.258 |
| Gemini API | Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (estimate) | $0.306 |
| Amazon Transcribe | Standard | $0.36 |
| Gladia | Starter (async) | $0.61 |
For your own volume, use the speech-to-text cost calculator; for one recording, see how much it costs to transcribe an hour of audio. The cheapest speech-to-text API ranks them by cost.
Quick answers
Is the Whisper API free?
Not from OpenAI: no free allowance or credit is listed on OpenAI's pricing page. Whisper (whisper-1) costs $0.36 an hour of audio from the first minute. Groq runs Whisper too: the free plan transcribes up to 7,200 audio seconds an hour and 28,800 a day (8 hours) per Whisper model at no charge, within its rate limits.
Does Google Speech-to-Text have a free tier?
The V1 API's first 60 minutes a month are free; the V2 table lists no free minutes. New Google Cloud customers get $300 of free credit to try any Google Cloud product. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, V2 dynamic batch, costs $0.18 an hour.
Does Azure speech to text have a free tier?
A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Batch transcription, costs $0.18 an hour.
Does Deepgram have a free tier?
Every new account gets $200 of free credit, which doesn't expire until used. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Nova-3 Monolingual, costs $0.258 an hour.
Does AssemblyAI have a free tier?
Sign-up comes with $50 of free credit and no card required; AssemblyAI says that covers up to 185 hours of pre-recorded or 333 hours of streaming transcription. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Universal-2, costs $0.15 an hour.
Does AWS Transcribe have a free tier?
New accounts get 60 minutes a month free, for the first 12 months only. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Standard, costs $0.36 an hour.
Does ElevenLabs Scribe have a free tier?
The Free / pay-as-you-go column of the API price table includes 4 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 and 2 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 Realtime. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Scribe v2, costs $0.22 an hour.
Does Speechmatics have a free tier?
New accounts get $100 of free credit, no card required. On pay-as-you-go, its cheapest model, Melia 1, costs $0.12 an hour.
Generating speech instead? See free text-to-speech APIs.
Free terms from each vendor's pricing page, read on 6 October 2026; the quoted text is on each vendor's page here. Self-hosted open-source models aren't priced.
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .