Gemini transcription pricing per hour and per minute
Gemini API charges $0.306 an hour for recorded audio ($0.0051 a minute) with Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (an estimate, as it bills tokens), and $0.536 an hour for live audio ($0.0089 a minute) with Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live (an estimate, as it bills tokens). 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. Billed in tokens: Google counts 25 audio tokens per second of input audio, plus the text tokens returned.
Ranked by each vendor's cheapest option at 100 hours a month, Gemini API comes 10th of 12 for recorded audio and 5th of 10 for live audio.
Prices by model
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Estimate: Billed in tokens: $2.00 per million audio input tokens and $12.00 per million output tokens. Google's own basis (25 audio tokens a second, 175 output tokens a minute) gives $0.0051 a minute; Google rounds it to about $0.005. | batch | $0.0051 | $0.306 |
| Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live Estimate: Billed in tokens: $3.50 per million audio input tokens and $21.00 per million output tokens. On Google's basis that is $0.0089 a minute; Google rounds it to about $0.009. | streaming | $0.0089 | $0.536 |
What 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 hours a month cost
| Model | 10 hours | 100 hours | 1,000 hours | 10,000 hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Transcribe batch | $3.06 $0.306/h | $30.60 $0.306/h | $306 $0.306/h | $3,060 $0.306/h |
| Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live streaming | $5.36 $0.536/h | $53.55 $0.536/h | $536 $0.535/h | $5,355 $0.535/h |
Regular prices. One-off credits and promotions aren't counted.
Free tier and credits
- 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.
Billing
- Billed in tokens: Google counts 25 audio tokens per second of input audio, plus the text tokens returned.
Add-ons
| Feature | Audio | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker diarization | batch | Included Part of Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, no separate price. |
Volume discounts and commitments
- Enterprise deployments can get volume-based discounts through Google's sales team.
Quick answers
How much does Gemini transcription cost per hour?
$0.306 an hour for recorded audio, and $0.536 an hour for live audio, at regular pay-as-you-go prices.
What do 100 hours of audio a month cost on Gemini API?
$30.60 for recorded audio on Gemini 3.5 Transcribe (an estimate, as it bills tokens), or $53.55 for live audio on Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live (an estimate, as it bills tokens).
Does Gemini API have a free tier?
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.
Does Gemini API bill per second?
Billed in tokens: Google counts 25 audio tokens per second of input audio, plus the text tokens returned.
Is anything cheaper than Gemini API for recorded audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 9 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 6 more.
Is anything cheaper than Gemini API for live audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 4 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 1 more.
Gemini API 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 |
Gemini API 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, or see the cheapest speech-to-text API.
Sources
Read on 6 October 2026:
- ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing (plain HTTP)
Show the quoted text
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live gemini-3.5-transcribe-live Try it in Google AI Studio Our low-latency, real-time speech-to-text model for bidirectional streaming audio transcription over WebSockets. Standard Free Tier Paid Tier, per 1M tokens in USD Input price Free of charge $3.50 or $0.005/min * (audio) Output price (including thinking tokens) Free of charge $21.00 or $0.004/min * (text) Grounding with Google Search Not Supported Used to improve our products Yes No * Estimated pricing is based on 25 audio tokens per second for input and 175 text tokens per minute for output, for an effective blended rate of ~$0.009 per min for Live Transcribe.
ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
Standard Free Tier Paid Tier, per 1M tokens in USD Input price Free of charge $2.00 or $0.003/min * (audio) Output price (including thinking tokens) Free of charge $12.00 or $0.002/min * (text) Grounding with Google Search Not Supported Used to improve our products Yes No * Estimated pricing is based on 25 audio tokens per second for input and 175 text tokens per minute for output, for an effective blended rate of ~$0.005 per min for Transcribe.
ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe gemini-3.5-transcribe Try it in Google AI Studio Our speech-to-text model with automatic language detection, speaker diarization, word-level timestamps, and custom vocabulary biasing.
ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
Volume-based discounts (based on usage)
ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .