AllocateThe cheapest transcription APIs in 2026
Transcription on the catalog starts at $0.0015 per minute of audio (Deepgram Flux). At that rate 1,000 hours of audio, 60,000 minutes, transcribes for $90 at list. All 7 transcription models are compared below.
Provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price on Allocate is list plus the 7% transaction fee.
Per-minute pricing in practice
Transcription bills on audio duration, not words produced, so cost forecasting is simple: minutes in, dollars out. Streaming and batch modes of the same model usually share a price; latency requirements, language coverage, and diarization decide between models more than price does at these levels.
For downstream LLM work, remember the second bill: an hour of speech is roughly 9,000 words, about 12,000 tokens, of input to whatever model reads the transcript.
Common questions
What does transcription cost per hour?
$0.09 per hour at list on Deepgram Flux ($0.0015 per minute). On Allocate, list plus the 7% transaction fee.
Does audio quality change the price?
No; billing is per minute of input audio regardless of quality. It changes accuracy instead, which is why noisy-channel workloads are worth testing across models before committing volume.
Related
Every model here sits behind one key on Allocate: route by name, meter per route, and swap the model in one click.