AssemblyAI gives new accounts a one-time signup credit rather than an ongoing free tier. The free plan includes $50 in free credits for AssemblyAI’s Speech-to-Text APIs and free users can start 5 new Universal-Streaming sessions per minute. FreeTier.co estimates the free tier at about $41/mo, and no credit card is required to sign up.
About
AssemblyAI provides speech-to-text, streaming speech-to-text, speech understanding, guardrails, and an LLM gateway for voice and audio applications. The platform exposes APIs for prerecorded transcription, real-time transcription, speaker diarization, language detection, keyterms prompting, custom formatting, sentiment analysis, summarization, entity detection, PII redaction, and related audio intelligence features.
The pricing page lists pay-as-you-go usage for the hosted API and a free offer of $50 in credits with no credit card required. Free users can start 5 new streaming sessions per minute, while pay-as-you-go accounts start with 100 new streams per minute. The service is aimed at developers building transcription, voice agents, contact center workflows, medical transcription, and other speech-processing applications.
- Speech-to-text and streaming transcription APIs
- Speaker diarization and speaker identification
- Language detection and code-switching support
- Sentiment, summaries, topics, and chapters
- PII redaction and profanity filtering
- $50 signup credits
- 5 new streams per minute on free accounts
Free Tier Value
This free tier is genuinely usable because it includes substantial monthly transcription quotas and does not require a credit card to start. Using the cheapest paid rate of $0.15/hour, 185 hours of pre-recorded transcription is worth about $27.75/month, and 333 hours of streaming transcription is worth about $49.95/month; taken together, the offer is roughly $41.40/month of paid usage value, though it remains capped rather than unlimited.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- $50 in free credits for AssemblyAI’s Speech-to-Text APIs.
- Free users can start 5 new Universal-Streaming sessions per minute.
- No credit card required to get started with the free offer.
See AssemblyAI pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Universal-3.5 Pro
- hour
- $0.21
- language_support
- 18
- billing_unit
- per hour
- Most accurate async speech-to-text model
- 18 languages with native code switching
- Most accurate speaker diarization
- Custom rate limits available via sales
Universal-2
- hour
- $0.15
- language_support
- 99
- billing_unit
- per hour
- Highly accurate speech-to-text model
- Supports 99 languages
- Lower price than Universal-3.5 Pro
Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime
- hour
- $0.45
- language_support
- 18
- billing_unit
- per hour
- Most accurate realtime model
- Built-in context carryover and conversation memory
- Supports 18 languages
- Self-correcting speaker labels
- Voice isolation
- Keyterm prompting
Universal-Streaming
- hour
- $0.15
- language_support
- 1
- billing_unit
- per hour
- High-quality realtime model
- English-only transcription
- Low latency
- Cost-effective for production voice apps
Universal-Streaming Multilingual
- hour
- $0.15
- language_support
- 6
- billing_unit
- per hour
- Multilingual realtime transcription
- Supports English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian
- Same speed and cost as Universal-Streaming
Sync API
- hour
- $0.45
- request_duration
- 2 minutes
- language_support
- 18
- billing_unit
- per hour
- Single-call transcription
- Up to 2 minutes per request
- Per-word timing and confidence
- Supports 18 languages
- No polling or WebSocket needed
Pricing extracted from AssemblyAI's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is AssemblyAI free forever?
No. AssemblyAI gives new accounts a one-time signup credit, spent at normal usage rates, then the account moves to pay-as-you-go.
Does AssemblyAI require a credit card?
No. You can start on AssemblyAI's free tier without entering card details.
What is AssemblyAI's free tier worth?
AssemblyAI's free tier is worth about $41 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 70/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
