An AssemblyAI alternative for transcription
AssemblyAI bills $0.15–$0.21 an hour and gives 185 free hours of transcription. Transcribsi gives 3 files a day for free and $10 a month with no minute limit. Read on 24 October 2026.
AssemblyAI charges $0.21 an hour for its best model and $0.15 an hour for Universal-2, and gives 185 free hours. Transcribsi charges $10 a month with no minute limit, gives 3 files a day for free, and takes a file of up to 30 minutes on the free plan.
Transcribsi and AssemblyAI side by side
a transcription service for files: a REST API, an MCP server and plugins for Claude and ChatGPT
a voice AI platform for developers: pre-recorded, real-time and sync speech-to-text APIs, a voice agent API, guardrails and an LLM gateway
a subscription: $10 a month paid yearly ($120 a year) with no minute limit of audio, or $20 a month paid monthly
per hour of audio: $0.21 an hour for Universal-3.5 Pro and $0.15 an hour for Universal-2, so a 30-minute recording is $0.105 or $0.075; billed monthly on actual usage with no minimum and no contract
$0: 3 files a day, up to 30 minutes per file, no card
yes: up to 185 hours of pre-recorded transcription and up to 333 hours of streaming, with no credit card required
up to 30 minutes per file on the free plan, no minute limit on Pro
no file size and no duration limit named on the pricing page
99+ languages, set by you or detected
99 for Universal-2 and 18 for Universal-3.5 Pro; Russian and Ukrainian are on the Universal-2 list
TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT, CSV, and DOCX on Pro
not offered: we take a file that is already finished
a real-time API whose concurrency scales on its own: 5 new streaming connections a minute on the free plan and 100 a minute on pay-as-you-go
a REST API under /v1 and an MCP server with 4 tools, from the Pro plan
pre-recorded, real-time and sync APIs, an API reference, a playground, a voice agent API at $4.50 an hour and an AWS Marketplace listing
none: no bot joins your meeting and we sell no recorder of our own
none on the pricing page: AssemblyAI sells APIs, not a meeting assistant
no translation, no summaries, no guardrails, no LLM gateway
a voice agent API, guardrails, an LLM gateway, a dictation API, speech understanding, and the option to buy through the AWS Marketplace
3 files a day, every day, with the same limits as the paid plans
185 hours of pre-recorded audio — a budget that takes a real workload to spend
A model menu and a plan
AssemblyAI prices by the hour and sells the model as much as the audio: Universal-3.5 Pro at $0.21 an hour for the most accurate work, Universal-2 at $0.15 for 99 languages. That is a developer's menu, and it comes with a large free tier — 185 hours of pre-recorded audio before the meter starts. Ours is the other shape of the deal: a month at a time, files of up to 30 minutes, and the same limits whatever you pay.
How to move a file to this service
- 1
Work out the hour
AssemblyAI bills per hour of audio, so a 30-minute interview is $0.075 at Universal-2 and $0.105 at Universal-3.5 Pro. Our Pro plan is $10 a month with no minute limit, and the free plan takes 3 files a day.
- 2
Watch the free hours
The free tier of AssemblyAI is 185 hours of pre-recorded transcription and 333 hours of streaming, with no card. Ours is 3 files a day of 30 minutes, also with no card, and it renews every morning.
- 3
Pick the model you need
Universal-3.5 Pro covers 18 languages and is the most accurate; Universal-2 covers 99.Wthe recording language is detected automatically.
- 4
Look at what surrounds the API
Around the transcription API sit a voice agent, guardrails, an LLM gateway and a dictation API. We keep it narrow: a transcript, timecodes, speaker labels and six export formats.
Tips
Hours are a unit you have to multiply.
A free tier can be larger than a plan.
Check whether your language is on the model you want.
Keep the export list in front of you.
Questions this page answers
Is AssemblyAI cheaper than Transcribsi?
Per hour of audio, yes: $0.15 for Universal-2 and $0.21 for Universal-3.5 Pro, against $10 a month with no minute limit on our Pro plan. If you transcribe more than a few hours a month, the monthly plan is the easier number to plan with.
How much does the AssemblyAI free tier give?
Up to 185 hours of pre-recorded transcription and up to 333 hours of streaming, with no credit card required. Ours gives 3 files a day of up to 30 minutes each, also without a card.
Does AssemblyAI understand Russian?
Russian and Ukrainian are both on the Universal-2 list of 99 languages. Universal-3.5 Pro covers 18 languages and Russian is not among them. We publish 99+ languages, and the language is detected automatically.
Can AssemblyAI transcribe a live meeting?
It has a real-time API with concurrency that scales on its own. We do not: we take a file, and the finished recording of a call is exactly the kind of file we are built for.
Does AssemblyAI export a transcript to a file?
The pricing page does not name the export formats. We publish six: TXT, Markdown, SRT, VTT and CSV on every plan, and DOCX on Pro.
Sources
- AAssemblyAI — pricingassemblyai.com · checked 24 October 2026
- AAssemblyAI — supported languagesassemblyai.com · checked 24 October 2026
- TTranscribsi — pricingtranscrib.si · checked 24 October 2026
- TTranscribsi — termstranscrib.si · checked 24 October 2026
- TTranscribsi — llms.txttranscrib.si · checked 24 October 2026
Reading: 8 minutesUpdated Transcribsi editorial team
Drop a recording — the text arrives in a minute
Speakers by name, a time on every line, export to TXT, SRT, VTT, CSV and Markdown.