AssemblyAI
assemblyai.com · 2 records in Compute, Inference · JSON
Records 2
- caveatAssemblyAI (Compute)
Computefree tieridentity emailno cardlimit request-rateevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-22
- trialAssemblyAI (Inference)
Inferencefree tieridentity emailno cardlimit volume-quotaevidence documentedstale on 2026-12-04
AssemblyAI (Compute)
Compute- Free allowance
- '$50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- request-ratethe free tier caps streaming concurrency at '5 new streams per minute' against 100 for pay-as-you-go, so five live sessions a minute is the real wall on a free account, long before 50 dollars of credit is spent.
- Evidence
- documented4 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22
| Free tier | '$50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required. Concurrency is capped (see above) until you upgrade.' At the Universal-2 pre-recorded rate of USD 0.15 an hour, 50 / 0.15 = 333 hours of transcription. At Universal-3.5 Pro (USD 0.21 an hour) the same credit is 238 hours. unit hours; metered on wall-clock; one-time-credit |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
|
| Identity | email no card and no payment method: the FAQ states '$50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required', so no payment method is taken and no hold exists. The evidence does not say which identifier the signup form asks for, so whether an email alone or an email plus a phone is required is not stated; debit and prepaid acceptance are not… |
| Egress | not stated |
| Interface | rest inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed |
| Tooling | not stated |
| Composes with | a free runner plus 333 hours of pre-recorded transcription is enough to transcribe a whole lecture or podcast archive once; pair it with a free object store from the storage lane for the audio, since the credit covers the API and nothing else. What breaks: the 5-stream streaming cap makes live capture useless, and a re-transcription after a model change spends the credit twice. |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | These are inference credits, not general compute. The page is an llms.txt-shaped 'Authoritative Reference' block dated 'Last updated: 2026-09-28' on the vendor's own pricing URL, so it is the vendor speaking and the rung is documented. The page also warns that 'Defaults can differ between free-tier and paid accounts' and that streaming bills session duration rather than audio duration, which is where a free credit disappears without producing output. Expiry of the USD 50 is not stated on the page; a 12-month read would have to come from the console. |
| Parsed numbers |
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Evidence 4
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | assemblyai.com/pricing | '$50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required. Concurrency is capped (see above) until you upgrade', quoted from the FAQ 'What's the free tier?' |
| 2026-10-22 | assemblyai.com/pricing | 'Free-tier streaming concurrency: 5 new streams per minute. Pay-as-you-go streaming concurrency: 100 new streams per minute', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | assemblyai.com/pricing | pre-recorded rates 'Universal-3.5 Pro ... $0.21/hr' and 'Universal-2 ... $0.15/hr', quoted; 'Pre-recorded is billed per hour of audio submitted' |
| 2026-10-22 | assemblyai.com/pricing | '$50 in free credits, no credit card required' restated in the Key Pricing Facts block, and 'EU region is the same price as US', quoted |
More fields 1
| facets | {"class": "credit-large-enough-for-real-workload","free_tier_kind": "one-time-credit","shape": {"vcpu": null,"ram_gib": null,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": 0}} |
|---|
Unknown values 6
- egress metered: egress metering was not published
- egress terms: a source was read and is silent on this field
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field
AssemblyAI (Inference)
Inference- Free allowance
- USD 50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required; one-time, not a monthly allowance.
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- volume-quotaUSD 50 in free credits at signup, one-time; the pre-recorded rate is USD 0.15 per hour on Universal-2 and USD 0.21 per hour on Universal-3.5 Pro
- Evidence
- documented14 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-04checked 2026-11-03 (live); stale on 2026-12-04
| Free tier | USD 50 in free credits at signup, no credit card required; one-time, not a monthly allowance. The credit is spent at the per-model rates: Universal-3.5 Pro pre-recorded USD 0.21 per hour, Universal-2 pre-recorded USD 0.15 per hour, Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime streaming USD 0.45 per hour, text-to-speech USD 15 per 1M characters. Free-tier streaming concurrency is 5 new streams per minute against 100 for pay-as-you-go. unit credits; metered on unstated; models on the pricing page: speech-to-text universal-3-5-pro, universal-2, universal-3-6-pro (streaming), universal-streaming-english and universal-streaming-multilingual; text-to-speech AssemblyAI-TTS-1; an LLM gateway that lists OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Qwen models at per-token rates. unverified: whether the signup credit also pays for the LLM gateway and the text-to-speech endpoint, because the page states the credit once and names no product scope; unverified: whether the credit expires |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
|
| Binding | volume-quota the one-time USD 50 credit is the ceiling for batch work; the 5 new streams per minute cap is a second, separate wall for streaming |
| Identity | email no credit card at signup ('no credit card required'); the signup page offers Continue with Google or Continue with email behind a reCAPTCHA check; unverified: whether a phone number or an email confirmation step follows the form |
| Egress | not published |
| Interface | rest REST at https://api.assemblyai.com (upload, transcript submit and poll); streaming over WebSocket at wss://streaming.assemblyai.com/v3/ws; Python and TypeScript SDKs endpoint: https://api.assemblyai.com/v2/transcript |
| Tooling | Python and TypeScript SDKs, and raw HTTP and WebSocket calls with the API key from the dashboard; every model id is set in the speech_models field of the request |
| Composes with | the credit pays for batch transcription of recorded audio, which a free CI runner can post file by file; pair it with a free object store for the audio, since the credit covers the API and nothing else. The 5 new streams per minute cap makes live capture on the free tier a poor fit. |
| Reliability | streaming is billed on session duration, not audio duration, so an idle open connection spends credit; the default model can differ between free-tier and paid accounts, so speech_models should be set explicitly |
| Notes | the pricing page names a streaming v3 endpoint, wss://streaming.assemblyai.com/v3/ws, and states that the v2 realtime endpoint is inactive |
| Evidence note | documented the credit, the card-free signup, the rates and the free-tier streaming cap are quoted from the vendor pricing page; the credit's expiry and its scope over the LLM gateway and text-to-speech were not stated and are unverified. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 14
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | USD 50 in free credits at signup with no card |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | free-tier streaming is capped at 5 new streams per minute |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | Universal-3.5 Pro pre-recorded costs USD 0.21 per hour |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | Universal-2 pre-recorded costs USD 0.15 per hour |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | the streaming model universal-3-6-pro costs USD 0.45 per hour |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | text-to-speech is billed at USD 15 per 1M input characters |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | streaming runs on the v3 WebSocket endpoint and the v2 realtime endpoint is inactive |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | streaming is billed on open-session time, idle time included |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | part of the text of Reliability, above |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/pricing | the LLM gateway is one endpoint on the same API key |
| 2026-11-03 | www.assemblyai.com/dashboard/signup | the signup form takes an email address |
| 2026-11-03 | www.assemblyai.com/dashboard/signup | the signup form sits behind a reCAPTCHA check |
| 2026-11-03 | www.assemblyai.com/docs | Python and TypeScript SDKs exist for transcription and streaming |
| 2026-11-03 | assemblyai.com/docs/pre-recorded-audio/getting-started/trans | the REST API base URL is https://api.assemblyai.com |
Unknown values 3
- egress metered: egress metering was not published
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer