AssemblyAI vs Deepgram
AssemblyAI and Deepgram are both audio AI tools, tracked here on price, platforms, integrations, and capabilities. Every figure below is read from the vendor's own pages and dated. No score and no winner: the facts do the picking.
Cheapest paid tier each vendor publishes. Free plans are listed above; tiers priced on request are not plotted because there is no figure to plot.
AssemblyAI
Voice AI infrastructure for builders
AssemblyAI delivers production-ready Voice AI models, including pre-recorded and real-time streaming speech-to-text, speaker diarization, and voice agent APIs. It provides advanced models like Universal-3.5 Pro, supporting multiple languages and specialized medical transcription modes.
Deepgram
Real-time APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agents
Deepgram provides real-time and batch APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agents. It offers Nova transcription models supporting over 45 languages and features like speaker diarization.
At a glance
Capability tags are factual labels we assign when a tool is added; they describe what a tool does, not how well it does it.
Checked against the vendors. Written from each vendor's own site and last re-checked there: AssemblyAI on August 31, 2026 · Deepgram on August 31, 2026. Vendors change pricing and features without notice, so confirm anything that decides your purchase on the vendor's page.
Also in audio
A tool we have an affiliate relationship with. It is not part of the comparison above and we are not calling it the better pick.
- Repurposing podcast and video recordings into social posts, newsletters, and blogs
- Content teams and agencies managing multi-brand client media pipelines
- Transcribing and summarizing meetings, webinars, and sales calls
Key features
AssemblyAI
- Pre-recorded and real-time streaming speech-to-text transcription
- Speaker diarization to segment utterances by speaker
- LLM-powered Speech Understanding and LLM Gateway
- Custom keyterms prompting and Medical Mode for specialized terminology
Deepgram
- Speech-to-text transcription
- Text-to-speech generation
- Voice agent API
- Audio intelligence and PII redaction
- Speaker diarization and language detection
What each one does well
AssemblyAI
- ✓ Building real-time voice agents
- ✓ Transcribing pre-recorded audio files with high accuracy
- ✓ Performing call analytics and medical transcription
Deepgram
- ✓ Building real-time voice agents
- ✓ Transcribing multilingual audio with background noise
- ✓ Generating low-latency text-to-speech responses
People also ask
Which is cheaper, AssemblyAI or Deepgram?
AssemblyAI. Paid plans start at $0.02 usage-based for AssemblyAI and $200 usage-based for Deepgram.
Does AssemblyAI or Deepgram have a free plan?
Both. AssemblyAI and Deepgram each publish a free plan.
What is the difference between AssemblyAI and Deepgram?
Both are tracked for speech-to-text, speaker-identification. Of the capabilities they do not share, only AssemblyAI is tracked for transcription, developer-api, and only Deepgram is tracked for text-to-speech, ai-agents.
How much do AssemblyAI and Deepgram cost?
AssemblyAI: free plan, then $0.02 usage-based. Deepgram: free plan, then $200 usage-based.
Answers are generated from the tracked plans and capability tags shown above, so they move when the vendors' pages do.
Full fact sheets, FAQs, and discussion links: AssemblyAI · Deepgram · all audio tools