AssemblyAI vs Braintrust Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| AssemblyAI | Braintrust | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | $249/mo |
| Number of plans | 2 | 3 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | hybrid |
Pay as you go
- Universal-3.5 Pro ($0.21/hr)
- Universal-2 ($0.15/hr)
- Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime ($0.45/hr)
- Universal-Streaming ($0.15/hr)
- Universal-Streaming Multilingual ($0.15/hr)
- Sync API ($0.45/hr)
- Voice Agent API ($4.50/hr)
- Speaker Diarization ($0.02/hr pre-recorded, $0.12/hr realtime)
- Medical Mode ($0.15/hr)
- Keyterms Prompting
- Prompting ($0.05/hr)
- Speaker Identification ($0.02/hr)
- Translation ($0.06/hr)
- Custom Formatting ($0.03/hr)
- Entity Detection ($0.08/hr)
- Sentiment Analysis ($0.02/hr)
- Auto Chapters ($0.08/hr)
- Key Phrases ($0.01/hr)
- Topic Detection ($0.15/hr)
- Summarization ($0.03/hr)
- Profanity Filtering ($0.01/hr)
- PII Audio Redaction ($0.05/hr)
- PII Text Redaction ($0.08/hr)
- Content Moderation ($0.15/hr)
- LLM Gateway
- No minimum commitments
- No credit card required to start
Custom
- Custom rate limits
- Enhanced concurrency
- Enterprise-grade flexibility
- Volume-based pricing
- Custom starting concurrency limits
Starter
- $10 credits
- 1 GB processed data
- 10k scores
- 14-day retention
- Unlimited users, projects, datasets, playgrounds, and experiments
Pro
Popular- $249 credits
- 5 GB processed data
- 50k scores
- 30-day retention
- Custom charts, environments, priority support, RBAC, and more
Enterprise
- Custom data retention and export, RBAC, and premium support with on-prem or hosted deployment for high volume or privacy-sensitive data.
AssemblyAI vs Braintrust FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. AssemblyAI uses usage-based pricing, while Braintrust goes with hybrid. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. AssemblyAI: They're positioning as the developer-friendly, API-first alternative to Deepgram and Rev AI — competitive on price at scale but differentiated by the breadth of AI features (LLM Gateway, multichannel, etc.). The AWS Marketplace listing signals they're actively chasing enterprise procurement budgets. Braintrust: At $249/mo flat for Pro, Braintrust sits mid-to-premium compared to open-source or DIY logging stacks, but it undercuts the fully custom enterprise observability players by keeping a transparent starting price public. They're clearly courting AI-native teams who've outgrown free tools but aren't ready for an enterprise sales cycle yet.
Still deciding? See the best AssemblyAI alternatives or the best Braintrust alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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