AssemblyAI vs Cohere 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 | Cohere | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | Custom |
| Number of plans | 2 | 3 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | usage-based | custom |
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
North
- Intuitive interface
- Purpose-built generative models
- Intelligent search
- AI agents for routine tasks and complex workflows
Compass
- Pre-built data connectors
- Intelligent search
- Document parsing
- Managed index
Model Vault
- Fully managed model deployment
- No shared resources or multi-tenancy overhead
- Seamless integration with Cohere North
- Simple startup and self-serve model access
- Fixed or Flex pricing plans available
AssemblyAI vs Cohere 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?
- AssemblyAI has a free plan. Cohere doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. AssemblyAI uses usage-based pricing, while Cohere goes with custom. 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. Cohere: Cohere is squarely targeting enterprise and developer teams that can't or won't send data to OpenAI or Anthropic — data residency, security, and deployment flexibility are the pitch. They're not the cheapest option, but they're positioning as the serious infrastructure play for regulated industries and large orgs that need control.
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