AssemblyAI vs Modal 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 pricing | Modal pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | $250/mo |
| Number of plans | 2 | 3 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
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
- $30 / month free compute
- 3 workspace seats included
- 100 containers + 10 GPU concurrency
- Scheduled and Web Functions (limited)
- Real-time metrics and logs
- Region selection
Team
Popular- $100 / month free compute
- Unlimited seats
- 5000 containers + 50 GPU concurrency
- Unlimited Scheduled Functions
- Custom domains
- Static IP proxy
- Deployment rollbacks
- Environment-level budgets
Enterprise
- Volume-based discounts
- Unlimited seats
- Higher GPU concurrency
- Embedded ML engineering services
- Environment-level budgets
- Support via private Slack
- Audit logs, SAML SSO, and HIPAA
AssemblyAI vs Modal 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?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- 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. Modal: Modal sits in the middle-to-premium band of the GPU cloud/serverless compute space — pricier per-unit than raw cloud GPU rental (AWS, Lambda Labs) but selling the convenience of not managing infra, which undercuts fully managed ML platforms on complexity. They're chasing ML/AI teams who'd rather write Python and let infra disappear than fight Kubernetes YAML.
Still deciding? See the best AssemblyAI alternatives or the best Modal alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
Stop checking your competitors manually.
Outmano watches your competitors' prices and features for you. See how competitor pricing monitoring works.
Try Outmano free »
14-day free trial