AssemblyAI vs Runway 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 | Runway | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | $15/mo |
| Number of plans | 2 | 5 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
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
Free
- Includes 125 credits (one time)
- Generative Video
- Gen-4 Turbo (Image to Video)
- Generative Image
- Gen-4 (Text to Image, References)
- Gemini 3 Pro
- Gemini 2.5
- Image Apps
- Generative Audio
- Text to Speech
- Audio Apps
- 3 video editor projects
- 5GB asset storage
Standard
- 625 credits monthly
- All AI images and video models (Gen-4.5, Nano Banana Pro, Aleph, Veo 3.1, and more)
- 4K Upscaling
- No watermarks
Pro
Popular- Everything in Standard
- 2250 credits monthly
- Create Custom Voices for Lip Sync and Text to Speech
- 500GB asset storage
- Access to best models
Max
- Everything in Pro
- 9500 credits monthly
- Roll over unused credits for 1 month
- First access to newest models
- Highest generation volume
Enterprise
- Everything in Max
- Custom credits
- Single sign-on
- Workspace Analytics
- Configurable teamspaces
- Enterprise-wide onboarding
- Priority support
- Custom team sizes
AssemblyAI vs Runway 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. Runway: At $35–$95/mo, Runway is priced as a serious professional tool — not a casual dabbler play, but not enterprise-only either. They're competing in the premium tier of AI video generation alongside tools like Pika and Sora, positioning themselves as the high-quality option for creators who care about output fidelity.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for AssemblyAI and Runway and let you know when something moves.