Gemini API vs AssemblyAI Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Gemini API | AssemblyAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | Custom |
| Number of plans | 3 | 2 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Free
- Limited access to certain models
- Free input & output tokens
- Google AI Studio access
- Content used to improve our products
Paid
Popular- Higher rate limits for production deployments
- Access to Context caching
- Batch API (50% cost reduction)
- Access to Google's most advanced models
- Content not used to improve our products
Enterprise
- Dedicated support channels
- Advanced security & compliance
- Provisioned throughput
- Volume-based discounts (based on usage)
- ML ops, model garden and more
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
Gemini API vs AssemblyAI 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. Gemini API: Google is playing the volume game here, positioning against OpenAI's API and Anthropic by offering competitive per-token rates with the added leverage of deep GCP integration. They're not the cheapest, but they're gunning for teams already in the Google ecosystem who want one throat to choke. 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.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Gemini API and AssemblyAI and let you know when something moves.