Transcribe audio
OpenAI speech to text
Hosted audio transcription API that turns uploaded recordings or live audio into text, with older models for speaker labels and timestamps.
Billing
- Pricing model
- Per minute of audio (
gpt-transcribe); per token plus an estimated per-minute figure for older models4 - Free tier
- Not published
- Card required for free tier
- Not published
- Minimum spend
- Build tier starts at $5 in total credit purchases7
- Billing period
- Monthly usage limit per tier, for example $500 a month at Build7
Prices
Prices are as listed on the pricing page. Per-token columns are dollars per 1M tokens (input, output); the last column is the page's estimated cost.
| Model | Type | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Per hour of audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
gpt-transcribe (recommended) | Transcription | - | - | $0.27 (= $0.0045 x 60) |
gpt-4o-transcribe (deprecated) | Transcription | $2.50 | $10.00 | $0.36 (= $0.006 x 60) |
gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (deprecated) | Transcription | $1.25 | $5.00 | $0.18 (= $0.003 x 60) |
gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize (deprecated) | Transcription + diarization | $2.50 | $10.00 | $0.36 (= $0.006 x 60) |
whisper-1 (deprecated, listed as Whisper) | Transcription | - | - | $0.36 (= $0.006 x 60) |
gpt-live-transcribe (live audio) | Live transcription | - | - | $1.02 (= $0.017 x 60) |
Source4Pricing
Read from OpenAI’s own pages on 2026-11-04. Every number links to the page a value came from. For agents, the same facts as markdown: /tools/transcribe-audio/openai-transcription.md