AssemblyAI: $50 Free Transcription Credits on Signup
Source: https://www.assemblyai.com/pricing
Description
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+ 1 AssemblyAI gives every new developer $50 in free API credits the moment you sign up — no credit card required. The credit covers all of AssemblyAI's speech AI: pre-recorded Speech-to-Text, real-time streaming STT, Speech Understanding (speaker diarization, summarization, sentiment, topic detection, entity detection, PII redaction, auto chapters, content moderation), and Guardrails. At the cheapest async tier ($0.15/hr Universal-2) the credit buys ~333 hours of transcription, or ~238 hours on the high-accuracy Universal-3 Pro model ($0.21/hr). Once exhausted, the account simply stops working until you add a card and top up — there is no auto-charge surprise.
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+ 7 1. Go to assemblyai.com/dashboard/signup
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+ 8 2. Sign up with email + password or with Google / GitHub SSO
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+ 9 3. Verify your email (click the link in the inbox)
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+ 10 4. Fill in a short profile (name, company optional, use case)
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+ 11 5. You land in the dashboard with $50 credit already loaded — your API key is visible on the home tab
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6. Copy the API key and start calling https://api.assemblyai.com/v2/transcript (REST) or use one of the SDKs (Python, Node, Go, Java, Ruby, C#)
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+ 14 Important:
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+ 15 • No credit card is requested at signup — you only enter one if you want to top up after the $50 runs out
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+ 16 • The credit is a one-time grant, it does not refresh monthly
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+ 17 • Unused balance is retained if you later upgrade to a paid account
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• When the balance hits zero you get the error Your current account balance is negative. Please top up to continue using the API. — no silent overage billing
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+ 24 Everything in the AssemblyAI API surface except the LLM Gateway (which routes transcripts to third-party LLMs and is billed separately):
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+ 26 CapabilityIncluded on free tier
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+ 27 Pre-recorded Speech-to-TextYes
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+ 28 Streaming Speech-to-Text (WebSocket)Yes
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+ 29 Speech Understanding (sentiment, topics, entities, summarization, auto chapters, PII redaction, content safety, key phrases)Yes
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+ 30 Speaker DiarizationYes
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+ 31 Automatic Language Detection (99+ languages)Yes
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+ 32 Medical Mode (clinical vocabulary)Yes
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+ 33 Voice Agent APIYes
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+ 34 GuardrailsYes
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+ 35 LLM Gateway (route transcripts to GPT/Claude/etc.)No — paid only
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+ 43 ModelPrice / hourHours from $50
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+ 44 Universal-2$0.15~333 h
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+ 45 Universal-3 Pro (highest accuracy, alphanumerics & names)$0.21~238 h
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+ 46 Slam-1 (premium pre-recorded)$0.37~135 h
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+ 50 ModelPrice / hourHours from $50
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+ 51 Universal-Streaming$0.15~333 h
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+ 52 Universal-3 Pro Streaming$0.45~111 h
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+ 55
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+ 56 • $4.50 / hr ($0.075 / min) — burns the credit fast (~11 hours)
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+ 58 Add-ons (speaker diarization, summarization, etc.) are billed on top of the base STT rate, see the pricing page for the per-feature cents/hour.
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+ 60 Source: AssemblyAI Pricing (verified 2026-05-09).
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+ 66 • Default to Universal-2 while testing — at $0.15/hr you get the most playtime out of the $50 and accuracy is already strong for general English.
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+ 67 • Switch to Universal-3 Pro only when you need precise transcription of names, IDs, codes, or technical jargon.
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+ 68 • Avoid the Voice Agent API for free-tier exploration unless that's specifically what you're building — at $4.50/hr it eats credit ~30x faster than async STT.
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+ 69 • No expiry has been published for the $50 credit, but treat it as best-effort — if you've signed up and not used it for months, log in and confirm the balance before planning a big batch.
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+ 70 • Concurrency / rate limits are not published for the free tier; they exist but are generous enough that solo developers rarely hit them. Heavy parallel batch jobs may get throttled.
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+ 71 • One account per person — re-registering with the same email won't grant a second $50.
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+ 72 • No region restrictions on signup — the API is global. Data is processed in AssemblyAI's US infrastructure by default.
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+ 78 • Deepgram — $200 free credit on signup, no CC, similar STT scope
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+ 79 • Speechmatics — 8 hours/month free recurring (480 min), good if you need a perpetual free tier rather than a one-shot credit
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+ 80 • OpenAI Whisper API — no free credit, but $0.006/min ($0.36/hr) pay-as-you-go and self-hostable for free
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+ 82 If you need a recurring free quota rather than a one-time $50, Speechmatics is the better starting point. If you want the largest one-shot credit, Deepgram's $200 beats AssemblyAI.
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+ 86 Sources:
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+ 87 • AssemblyAI Pricing
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+ 88 • AssemblyAI FAQ — Can I sign up for free?
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+ 89 • AssemblyAI Dashboard Signup
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+ 90 • AssemblyAI Speech-to-Text product page
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