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AssemblyAI itemizes what's bundled into its $4.50/hr Voice Agent API

AssemblyAI pricing

AssemblyAI now itemizes its $4.50/hr Voice Agent bundle (STT, LLM, TTS all 'Included') and confirms via FAQ there are no per-layer add-on fees on top of that rate.

Before

Voice Agent API shown as a single opaque row: '$4.50/hr ($0.075/min)' with a one-line description; no FAQ entry explaining what the rate includes.

After

Voice Agent API pricing table itemizes Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime (STT), Voice Agent LLM, and Voice Agent TTS as separate rows all marked 'Included' under the same $4.50/hr rate; a new FAQ ('What is included in the $4.50/hr Voice Agent API price?') states there are no per-layer add-ons, concurrency fees, or per-agent subscriptions, and that SIP trunking carries no markup when bringing your own Twilio account. The $4.50/hr headline rate itself is unchanged.

AssemblyAI did not change the price of its Voice Agent API — it is still $4.50/hr ($0.075/min) — but it substantially increased the transparency of what that all-in rate covers. The pricing table now breaks the bundle into three named components (Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime speech-to-text, a proprietary Voice Agent LLM, and Voice Agent TTS), each explicitly marked “Included,” rather than presenting the product as a single undifferentiated line item.

A new FAQ entry, “What is included in the $4.50/hr Voice Agent API price?”, spells out the entitlement in detail: prompting and Voice Focus on the STT layer, advanced turn and interruption detection, full conversation recordings and transcripts retrievable via dashboard or API, and SIP trunking that carries no markup when a customer connects their own Twilio account. AssemblyAI states plainly that there are no per-layer add-ons, concurrency fees, or per-agent subscriptions stacked on top of the $4.50/hr rate, and that usage is billed per second on connected conversation time. This directly addresses the previously-flagged risk that the Voice Agent API’s ~30x premium over base transcription could hide surprise per-layer charges.

From AssemblyAI's pricing timeline
Voice Agent API bundle itemized ($4.50/hr rate unchanged)

AssemblyAI did not change the Voice Agent API's $4.50/hr ($0.075/min) headline rate, but the pricing table now itemizes what it covers as three separate "Included" line items — Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime STT, the Voice Agent LLM, and Voice Agent TTS — and a new FAQ confirms there are no per-layer add-ons, concurrency fees, per-agent subscriptions, or SIP markup on top of the all-in rate. All other product lines (async, realtime, sync, Speech Understanding/Guardrails add-ons, LLM Gateway's 31-model table) were re-verified unchanged against the same capture.

About AssemblyAI
assemblyai.com ↗

AssemblyAI operates a pure usage-based pricing model billed per hour of audio: async transcription at $0.15/hr (Universal-2) or $0.21/hr (Universal-3.5 Pro), with no seat fees, no monthly minimums, and a free tier of up to 185 hours to test before committing.

Pricing model pure usage
Billing units api callstokens
Sales motion self servesales led
Free tier
Yes
Commits
None
Transparency
public

AssemblyAI pricing history

  1. Aug 2026
    Voice Agent API bundle itemized ($4.50/hr rate unchanged)
  2. Jul 2026
    Sync Speech-to-Text API launched ($0.45/hr)
  3. Jul 2026
    Voice Agent API launched; pricing page restructured into six product tabs
  4. May 2026
    Current Pricing (May 2026)
  5. Jan 2025
    Universal-3.5 Pro and Streaming Models Released
Full AssemblyAI timeline

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