Gladia replaces its 10-hours-a-month free tier with a one-time 50 EUR credit and a prepaid wallet
Gladia moved self-serve billing to a prepaid credit wallet with auto top-up and swapped its recurring 10 free hours per month for a single non-resetting 50 EUR signup credit.
Starter offered 10 hours of transcription free every month on a pay-as-you-go account billed in arrears, at $0.61/hr async and $0.75/hr real-time (captured 2026-06-09).
Starter is funded from a prepaid credit wallet with manual or automatic top-ups and opens with 50 EUR in free credits - a one-time grant with no monthly reset, which Gladia puts at roughly 80+ hours of pre-recorded or 60+ hours of real-time transcription. Per-hour rates are unchanged: async $0.61/hr, real-time $0.75/hr on Starter; async as low as $0.20/hr and real-time as low as $0.25/hr on Growth; Enterprise custom.
The headline rates did not move, but the way a Gladia account is funded did. Self-serve customers now run on a prepaid credit wallet: you top up manually, or set an auto-top-up threshold that recharges the existing payment method when the balance drops below a level you choose. Gladia notifies on low balance, top-ups, and failed payments, and the threshold, the top-up amount, and the feature itself can be turned off from the Developer Console. The company pitches this as “full visibility, no end-of-month surprises.”
The free-tier change is the sharper edge of the same move. The recurring “10 hours free every month” allowance is gone from the pricing page, replaced by a 50 EUR signup credit that the FAQ describes as “a one-time grant with no monthly reset. That’s roughly 80+ hours of pre-recorded transcription or 60+ hours of real-time transcription at current rates. Once used, top up or upgrade to continue.” Low-volume hobby users who previously sat inside a perpetual free allowance now have a finite runway and then a payment step.
Plan structure and prices are otherwise stable. Starter still lists async at $0.61/hr and real-time at $0.75/hr with 30 real-time and 25 async concurrent requests; Growth is still commitment-gated at “as low as” $0.20/hr async and $0.25/hr real-time, footnoted as 67% less than Starter; Enterprise remains a custom annual plan with unlimited concurrency, zero data retention, custom hosting, and SLAs.
Self-serve billing moved from pay-as-you-go in arrears to a prepaid credit wallet with manual or automatic top-ups, a user-set low-balance threshold, and notifications on low balance, top-ups, and failed payments — all editable in the Developer Console. The recurring 10-free-hours-per-month allowance was withdrawn in favour of a one-time 50 EUR signup credit with no monthly reset (roughly 80+ hours pre-recorded or 60+ hours real-time). No rate moved: Starter stays $0.61/hr async and $0.75/hr real-time, Growth as low as $0.20/$0.25 per hour, Enterprise custom; concurrency stays 30 real-time / 25 async.