AssemblyAI alternatives

Speech-to-text API built for developers — fast, cheap, real-time.

freemium$200 free credits; Nova-3 STT from $0.0048/min (promo)

The reference standard for AI voice — TTS, cloning, dubbing and voice agents.

freemiumfree tier (10k credits/mo, non-commercial); Starter $6/mo, Creator $22/mo

Full-song generation — vocals, lyrics, arrangement — from a text prompt.

freemiumfree tier (10 songs/day, non-commercial); Pro $10/mo, Premier $30/mo

Ultra-low-latency voice AI with streaming TTS and voice cloning.

freemiumfree tier (20K credits/mo); paid plans from $5/mo

OpenAI's open-weights speech recognition — the default transcription model.

freeopen source (MIT), self-host free; hosted: gpt-4o-transcribe $0.006/min

Text-to-speech and voice-cloning model family from Alibaba Cloud.

paidCosyVoice 2 from ~$0.287/10,000 characters; CosyVoice 3.5 Plus from ~$0.22/10,000 characters; CosyVoice voice creation free; Qwen-TTS voice creation $0.20/voice; free quota: 10 voice creations in first 90 days (Singapore region)

Expressive TTS, cloning, and STT — S2.1 Pro in the web app and a byte-priced API.

freemiumweb app free to start (personal use); API pay-as-you-go, no monthly minimum — s2.1-pro $15/M UTF-8 bytes, s2.1-pro-free $0 (fair use, no TTFA/DPA), ASR transcribe-1 $0.36/audio-hour

Realtime text-to-speech API aimed at voice agents and characters, with voice cloning and LLM routing.

freemiumOn-Demand free tier includes up to 70 min TTS; paid plans start at $25/mo (Creator), then $100/mo Builder, $300/mo Developer, $1,500/mo Growth, and Enterprise custom.

AI noise cancellation, accent conversion, and meeting notes for voice calls.

freemium7-day free trial; paid Meeting AI plans; Call Center AI and Developer APIs are custom-priced

Text-to-speech, voice cloning, and audio generation API.

paidTurbo $60/M characters, HD $100/M characters; subscription plans $5–$150/month on some aggregators; voice clone $1.5/clone on fal.ai

Business-focused voiceover studio for presentations and e-learning.

freemiumfree tier; Creator $29/mo or $19/mo billed yearly

Deepfake detection and synthetic-media security for audio, image, video and meetings.

freemiumfree Flex tier (pay-as-you-go); Team from $350/mo

Text-to-speech reader and AI voice generator for content consumption.

freemiumfree tier; Premium $29/mo

High-fidelity music generation, strong on vocals and mix quality.

freemiumfree tier; Standard $10/mo, Pro $30/mo (yearly)

Fully managed AWS service that converts text into lifelike speech in dozens of languages.

freemiumFree tier lasts 12 months and varies by engine (e.g., 1M neural characters/month); Standard voices are $4 per 1M characters, Neural $16, Generative $30, Long-Form $100.

Fully managed AWS speech foundation model that converts real-time or recorded speech into text.

freemium60 minutes/month free for 12 months; standard streaming is $0.01/min and batch $0.006/min, with add-ons for PII redaction and custom language models.

Open-source text-to-speech model using flow matching for fast, faithful speech synthesis.

free

Cloud API that transcribes audio into text in 85+ languages with streaming and speaker diarization.

freemiumV2 API standard recognition starts at $0.016/min; V1 offers 60 free minutes per month, then $0.016–$0.024/min depending on data logging.

Cloud API that turns text into natural-sounding speech with hundreds of voices across 75+ languages.

freemiumFree monthly character allowances vary by voice type (e.g., 1M for WaveNet, 4M for Standard); paid per million characters after that.

Open-source few-shot voice cloning and text-to-speech toolkit with a built-in WebUI.

free

GPU-accelerated SDK for customizable real-time speech recognition, synthesis, and translation pipelines.

paidCan be explored through managed endpoints on nvidia.build.com; production deployment is self-hosted on NVIDIA GPU infrastructure.

Developer-first speech-to-text API offering accurate transcription in 57+ languages at scale.

freemiumPay-as-you-go plan includes free credits equivalent to 5 hours of Reverb ASR usage; volume pricing is available.

Speech-to-text and text-to-speech APIs supporting 55+ languages with low latency and flexible deployment.

paidSpeech-to-text starts at $0.24/hr for batch Standard and $0.43/hr for real-time Enhanced; text-to-speech is $0.011 per 1,000 characters.

Open-source speech recognition toolkit with batched Whisper, word-level timestamps, and speaker diarization.

free

Microsoft speech-to-text, TTS, and translation APIs — boring, regional, and actually contractable.

paidAzure meter; free trial credits exist on new accounts

Expressive voice / EVI APIs — emotion-conditioned speech, not a generic TTS clone.

freemium

Small open TTS model (82M) that runs locally at usable quality for the size.

free

Studio TTS for enterprise voiceovers, older than the ElevenLabs wave, still sold into learning/ops.

paid