OpenAI Whisper API provides highly accurate multilingual speech recognition and translation via OpenAI's hosted Whisper model.
✓ Pros
- Excellent multilingual accuracy across 99 languages
- Built-in translation to English from any supported language
- Very low cost at $0.006/min
- Open-source model available for self-hosting
✗ Cons
- No real-time streaming—batch/file upload only via API
- No speaker diarization in the hosted API
- Rate limits can affect high-throughput workloads
| Free tier | Paid only |
| Pricing model | usage |
| Price (per minute) | $0.006 USD |
| Features | |
| Languages | en, ja, zh, ko, fr, de, es |
| API | ✓ Available Docs ↗ |
| Pricing Plans | Pay-as-you-go$0.006/minFlat rate, all languages Open-source (self-host)$0Run Whisper model locally for free |
| Platforms | |
| Integrations | OpenAI Platform, Python SDK, Node.js SDK, REST API |
| Homepage | https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/speech-to-text |
AI Commentary
The hosted Whisper API offers the easiest path to OpenAI's speech recognition model without infrastructure management. Its multilingual accuracy—particularly on low-resource languages—is among the best available. The major drawback is the absence of real-time streaming, limiting it to asynchronous transcription workflows. Teams needing real-time streaming should run the open-source model on their own infrastructure or use Deepgram/Azure Speech instead.