Deepgram vs AssemblyAI vs Whisper: If You Self-Host, Skip Whisper
AssemblyAI is the default for post-call transcription and Deepgram for live voice agents. Self-hosting pays past roughly 2-6M call minutes a month with a two-engineer team — and then the model to run is NVIDIA Parakeet, not Whisper.
September 22, 2026 · 20 min read