Every THE D[AI]LY BRIEF article on speech-to-text pricing — enterprise AI analysis, benchmarks, vendor comparisons, and ROI frameworks for technology and business leaders. Updated as new coverage publishes.
Microsoft's MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming claims a 2.5% streaming WER at $0.54 an audio hour, but it ships as a public preview with no SLA and no word-level timestamps, at 2.7 times Grok's streaming price.
October 3, 2026 · 9 min read
Qwen-Audio 3.1 bills speech recognition in tokens: at 25 tokens per audio second it works out to about $0.02 an hour in Singapore, against $0.15-$0.26 at AssemblyAI and Deepgram. The catches are a five-minute request cap, per-channel billing and a residency decision.
September 27, 2026 · 10 min read