AssemblyAI vs Gladia

For high-volume call center transcription, per-minute batch cost is the dominant factor. AssemblyAI charges $0.0035 per audio minute versus Gladia at $0.010167 per audio minute, meaning Gladia costs nearly 3x more at scale. On speaker diarizationdiarization - Splitting a transcript by speaker, so you can see who said what., AssemblyAI adds a small extra per-minute charge of about $0.000333 per audio minute, while Gladia includes diarization in its base rate, but even with that add-on, AssemblyAI's total per-minute cost remains well below Gladia's base price. PII redaction is a paid add-on for AssemblyAI at about $0.001333 per audio minute but is included in Gladia's rate, yet again AssemblyAI's all-in cost stays lower. Concurrency seals the advantage: AssemblyAI supports 200+ concurrent async jobs versus Gladia's 25, which is critical for high call volumes.

For developers building transcription products, batch pricing is the heaviest factor. AssemblyAI charges $0.0035 per audio minute versus Gladia at $0.010167 per audio minute, meaning Gladia costs nearly 3x more at scale. Both tools offer Python and JavaScript SDKs, websocket streaming APIs, and word-level timestampsword-level timestamps - The API reports exactly when each word is spoken in the audio, for subtitles and highlighting., so those attributes are even. On supported audio formats, AssemblyAI supports 30+ audio and video formats including mp3, wav, flac, m4a, mp4, and mov, while Gladia's published information lists only aac, a significant gap for developers needing format flexibility. The decisive batch pricing advantage combined with broader format support makes AssemblyAI the clear choice for this use case.

The available facts cover API-level attributes such as batch pricing, streaming latency, WERWER - Word error rate - the share of words a transcription gets wrong; lower is more accurate. benchmarks, concurrency, and compliance, but none of the five attributes that decide this dictation use case are addressed: platform support for voice typing apps, whether audio is processed locally or in the cloud, AI formatting and editing features within a dictation app, one-time versus subscription app pricing, and app integrations. Without any facts on these deciding attributes for either AssemblyAI or Gladia, neither tool can be shown to lead on even one of the five criteria.

Both AssemblyAI and Gladia offer a HIPAA BAAHIPAA BAA - A signed Business Associate Agreement that lets you handle protected health information under US healthcare privacy law., the gating requirement for clinical transcription. On PII redaction, Gladia includes it in the base price while AssemblyAI charges a small per-minute add-on of about $0.08/hr, giving Gladia a mild edge on the second-heaviest attribute. Both support custom vocabulary and keyterm boosting, both hold SOC 2 Type II certification, and both offer self-host or on-prem deployment. Because the top attribute is matched and the remaining attributes split roughly evenly, with only a minor cost difference on PII redaction separating them, the tools are genuinely balanced across the attributes that matter for this use case.

For recorded meetings, speaker diarizationdiarization - Splitting a transcript by speaker, so you can see who said what. is the top priority. Gladia includes diarization in its base price, while AssemblyAI charges a small extra per-minute add-on for it. AssemblyAI's file handling is substantially better, though: it supports files up to 5 GB and 10 hours per file, whereas Gladia caps at 1000 MB and 135 minutes per request on standard plans. Long meeting recordings frequently exceed Gladia's 135-minute limit, making AssemblyAI the more practical choice. Both tools offer summarization and word-level timestamps, and language support is essentially matched at 99 versus 101 languages. The decisive edge for AssemblyAI is its clearly superior file size and duration limits for long recordings.

Both AssemblyAI and Gladia offer a self-hostself-host - Run the software on your own servers instead of the vendor’s cloud. or on-premises option, which is the top-weighted attribute here. Beyond that single confirmed fact, no information is available on model weights licensing, hardware requirements, project maintenance status, or model size for either tool. Since the decisive attributes beyond self-hosting are entirely unpublished, and both tools are equal on the one confirmed attribute, there is no basis to prefer one over the other.

For voice agents, streaming latency is the decisive attribute. AssemblyAI claims 150 ms versus Gladia's 300 ms, meaning AssemblyAI responds twice as fast, directly reducing the chance a bot lags or mistimes interruptions. Both tools offer a WebSocket streaming API, so that is a wash. On streaming price, AssemblyAI charges $0.0075 per audio minute versus Gladia's $0.0125, giving AssemblyAI a clear cost advantage at scale. Concurrencyconcurrency - How many phone calls the platform can handle at the same time. further favors AssemblyAI, which supports 100 new streams per minute on the base plan versus Gladia's 30 real-time concurrent connections. Both tools offer custom vocabulary boosting. AssemblyAI leads on the three heaviest attributes that matter here.