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Compare AssemblyAI Universal-2

AssemblyAI Universal-2’s pricing, architecture, and capability ratings side by side with up to three other AI audio models. Pick models below — your selection is saved in the URL and is shareable. AssemblyAI Universal-2 full profile ↗

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AssemblyAI Universal-2's pricing, architecture, and capability ratings side by side with up to three other AI audio models. Add or remove comparison models with the selector below — the selection is saved in the page URL, so a specific comparison is shareable.

Is AssemblyAI Universal-2 or Deepgram Nova-3 cheaper?

AssemblyAI Universal-2 is cheaper: AssemblyAI Universal-2 is $0.0025 / minute, Deepgram Nova-3 is from $0.0043 / minute.

How does AssemblyAI Universal-2 compare to Deepgram Nova-3?

Modelglass rates both models across 5 capability dimensions. Deepgram Nova-3 rates higher on Real-time streaming.

Compare with (up to 3)

	AssemblyAI Universal-2 base	Amazon Transcribe	Azure Speech-to-Text	Deepgram Nova-3	Google Cloud STT Chirp 2	MAI-Transcribe	OpenAI Whisper-1 (deprecated)	Whisper Large v3
Price	$0.0025 / minute	from $0.006 / minute	$0.0167 / minute	from $0.0043 / minute	from $0.016 / minute	$0.006 / minute	$0.006 / minute	$0.00185 / minute
Creator	AssemblyAI	Amazon	Microsoft	Deepgram	Google	Microsoft AI	OpenAI	OpenAI
Architecture	end-to-end-asr	end-to-end-asr	end-to-end-asr	end-to-end-asr	end-to-end-asr	llm-based-asr	encoder-decoder-transformer	encoder-decoder-transformer
Released	2024-06	2018-04	2017-06	2025-01	2024-03	2026-04	2022-09	2023-11
Generation	—	—	—	—	—	—	Previous	Current
	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Moderate	Strong
Word error rate on diverse real-world audio — covering accented speech, background noise, domain-specific vocabulary, and low-quality recordings. What each rating means here Strong Best-in-class word error rates on diverse real-world audio including accented speech, background noise, and domain-specific vocabulary. Moderate Solid accuracy on clean, standard audio; word error rates increase noticeably on noisy recordings or specialised domains. Weak Acceptable accuracy only on high-quality, near-studio audio; degrades significantly on real-world conditions.
	Moderate	Strong	Strong	Moderate	Strong	Moderate	Strong	Strong
Number and quality of supported input languages. Strong coverage means reliable transcription across many major and minor languages. What each rating means here Strong High-quality output across many major and minor languages with consistent accuracy or naturalness. Moderate Good support for widely spoken languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese) but quality degrades for lower-resource languages. Weak Primarily English-optimised; other languages may be supported but with noticeably lower quality.
	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Weak	Weak	Weak
Ability to identify and label different speakers in a recording — critical for meeting transcription, interviews, and multi-participant audio. What each rating means here Strong Reliable automatic speaker identification and labelling across multi-speaker recordings with accurate turn boundaries. Moderate Basic diarisation available; works well on clean recordings with few speakers but accuracy drops with more speakers or crosstalk. Weak No native diarisation support, or quality is insufficient for production meeting and interview transcription.
	Moderate	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Weak	Weak	Moderate
Latency and accuracy when transcribing live audio streams — lower latency and stable partial transcripts are key for interactive applications. What each rating means here Strong Low-latency streaming (< 300 ms) with high-quality partial transcripts — suitable for live captioning and voice-activated interfaces. Moderate Streaming available but latency or partial transcript quality limits use to less time-sensitive live scenarios. Weak No streaming support or streaming latency is too high for interactive real-time applications.
	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Moderate	Moderate	Weak	Weak
Support for domain-specific terms, product names, and acronyms via word-boost, custom dictionaries, or fine-tuning. What each rating means here Strong Effective word-boost or custom dictionary that reliably improves accuracy on domain-specific terms, product names, and acronyms. Moderate Some custom vocabulary support available but with limited coverage or requiring more setup than best-in-class solutions. Weak No custom vocabulary support — accuracy on technical or branded terminology depends entirely on training data coverage.

Capability ratings are an expert synthesis across benchmarks, community evaluations, and provider documentation. “—” means no profile data for that dimension.