How much does OpenAI Whisper API cost?

OpenAI Whisper API costs $0.006/minute of audio. Transcribing a 1-hour podcast costs $0.36. A 10,000-hour transcription project costs $3,600 — very competitive vs human transcription.

Is self-hosted Whisper free?

Yes — Whisper is open source. Self-hosted large-v3 on a T4 GPU processes audio at approximately 10-20x real-time speed, costing ~$0.0003-0.0006/minute in GPU fees.

What is Whisper accuracy?

Whisper large-v3 achieves 2-5% word error rate on English, competitive with professional transcription services. Accuracy varies for accented speech and technical vocabulary.

Speech-to-Text Whisper Cost Calculator

Calculate OpenAI Whisper API speech-to-text costs at $0.006/minute. Compare self-hosted Whisper (free) vs API for podcast transcription and voice apps.

AI & SaaS Tools

SaaS Metrics

AI Compute

AI ROI

LTV:CAC Ratio

ARPU ($/month)

Monthly Churn %

CAC ($)

Gross Margin %

LTV

$3500

LTV:CAC

11.67

Payback

2.9 mo

Health

Healthy ✓

Benchmark: LTV:CAC ≥ 3 is healthy. Payback under 12 months is excellent. Under 1 means you lose money on each customer.

How to Use

Enter the values for the scenario you are assessing. Calculate OpenAI Whisper API speech-to-text costs at $0.006/minute. Compare self-hosted Whisper (free) vs API for podcast transcription and voice apps. Use the whisper stt cost result to inform your calculation.

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Speech-to-Text Whisper Cost Calculator

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much does OpenAI Whisper API cost?

Is self-hosted Whisper free?

What is Whisper accuracy?