Deepgram vs OpenAI pricing
Voice agents: Deepgram from $0.075 vs OpenAI from $0.05; STT: Deepgram from $0.0048 vs OpenAI from $0.003.
Last updated · prices checked daily
Voice agent platforms: Deepgram vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.075 for Deepgram (Voice Agent API, Standard), about 33% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech) Bundled models Per-minute session price; backend model and tool usage are charged separately. | $0.05 |
| Deepgram Visit site ↗ | Voice Agent API, Standard Pay as you go Bundled models Bundled STT + LLM + TTS agent tier. | $0.075 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Deepgram | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $75.00 | $50.00 |
| 10,000 min | $750.00 | $500.00 |
| 100,000 min | $7,500.00 | $5,000.00 |
Speech-to-text: Deepgram vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0048 for Deepgram (Nova-3 Monolingual (streaming, current price)), about 37% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated) Token-billed; OpenAI's own per-minute estimate. | $0.003 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-transcribe (batch) | $0.0045 |
| Deepgram Visit site ↗ | Nova-3 Monolingual (streaming, current price) Pay as you go Page shows a discounted 'current price' next to a higher 'regular price'. | $0.0048 |
| Deepgram Visit site ↗ | Flux English (streaming, current price) Pay as you go | $0.0065 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-transcribe (streaming) | $0.017 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Deepgram | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $4.80 | $3.00 |
| 10,000 min | $48.00 | $30.00 |
| 100,000 min | $480.00 | $300.00 |
Cost-per-call calculator
Estimate what one call really costs. Prices come from today's table; LLM and telephony presets are per-minute rates published by Retell and Vapi. Everything is editable.
Cartesia's pricing page puts one minute of speech at 750–800 characters; Rime says about 1,000. The talk share is your own guess at how much of each call the agent is speaking.
FAQ
Is Deepgram or OpenAI cheaper for voice agent platforms?
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.075 for Deepgram (Voice Agent API, Standard), about 33% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
Is Deepgram or OpenAI cheaper for speech-to-text?
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0048 for Deepgram (Nova-3 Monolingual (streaming, current price)), about 37% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
How often are these prices updated?
Every day. A script reads each vendor's public pricing page, extracts the listed rates and keeps a dated copy, so price changes show up in the history.